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J La Grange College Bulletin

LA GRANGE, GEORGIA

VOLUME LXXXIV

NUMBER 1

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The Ancient Landmarks

ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATING CLASS
BY

SAMUEL C. DOBBS, LL.D.

PUBLISHED BY

La Grange College

La Grange, Ga.

AUGUST, 1928

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ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT
LA GRANGE. GEORGIA. UNDER ACT OF AUGUST 24. 1912

The Ancient Landmarks

I confess that I approach this occasion with no little
temerity, for I have a keen sense of my lack of fitness to
meet such an obligation and to take full advantage of so
notable an opportunity.

You young ladies are going out into the world to enter
into a new life a life of amazing freedom and liberty of
thought and action. You will enter into a new environment.
You will frequently hear comparisons drawn between condi-
tions and social customs of to-day and those of twenty years
ago. It is true that conditions and modes of life and living
have undergone a tremendous change, but I am in no wise
convinced that these changes are not hazardous to the moral
and spiritual welfare of this present generation.

While conditions are daily changing, fundamentals have
not changed. The truths of two thousand years ago, of two
generations ago, are as fundamental and immutable to-day as
they were when our Lord delivered the tablet of the Ten
Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai ; and, whatever be
your environment in the future, you can't ignore, without
courting disaster, the old landmarks.

In Proverbs, 22nd chapter, 28th verse, we read :

"Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have
set."

A little further on in Proverbs, 23rd chapter, 10th verse, we
read again :

"Remove not the old landmarks and enter not into the
fields of the faithless/'

Just here, I would like to tell you a little story that will
make clear to you my thought. Some months ago, I found
it necessary to establish certain land lines between some
property that I own in Rabun County, where I have my coun-
try home, and that of my neighbors. I engaged the County
Surveyor of Rabun County to come to my place and under-

take to establish these lines. They were not the old land
lines of the survey of 1806; many of these had been changed
because of the extensive hydroelectric developments up there
by the Georgia Railway and Power Company. These great
storage lakes had obliterated many of the old landmarks and
caused the necessity of changing many of the old established
land lines. You know in the rural districts there is no sub-
ject quite so "touchy" as land lines. Our rural courts are
choked with lawsuits involving disputes between neighbors
over property lines, and a great deal of bloodshed has been
caused by these disputes. I have known of instances where
thousands of dollars have been spent, fighting over some
insignificant amount of property because neighbors had fallen
out over just where the dividing lines should run.

When we started out that morning, my friend, the sur-
veyor, asked me where the line was located between my
property and that of my neighbor, Mr. Hopkins. I told him
I didn't know; that was what I had him down here for.
"Well," he says, "we have to establish a corner." He looked
up some of his old notes and surveys and we found that
the particular corner from which he wanted to start had been
submerged by Lake Rabun and was then under more than
sixty feet of water, naturally making it unavailable. Neither
Mr. Hopkins nor I knew exactly where the dividing line
between us was located.

He thought for a minute, picked up his instrument and
started off through the woods. I asked him where he was
going. He pointed to a distant mountain and said, "Up on
the side of that hill, I think I can locate an established corner
that was set up there when the State Survey was made 120
years ago." We all went over there and began to search.
Finally, on the side of a very steep place, I stumbled on to a
pile of stones that the storms and rains and winds of more
than a century had almost obliterated, long since forgotten,
covered with leaves and over-run by briars.

I called to Mr. Henderson, the surveyor. He came up to
where I was standing and began to scratch around in the
leaves, uncovered the stones and finally we found a portion
of a rotting stake which, however, still contained some sur-
veyor's marks which he could interpret. It had originally

been driven into the ground and the stones piled around it,
but had rotted off. We then began to search for some "bench
marks" which are used by surveyors in marking a corner.
We found some faint evidences of these. He set up his instru-
ment there and we began to work out from that old landmark.
In a short while we found others one a most interesting one.
We came across an old charred pine stump about ten feet
high. The original tree had undoubtedly died and forest
fires had almost destroyed it; but Mr. Reynolds began to
cut into this old stump and finally found unmistakable mark-
ings, long since over-grown, that showed that he was on the
right track. From that old corner, more than a mile from
my property, we were enabled, by reading the markings of
120 years ago, with absolute accuracy to locate other estab-
lished corners and well-nigh obliterated bench marks. Be-
fore the day was done, we had found and reestablished long
forgotten corner posts and lines, clearly defining the dividing
lines and boundaries of our several properties thus avoid-
ing misunderstanding and confusion in the future.

"Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have
set."

The next day we went back to this old corner and put up
a permanent pile of stones thus reestablishing the old land-
marks of six generations ago.

What tremendous changes have taken place since the estab-
lishment of that old land corner, when the original survey
was made in 1806. Rabun County was then nearly a week's
journey by the then prevailing modes of travel from the spot
where Atlanta now stands. Then such a trip would have in-
volved many hardships, much discomfort, and some real
danger. Unfriendly Indians roamed those hills, and a lawless
element that had drifted down along the Blue Ridge moun-
tains from Virginia and North Carolina were given to pillage
and plunder. Then communication with the outside world
was uncertain and irregular.

To-day, I can drive from my office in Atlanta to my home
in Rabun County in about three hours. To-day, I can have
my breakfast in Atlanta, drive to Lakemont and transact
important business and return to Atlanta in time for dinner.
Or, in other words, between suns I can accomplish what

would have taken my grandfather practically two weeks to
have done, and without discomfort or undue risks.

I can pick up my 'phone and talk with my farm superin-
tendent up there in the hills of Rabun, or transact business
with my broker in New York, or talk with a banker in
London, almost with equal ease. There is scarcely a day
that I do not talk to someone in New York, consummate im-
portant business deals with as much facility as I could if the
person to whom I was talking sat at my desk in the Candler
Building in Atlanta.

Great hydroelectric plants, nestling in the canyons of
those mountains up there, driven by the terrific force of the
mountain torrents that have been running uselessly for cen-
turies, serve to generate an unseen power that is conveyed
through a copper wire no larger than this pencil to Atlanta,
120 miles away, and other nearby cities, that turns the wheels
of her great factories, lights her streets and buildings, and
furnishes transportation for nearly three hundred thousand
people daily. Or, in other words, the harnessing of the
rivers of North Georgia has completely revolutionized the
mode of living of more than a million people. Yet that old
landmark that we discovered and reestablished that morning
the handiwork of a surveyor 120 years ago is just as ac-
curate a marker to-day as it was the day it was erected.

How important it is that we remove not the ancient land-
marks which our fathers set up ! I sit in my library up there
on Sunday morning and listen to a sermon. The preacher
may be speaking from a pulpit in Atlanta or from the plat-
form of some great metropolitan church in New York, Pitts-
burgh, or Chicago ; but through the medium of a little instru-
ment sitting on the table by my side, I hear every word dis-
tinctly and as quickly as uttered. What an astounding change
from the days of the Pony Express or the Circuit Rider on
horseback ; but the message is fundamentally the same.

The old landmarks stand IMMUTABLE, UNCHANGE-
ABLE.

There is to-day a restless impatience with the thoughts
and ideals of the past, which no serious-minded and thought-
ful person can overlook. The automobile, the telephone, the
aeroplane, and the radio have revolutionized and reconstructed

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the social and economic life of our day. The plodding way
of our fathers is to us to-day the dull, impossible day of a
scientifically unenlightened age. Nobody rises for the de-
fense of the methods of a generation ago, because we all
know that we have lived beyond their adaptation. You can-
not force the present economic conditions into such a crude
and rigid mold, nor can you compel social life to accept stand-
ards which lack the drive and the thrust of the great days
in which we find ourselves. These facts have been responsi-
ble for the development of new conditions for the religious
life and is an entirely altered stiuation for the Christian
church. The whole current of our religious life has been
changed to fit the new order of things. Religious thinking
has undergone a very definite revision, and the whole method
of Church work has been turned inside out. It is not that
we have been swept off our feet by the materialistic phases
of progress, but that religion must keep pace with the age to
which it speaks. It is unnatural and impossible for the same
person to observe the social and business standards of the
twentieth century and bend slavishly to the religious stand
ards of the nineteenth century.

It is just here that we face our gravest danger in this new
and revolutionary age. Our first impuse is to put overboard
the whole religious life and methods of a generation ago ; but
in that disposition we are outrunning the facts in material
progress, and we are sometimes altogether too prone to ignore
the ancient landmarks which our fathers have set up for us.
Twentieth century enterprise has in no sense broken with
the past ; it has simply surged forward in an almost miracu-
lous degree. Take, for instance, the automobile. It was not
originated by the Twentieth Century. The wheel and axle
have been in process of evolution since the days of the ox
cart in the wilderness, and its motor is but the latest phase
of the vision of James Watts as he sat in his mother's kitchen
and listened to the tattoo of the lid of the teakettle. The
propeller of the great ocean liner is but the ultimate develop-
ment of the crude paddle with which the savage drove his
rude birch-bark canoe over the waters of this country, even
before the advent of the white man. It is the recognition
and retention of these vital factors which have made economic

progress possible. In just exactly the same way, there are
certain factors of life and certain values, established through
history, which we cannot afford to cast off.

"Thou shalt not steal" is just as great a law to-day as it
was 2,000 years ago, and the Ten Commandments are as abid-
ing and eternal as God himself. "Remove not the ancient
landmarks which thy fathers have set." You may well ask
what are these old landmarks that we are to be guided by in
this new environment and in this modern life in which we
are living.

Here is the greatest of all the great Beacon Light of
Civilization that has sent out its rays of hope and of life to
millions of souls who were groping in darkness and doubt
and unbelief. "O," you say, "that is old stuff; we have out-
grown that." Now, have you?

Some of us think pretty well of Mr. Thomas Jefferson. He
has sometimes been called the Father of the Constitution.
Here is what he has to say: "I have always said, and I always
will say, that the studious perusal of the Sacred Book will
make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands."
And I have a notion that these three personalities are sadly
needed to-day.

That great philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, uttered these
wise words : "A Bible and a newspaper in every home, a good
school in every district, all studied and appreciated as they
merit, are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil
liberty."

Daniel Webster made it a practice to read the Bible through
every year, and once said: "I pity the man who cannot find
in it a rich supply of thought and rules of conduct."

The eloquent and learned Edward Everett once said: "All
the distinctive features and superiority of our public institu-
tions are derived from the teaching of the Scriptures."

William H. Seward, great in law and statesmanship, said :
"The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the
ever-growing influence of the Bible."

I have nothing but contempt for the so-called scientist who
prattles away out of an empty head, and an emptier heart,
and says that the Bible is an obsolete book and has no bearing
on the problems of modern civilization. We may have de-

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parted from its teachings, but our marvelous progress of the
past 100 years has not changed one divine principle laid
down in this old Book. That was the foundation stone and
the inspiration of the greatest document ever conceived by
finite minds the Constitution of the United States.

This spirit of unrest characterizes our age. Theories are
reversed over-night. Dogmas are cast aside with the care-
lessness one would manifest in discarding an old garment.
The discovery of America by Columbus is no longer an ac-
cepted tenet. The authenticity of Shakespeare is even ques-
tioned. The character of that great soldier, citizen, and states-
man, George Washington, has been bitterly assailed by some
publicity-seeking individuals, and the proverbial certainty of
two and two making four is no longer accepted without some
mental reservation or explanatory conjunction. I expect
almost any time to hear some little two-by-four pedagogue,
who has a few letters behind his name, jump up and say "that
two and two make four is true only because we have ac-
cepted it as such."

You young ladies are going out from the sacred walls of
this old College some to enter business, some to enter pro-
fessions, but most of you, I hope, to take up that greatest of
all occupations, home-building and the sacred office of moth-
erhood.

You must teach your children that if our civilization is to
stand, there are things that never change. The Creator, by
whatever name he may be called, is the same yesterday, to-
day, and forever. The operation of natural law rewards or
punishes with the same exactness as it did when Moses sinned
in the wilderness.

Love is another of the eternal verities that changeth not.
Its light will illumine the human mind and its radiance will
warm the human heart when we are in darkness and the chill
of death is upon us. Parents should teach their children that
human history is a chain; that this generation is a link con-
necting the civilization of yesterday with that of to-morrow;
that it is as unwise to reject a truth because it is old as it is
to refuse one because it is new. Life is a building, and when
you destroy the foundation upon which our Christian civiliza-
tion has been builded you wreck the entire edifice.

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But it is not my purpose to preach to you ; but, rather, to
talk to you in the plain, frank manner of a business man who
has had much to do with the college boys and girls of the
past decade. Let us get back to some of the corner posts
from which we are to shape our course in everyday life. We
will go over here on the hillside, and there we find the Cross
of Calvary, and we lay down the eternal corner stone of

REVERENCE FOR RELIGION

Irreverence, while alarmingly prevalent amongst the youth
of our country to-day, is in no sense a modern evil. Irrever-
ence is as ancient as Cain, as vulgar as Esau, and as profane
as Hophni and Phinehas; but whether in ancient or modern
times, it in the end works the same direful result. It is not
possible to hold religion in disrespect without damage to
society and danger to civil government.

Both social and political life take their color in great meas-
ure from! the religion of the people ; and when religion is
despised and its sacred institutions neglected, all the best
things in civilization wither and die.

It has been always the office of religion to found and sus-
tain commonwealths. Even the skeptical Rousseau said :
"Never was a State founded that did not have religion as its
basis." And the great English statesman, Edmund Burke,
affirmed: "We know that religion is the basis of civil society
and the fruitful source of all blessing and comfort in human
intercourse."

These famous men have not overstated the indispensable
value of religion to social order and political well being.
And, if they have spoken truly, irreverence with respect to
religion is in essence almost treason with respect to govern-
ment. It is especially true that republics cannot exist with-
out religion to nourish the life of their citizens.

We do well to lay to heart in these days of irreverence and
impurity the words of Washington, the father of our coun-
try, which are found in his Farewell Address:

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political
prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.
In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who

should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happi-
ness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.
The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to
respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their
connections with private and public felicity. Let it be simply
asked: 'Where is the security for prosperity, for reputation,
for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths
which are the instruments of investigation in courts of jus-
tice?' And let us with caution indulge the supposition that
morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may
be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds
of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us
to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of
religious liberty."

Religion is the corner stone of our American Republic, and
the Bible was held by Chancellor Kent to be a part of the
common law of America. Our nation was a nation founded
in faith; and if it ever perishes (which God forbid), it will
fall for want of faith in God and the Bible.

Now we come down into the valley, and we find the second
great corner stone of life

RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY

Scarcely less important than religion itself, and inseparably
bound up with religion, is respect for authority. There can
be no government and no order where there is no authority.
Lack of respect for authority is born of revolutionary self-
assertion, and culminates at last in anarchy.

About us are many evidenes of decay in respect for
authority. The authority of the home is set at naught, the
sanctity of law is despised, and the rule of government
is held in greater or less contempt by large numbers of peo-
ple. We hear now of a "revolt of youth." But against whom
can youth revolt, except against its own parents? And what
sort of revolt is it that violates the commandment to "honor
thy father and thy mother" and rushes forth into life with
the blind and boastful confidence of inexperience?

Of course, if the present generation of youth may revolt
against the authority of parents, the generation following it

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will in turn revolt. Shall we have from the present day to
the day of judgment a series of youthful insurrections against
all that has gone before?

It is a matter of most serious import that revolt against
authority in the home breeds disorder and revolution in the
church and State, and this danger of revolution is the peculiar
peril which besets the home, the church, and the State in
our day. It is not a matter of little importance to be lightly
considered. We must have a return to reverence for reli-
gion and respect for authority, or all of the noblest and most
sacred things in life will be overthrown and the holiest insti-
tutions of society will be pulled down.

From this mountain top we see our final and fundamental
corner stone

LOVE OF COUNTRY

"O," you say, "that's easy!" Yes, it is easy to throw our
hats in the air and yell ourselves hoarse when the band
marches down the street with flags flying and we see those
boys in our country's uniform, alert, straight-backed, their
faces glowing with pride. We saw them as they marched
away in 1917, at the call of that great idealist and statesman,
Woodrow Wilson. Then we began to realize what love of
country meant. I shall never forget one spring morning
when that curly-headed, blue-eyed boy of mine, impelled by
a patriotic desire to serve his country, left college and came
to my office with a carefully rehearsed speech by which to
sell me the idea that he wanted to enlist and go overseas.
I am quite sure that that morning my love for my own over-
topped my love of country.

What notable words were those uttered by Mr. Wilson
before the House of Congress on April 2, 1917, when he said :
"There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of
making. We will not choose the path of submission and
suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people
to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we
now array ourselves are no common wrongs. Our object is
to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of
the world, as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set
up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the

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world such a concert of purpose and of action as will hence-
forth insure the observance of these principles. " The heart
of a great nation responded almost as one man, and poured
out its life and treasure in the support of a divine principle.

More than 56,000 of our boys poured out their blood on
French soil in defense of this great purpose. The American
people not only gave of their flesh and blood, but nearly
twenty billions of dollars without hope of reward other than
that of fighting for a principle. Yet most of us do not love
our country well enough to obey its plain and simple laws.
We are a peculiar people. Many of us, because we do not
agree with the requirements of the Eighteenth Amendment,
persist in violating the prohibition law and think that we are
good citizens, think that we love our country, and look with
scorn and contempt upon the common thief that burglarizes
a store or lifts a purse from the pocket of some unsuspecting
individual. I suspect that most of us here to-day have been
guilty of the violation of motor speed laws because we are
unwilling to suffer even temporary inconvenience to our-
selves, even though we claim to be good, law-abiding citizens.

We do not love it even well enough to sacrifice some of our
simplest pleasures for it without grumbling. We do not even
vote, and then bad men get into office, put there by an in-
significant minority because the right-thinking people, who
always in the majority, take no interest in civic, State, or
National government beyond that of critcising those who
have been elected to office through our suffrage. We need
a great civic awakening, where the aroused conscience of the
people will manifest itself in the elimination of inefficient,
and often vicious, men from positions of power and influence
and putting into office men and women who, under the fear
of God, will look upon public office as a sacred trust.

It is a conspicuous fault of the present generation of men
and women that they vainly imagine that they can do nothing
toward evidencing their love of country without a lot of
vulgar noise and senseless publicity. There has been pub-
lished in recent years a popular and well-written set of books
entitled "Makers of History," in which such names as those
of Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon, George Washing-
ton, and Abraham Lincoln appear. But these men were not

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the real makers of history. Mothers make more history than
militarists, and the great common people do more to advance
civilization than do those who occupy places of honor in
Legislatures, the Congress, and the Senate. They toil and
die while working at the very foundations of society. The
common people heard our Lord gladly, and he spoke to them
and cared for them with equal gladness. He knew their
worth and valued their work.

It was Susanna Wesley, a home-making, home-loving
mother, who toiled in obscurity, but who gave John and
Charles Wesley to the world. Behind every great person-
ality that has illumined the pages of history, if you will
search carefully, you will likely find the influence of some de-
voted mother. It was a poor peasant mother who gave to the
world the Babe born in Bethlehem, and when He died He was
buried in a borrowed tomb.

Not from conspicuous corners in crowded streets has come,
or will come, the great, vital influences on our lives ; but
when the great book of life is opened, the simple, brave,
sweet services of the King's unknown soldiers, of the de-
voted mothers of men who have toiled in obscurity, and even
suffered in poverty, will then be gloriously honored by Him
who seeth in secret, and angelic forms will walk gladly in
the train which does reverence to their heroic lives.