Ivory Soap and Ivory Palaces
This is not a commercial. It is a teaching story with spiritual implications relative to the beginning of ivory soap and how it received its name.
Once there was a man named Harley Proctor. He was one of the founders of famous Proctor and Gamble soap company in Cincinnati, Ohio, during the days of the Civil War.
One day a worker in his factory allowed the soap mixing machine to run too long. This machine, which was called a "crutcher," beat this particular batch of soap so long that it was much lighter than usual. When it was made into bars and cakes, the soap floated. Someone suggested that it be reboiled but another man said, "Maybe people will like it." They did, customers who were used to fishing at the bottom of the tub for their soap bought the new product and were glad to have it.
For a while this soap was marketed without a name. Nobody could think of a good title for it. Then one Sunday, Harley Proctor heard a hymn at his church which gave him the name he had been wanting. The gospel song which he heard was "Out of the Ivory Palaces." It is a hymn which tells about the pure white mansions in heaven. Proctor decided that "Ivory" would be a good name for his new product and that's how Ivory Soap and Ivory Flakes were named.
The story has two spiritual implications: (1) Church meant something to Harley Proctor who was a regular attender and tither; (2) Eternity meant something to Harley Proctor otherwise his mind would not have dwelt on the beauty and purity of heaven when the choir sang "Out of the Ivory Places into a world Of woe, only his redeeming love made my Saviour go."
Ivory is almost always associated in our minds with something white. It stands for purity in religious writings and the dictionary says that purity is: "freedom from dirt - cleanness, moral cleanness." The scripture points out that "nothing unclean shall enter that eternal kingdom." While Ivory Soap may have received its name form such an analogy, let us learn that the Christ who came from the Ivory Palaces alone is able to cleanse us from all our sins and enable us by faith in Him to enter that Kingdom. August, 1982