The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1886-04-24

or the Nineteenth Century is the News
paper. So Says Rev. T.
De Witt Tai
mage.

mage.
On the 18th inst, DIR. Talmage
preached an eloquent sermon in the
Brooklyn Tabernacle on.the Newpa-
per and its influence. Among other
things he said:
The newspaper is the great educa-
tor of the nineteenth century. There
is no force compared with it. 1t is
book, pulpit, platform, forum, all in
one. And there is not an interest
religious, literary, commercial, scien-
tific agricultural or mechanical
that is not within it's grasp. All
our churches, and schools, and col
leges, and asylums, and art galleries
feel the quaking of the printing
press. The vast majority of citizens
do not read books. Take this audi
ence, or any other promiscuous as
semblage, and how many histories
have they read2 How many treat
Uses on constitutional law, or poll
tics elaborate poems or books of
travel.-How much of Boyle, or De
Tocqueville, Xenophon, or Herod-
otus, or Percival! Not many. In
the United States the people would
not average one such book a year
for each individual. Whence, then,
this intelligence-this capacity to
talk about all themes, secular and
religious; this acquaintance with
science and art; this power to appre-
ciate the beautiful and grand9 Next
to the Bible, the newspaper-swift-
winged and everywhere present, fly
ing over the fences, showed under the
door, tossed into the counting house,
laid
ON THE WORK BENCH,
hawked through the cars. All read
it; white and black, German, Irish
man, Swiss, Spaniard, American, old
and young, good and bad, sick and
well, before breakfast and after tea,
Monday morning, Saturday night,
Sunday and week day. Inow declare
that consider the newspaper to be
the grand agency by which the Cos
pei is to be preached, ignorance cast
out, oppression dethroned, crime .ex-
tirpated, the world raised, heaven re-
joiced, and God glorified In the
clanking of the printing press, rs
the sheets fly out, hear the voice of
the Lord Almighty proclaiming to
all the dead nations of the earth
Lazarus, come FORTH and to the
retreating surges of darkness: "Let
there be lightr'
WHAT VAST PROGRESS
since the day when Cardinal Wolsey
declared that either the printing
press must 60 down or the church of
God must go down, to this time,
when the printing press and the pull
pit are in combination and man on
the Sabbath day may preach the Cos
pei to 500 people, while on Monday
morning, through the secular journals
he may preach that gospel to millions
Notwithstanding all this that you
have gained in position and influ-
ence, men of the press, how many
words of sympathy do you get dur
ing the course of year? Not ten.
How many sermons of practical help
fulness for your profession are
preached during the twelve months?
Not one. How many words of ex-
coriation, and denunciation, and by
percriticism do you get in that sane
length of time? About 10000. III
You are type-setter and get the
type in the wrong font the foreman
storms at you. If you are foreman
and cannot surmount the insur-
mountable and get the Storms" ready
at just the time, the publisher de-
nounces you. If you are publisher
and make mismanagement then the
owners of the paper will be hard on
you for lack Of dividend. If you are
an editor and you announce
AN UNPOPULAR SENTIMENT,
all the pens of christendom are flung
at You. If you are a reporter, You
shall be responsible for the indis-
tinctness of public speakers and for
the plumbers Of type-setters, and for
the fact that you cannot work quite
as well in the pickering gaslight and
after midnight as you do in the noon
day. If you are proof-reader, upon
you shall come the united wrath of
editor, reporter and reader because
you do not properly arrange the per-
iods, and the semicolons, and the ex-
clamation points and the asterisks.
Plenty of abuse for you, but no SYM
patty.
INADEQUATE COMPENSATION
Another great trial of the newspa-
per profession is inadequate compen-
sation. Since the days Of Hazlitt,
and Sheridan, and John Milton, and
the wailings of Grubb street, Lon
don, literary toll, with very few ex-
ceptions, has not been properly re-
Quilted. Another great trial of the
newspaper profession is the diseased
appetite for unhealthy intelligence.
You blame the newspaper press for
giving such prominence to murders
and scandals. Do you suppose that
SO many papers would give promi-
nence to these things if the people
did not demand them?
Newspaper men are not fools.
They know what you want, and they
give it to you. believe that if the
church and the world bought moth
ing but pure, honest, healthful news
papers, nothing but pure, honest
and healthful newspapers would be
published. If you should gather all
the editors and the reporters of this
country in one greet convention, and
then ask of them what kind of pa
per they would prefer to publish, /
believe they would unanimously say:
"We would prefer to publish an ele-
waiting paper" So long rs there ia