The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1886-04-22

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, In q recent
sermon, took up the cudgel for tue news
paper men, Illustrating their trials, temp
tations and almost ceaseless labors in the
fight for current news in forcible man
ner. He took for his text:
Behold a flying rolll-tZacharian WI
DR.. Talmage said: This winged sheet Of
the text had on it prophecy. The flying
roll to-day is the newspaper. In calcu-
latins the influences that affect society
you can no more afford to ignore 1t than
YOU can ignore the MONDAY sun or the
Atlantic Ocean.
1t is high time that preach q sermon
expressing my appreciation of what the
newspaper press has done and is doing.
No man, living or dead, is or has been go
indebted to it as l am, for it gives me
perpetual audience in every city, town
and neighborhood of Christendom, and I
take this opportunity before God and this
people to thank the editors and publishers,
and compositors and type-setters the
world over, and give fair notice thet l
shall take every opportunity of enlarging
this field, whether by stenographic report
on the Sabbath, or galley proofs on Mon
day, or previous dictation. I have said
again and again TO the officers of this
church, whoever else are crowded, don't
let the reporters be crowded. Each re-
sponsible and intelligent reporter is ten
or fifteen churches built on to this church.
Ninety-ive per cent. of the newspa-
peTs are. now my friends, and
do me full justice and more than justice,
and the other five OF the hundred are such
notorious liars that nobody believes them.
1t was in self-defense that sixteen years
ago / employed an official stenogrspher of
my own because OF the appalling misrep-
reservations of myself and church. From
that things have miraculously changed,
until now it is just as appalling in the
marvellous opportunity opened.
The newspaper is the great educator of
IL e nineteenth century. There is no force
compared with it. 1t is book, pulpit, plat
form, forum, all in one. And there is not
an interest-religious literary, CONNER
sial, scientific, agricultural or mechanical
that is not within its grasp. All our
churches, and schools, and colleges, and
asylums, and art galleries feel the quak-
ing of the printing press.
The institution of newspapers arose in
Italy. In Venice the first newspaper was
published, and monthly, during the time
that Venice was warning against Solyman
the Second, in Dalmatia, it was printed
for the purpose of giving military and
commercial information to the Venetians
The first newspaper published in England
was in 1888, and called the English Mer-
cary. Others were styled the Weekly Dis
cOrerer, the Secret O,ol, Heraclitus RidenS,
etc.
Who can estimate the political, scientific.
commercial and religious revolutions
reused up in England for many years past
by Belrs Weekly Dispatch, the Standard,
the Morning Chronicle, the Post and the
London Times?
The first attempt at this institution In
France was in 1881, by physician, who
published the NcrS for the amusement and
health of his patients. The French nation
understood fully how to appreciate this
power. Napoleon, with his own hand,
wrote articles for the press, and so early as
in 1929 there were in Paris 100 journals.
But in the United States the newspaper
has come to unlimited sway. Though in 1775
there were but thirty seven in the whole
country, the number of published journals
is now counted by thousands and to-day
we may as we'll acknowledge it as not
the religious and secular newspapers are
the great educators of the country.
find no difficulty in accounting for the
worlds advance. Four centuries ago, in
Germany, in courts of justice, men fought
with their fists to see who should have the
6aci eli nf nd nd col
decision was unsatisfactory, then the
Judge fought with counsel. Many of the
lords could not read the deeds of their own
estates. What has made the change?
Books" you say.
No, sir! The vast majority of citizens
do not read books. Take this audience, or
any other promiscuous assemblsge, and
how many histories have they read? How
many treatises on constitutional law, or
political economy, or works Of science:
How many elaborate poems or books of
travel? How much of Boyle, of De
Tocqueville, Xenophon, or Herodotus, or
Percival: Not many.
In the United States the people would
not average one such book year for each
individual.
Whence, then, this intelligence-this ca
pacity to talk about all themes, secular
and religious-this acquaintance with
science and art-this power to appreciate
the beautiful and grand: Next to the
Bible the newspaper-swift- winged and
everywhere present, flying over the fences,
showed under the door, tossed into the
counting house, laid On the work bench,
hawked through the cars. All read it,
"A 10, n Ii
Spanish, American, old and young, good
and bad, sick and well, before breakfast
and after tea, Monday morning, Saturday
night, Sunday and week day.
now declare that | consider the news
paper to be the grand agency by which
gospel is to be preached, ignorance cast
out, oppression dethroned, crime extir-
pated, the world raised, Heaven rejoiced
and God glorified.
In the clanklng of the printing press, as
the sheets fly out, hear the voice of the
Lord Almig bty proclaiming to all the dead
nations of the earth, Lazarus, come
forth" and to the retreating surges of
darkness, LET there be lightw In many
of our city newspapers, processing no more
than secular information, there have APP
pea-ed during the past ten years some of
the grandest appeals in behalf of religion,
and some of the most effective interpreted
tions of Gods government among the
nations.
There are only two kinds of newspapers
the one good, very good, the other bad,
very bad. A newspaper may be started
with an undecided character, but after it
has been going on for years everybody
finds out just what 1t is; and it is very