The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1886-05-13
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Discourse on the Trials Of News.
paper Editors and Reporters.

The shanls They See aud the Temptations
They Meet In Their Search for News
An Underpaid Glass, as Rule, and
Their Souls Nobody's Care.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, in recent
sermon, took up the cudgel for the news
paper men, illustrating their trials, temp
tations and almost ceaseless labors in the
fight for current news in forcible man
uer. He took for his text:
Behold flying roll!-fZachariah WI.
DR.. Talmage said: This winged sheet of
the teri had on it prophecy. The flying
roll to-day is the newspaper. In calcu-
lating the influences that affect society
you can no more afford to ignore it than
you can ignore the monday sun or the
Atlantic Ocean.
1t is high time that preach a sermon
expressing my appreciation of what the
newspaper press has done and is doing.
No man, living or dead, is or has been SO
indebted to it as / 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 that /
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-five per cent. of the newspa-
pers 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.
It was in self-defense that sixteen years
ago employed an official stenographer 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
the 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
cial, scientific, agricultural or mechanical
-thatfs not within its grasp. All our
churcheH, 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, 1t was printed
for the purpose of giving military and
commercial information to the Venetians.
The first newspaper published in England
was in 1858, and called the English Mer-
curry. 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 Belts Weekly Dispatch, the Standard,
s the Morning Chronicle, the Post and the
London Times?
The first attempt at this institution in
SFrance was in 1881, by physician, who
published the Ne,cs 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 1923 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
I'VE may as well acknowledge it as not
the religious and secular newspapers are
/. The great educators of the country.
l 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
decision of the court; and if the judges
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, sirl The vast majority of citizens
do not read books. Take this audience, or
Fny other promiscuous assemblage, 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
eravelf 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-thi 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:
white and black, German, Irishman, Swiss,
Spanish, American, old and young, good
and bad, sick and web, before breakfast
and after tea, Monday morning, Saturday
night, Sunday and week day.
Il 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 elorifed.
In the clanking Of the printing press, as
the sheets fly out, hear the voice of the
Lord Almighty proclaiming to all the dead