The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1888-06-21

verted. The fact is that the modern
Sunday newspaper is great improve
ment on the old Sunday newspaper.
What beastly thing was the Sunday
newspaper thirty years ago It was enough
to destroy mans respectability to leave
the tip end Of it sticking out Of his coat
pocket. What editorialsl What adver-
tisementsl What pictures! The modern
Sunday newspaper is as much an improve
ment on the old time Sunday newspaper
as one hundred Is more than twenty-five;
in other words, about seventy-five per
cent. improvement. Who knows that by
prayer and kindly consultation with our
literary friends we may have it lifted into
a positively religious sheet printed on
Saturday night and only distributed, like
The American Messenger, or The Mis-
sionary Journal, or The Sunday School
Advocate, on Sabbath mornings. ALI
things are possible with God, and my
faith is up until nothing in the way of
religious victory would surprise me. All
the newspaper printing presses Of the
earth are going to be the Lords, and tel
egraph and telephone and type will yet
announce nations born in day. The first
book ever printed was the Bible by Faust
and his son-in-law, Schoeffer, in 1860, and
that conservation Of type to the Holy Scrip
lures was prophecy Of the great mission
of printing for the evangelization of all
the nations. The father of the American
printing press was clergyman, Rev.
Jesse Glover, and that was a prophecy of
the religious use that the Gospel ministry
in this country were to make of the
types.
Again: we shall secure the secular
press as a mightier reinforcement of re-
igion and the pulpit by making our re-
igious utterances more interesting and
spirited, and then the press will reproduce
them. On the way to church some fif-
teen years ago, a journalist said thing
that has kept me ever since thinking:
Are you going to give US any points
today?" "What do you mean?"
asked. He said: II mean by that
anything that will be striking enough
to be remembered Then l said to
myself: What right have we in our pull
pits and Sunday schools to take the time
of people if we have nothing to say that
is memorable? David did not have any
difficulty in remembering Nathan's
thrust: ''Thou art the man." nor Felix
In remembering PauI's point blank utter
ance on righteousness, temperance and
judgment to come; nor the English king
any difficulty in remembering what the
court preacher said, when during the
sermon against sin the preacher threw
his handkerchief into the kings pew to
indicate whom he meant. The tendency
of criticism in the theological seminaries
is to file off from our young men all the
sharp points and make them too smooth
for any kind of execution. What we
want, all of us, is more point, less hum
drum. II we say the right thing in the
right way the press will be glad
to echo and re-echo it. Sabbath
school teachers, reformers, young men
and old men in the ministry. what we
all want if we are to make the printing
press an ally in Christian work is that
which the reporter spoken OF suggested
points, sharp points, memorable points.
But if the thing be dead when uttered
by living voice, it will be hundredfold
more dead when it is laid out in cold
type.
Now, as you all have something to do
with the newspaper press, either in issu-
ing paper or reading it, either as pro-
ducers or patrons, either as sellers or
purchasers of the printed sheet, pro-
pose on this Sabbath morning. June ~,
1888, a treaty to be signed between the
church and the printing press, treaty
to be ratified by millions of good people
if we rightly fashion it, a treaty pronlis-
ing that we will help each other in
our work Of trying to llumine and
felicitate the world, we, by voice,
you by pen, we, by speaking only that
which is worth printing, you by printing
only that which is fit to speak. You
help us and we help you. Side by side
be these two potent agencies until the
Judgment Day, when we must both be
scrutinized for our work, healthful or
blasting. The two worst off men in that
day will be the minister of religion and
the editor, if they wasted their opportu-
nifty. Both of US are the engineers of
long express trains Of influence, and we
will run them into a depot of light or
tumble them off the embankments.
What useful life and what glorious
departure was that of the most famous
of all American printers, Benjamin
franklin, whom infdels in the penury
of their resources have often fraudulently
claimed for their own, but the printer
who moved that the Philadelphia con-
vention be opened with prayer, the reso-
luton lost because majority thought
prayer unnecessary, and who wrote at
the time he was viciously attacked: ''My
rule is to 60 straight forward in doing
what appears tome to be right, leaving
the consequences to Providence" and
who wrote this quaint epitaph showing
his hope Of resurrection, an epitaph that
hundreds of times read while living in
Philadelphia:
The Body