Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1888-06-29

PiSDooi1 hOb one. VI all Une prayers OlIereu
Tor classes OF men innumerabe the prayers
offered for this most potential class will be so
Few ana rare that they will be thought
preachers idioSyncrasy. This world will
never be brought to God until some revival
or religion sweeps over the land and takes
into the kingdom OF God editors and re-
porters, compositors, pressmen and news
enough to pray for that and toll for thqt,
you had better get out of our ranks
and Join the other side, for you are the un-
believers VINO make the wheels of the Lords
chariot drag heavily. The great final battle
between truth and error, the Armage1don,
think will not be fought with swords and
shells and guns, but with pens quill pens,
steel pens gold pens, fountain pens, and, be-
fore that, the pens must be converted. The
most divinely honored weapon of the past
has been the pen, and the most divinely hon.
ored weapon of the future will be the pen:
prophets pen and evangelist's pen and apos-
ties pen followed by e1itor's pen and re-
porter's pen and authors pen. God save the
pen! The wing of the Apocalyptic angel will
be the printed page The printing press will
roll ahead of Christ's chariot to clear the way.
But" some one might ask would you
make the Sunday newspapers also re-en-
forcement" Yes, would. / have learned
to take things as they are. l would like to
see the much scoffed at old Puritan Sabbaths
come back again. ! do not think the modern
Sunday will turn out any better men and
women than were your grandfathers and
grandmothers under the old-fashoned Sun
day. To say nothing of other results, Sun
day newspapers are killing editors, reporters,
compositors and pressh-A. Every man,
woman and child is entitled to twerty-fou
hours of nothing to do If the newspapers
put on another set Of hands that does not
relieve the editorial and reportoral room of
its cares and responsibilities Our literary
men die fast enough without killing them
with Sunday work. But the Sunday news
paper has come to stay. 1t will stay a
good deal longer than any of us stay. What,
then, shall we dol Implore all those who
have anything to do with issuing it to fill it
with moral or religious information; live
sermons and facts elevating. Urge them
that all divorce cases be dropped, and in
stead thereof have good advice as to how
husbands and wives ought to live lovingly
together. Put in small type the behavior of
the swindling church member and in large
type the contribution OF some Christian man
toward an asylum for feeble minded children
or seaside santarium. Urge all managing
editors to put meanness and impurity in type
pearl or agate and charity aud fidelity and
Christian consistency in BREWER or bour-
geois. II we cannot drive out the Sunday
newspaper let us have the Sunday newspaper
COuNeFJ9u. L H6 ldCU is UildG UDe modern Sun
day newspaper is great improvement on
the old Sunday newspaper. What a beastly
thing was the Sunday newspaper thirty years
agol 1t was enough TO destroy mans re-
spectability to leave the tip end of it stick
ing out of his coat pocket. What editorials!
What advertisements! What pictures! The
modern Sunday newspaper is as much an
improvement on the old time Sunday news
paper as one hundred is more than twenty
five; in other words, about Is per cent. i'm
provement. Who knows that by prayer and
kindly consultation with our literary friends
we may have it lifted into a positively re-.
ligious sheet, printed on Saturday night and
only distributed, like the American Messen-
ger, or the Missionary Journal, or the Sun
day School Advocate, on Sabbath morningsi
All things are possible with God,
and my faith Is up until nothing
in the way of religious victory would sur
prise me- All the newspaper printing
presses of the earth are going to be the
Lords, and telegraph and telephone and
type will yet announce nations born in a 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
Scriptures was prophecy of the great mis-
sion of printing for the evangelization of all
the nations. The father of the American
printing press was Clergyman, Rev. Jesse
Glover, and that was prophecy of the re-
ligious use that the Gospel ministry in this
country were to make of the types
Again, we shall secure the secular press as
a mightier re enforcement of religion and the
pulpit by making our religious utterances
more interesting and spirited and then the
press will reproduce them. On the way to
church some fifteen years ago, a journalist
said thing that has kept me ever snca
thinking. "Are you going to give us any
points to-day" What do you mean" i
asked, He said: 81 mean by that anything
that will be striking enough to be remem-
bered." Then l said to myself: What right
have we in our pulpits and Sunday schools to
take the time of people if we have nothing to
say that is memorabilia David did not
have any difficulty in remembering Nathan's
thrust: "Thou art the man. nor Felix
in remembering Pauls 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 SER
mon against sin the preacher threw his hand
kerchief into the kings pew to indicate whom
he meant. The tendency of criticism in the
theological Summaries 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
humdrum. If we say, the right, thing, in the
right way the press will be glad to echo and
re-echo it, Sabbath school teachers, reform
ers 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 il
that which the reporter spoken of suggeste
points sharp points, memorable points
But If the thing be dead when uttered
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 issuing paper
or in reading it, either as producers or pa
irons, either as sellers or purchasers OF the
printed sheet, | propose on this Sabbath
morning June II, 1888, treaty to be signed
between the church and the printing press,
treaty to be ratified by millions of good peo-
pie if we rightly fashion it, treaty proms-
ing that we will help each other in our work
of trying 70 illumine and felicitate the
world, we by voice, you by pen, we by
speaking only that which is worth print
ing, you by printing only that which is
fit to speak. You help us and we will help
you. Sde 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 opportunity.
Both of us are the engineers Of long express
trains of influence, and we will run into
depot Of light or tumble them off the en-
bankment,
What useful life and what a glorious de-
parture was that of the most famous of all
American printers, Benjamin Franklin,
whom infdels in the penury of their re-
sources have often fraudulently claimed for
their own, but the printer who moved that
the Philadelphia convention be opened with
prayer, the resolution lost because Q ma
sority thought prayer unnecessary, and who
wrote at the time he was Viciously attacked
what appears TO me to be right, leaving the
consequences TO Providence" and who wrote
this quaint epitaph showing his hope CT res
direction, an epitaph that | hundreds OF
times read while living in Philadelphia:
The Body
of
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Printer
like the cover OF an old book,
Its contents torn out,