Milford chronicle., 1888-06-22

that is yourself Keep your disposition
sweet by communion with the Christ, who
answered not again, the society Of genia.
people, and walk in the sunshine with youl
hat Off and you Will corIe out all right Anc
don't join the crowd Of people in our daJ
who spend much of their time daInnins
newspapers
Again, in this effort to secure the secular
press as amightier erre-enforcement OF religion
and the pulpit, let As make it the avenue Of
religious information. Il you put the fact
Of churches and denominations Of Christian
only into the column Of religious papers
which do not In this country have an aver
age Of more than ten thousand subscribers
what have you done as compared with wha
you do if you put these facts through thl
daily papers which have hundreds of thou
ands Of readersl Every little denomination
must have its little organ, supported at grea
expense, when, with one-haf the outlay, col
umn or half a column Of room might b,
rented in some semi-omnipotent secular pub
lication, and so the religious information
would be sent round and round the world
The world moves so swiftly today that new
a week old is stale. Give Us all the greai
church facts and all the revival tidings the
next morning or the same evening. My ad
/ vice, often given TO friends who propose tc
start a new paper, is; "Don'tl Don'tl EN-
ploy the papers already started" The big
gest financial hole ever dug in this American
continent is the hole in which good people
throw their money when they start a news
paper. 1t is almost as good and as quick
way Of getting rid of money as buying stoch
in a gold mine in Colorado. Not more print
ing presses, but the right use Of those already
established All their cylinders, all their
steam power, all their pens, all their types
all their editorial chairs and reportoria
rooms are available if you would engage
them in behalf of civilization and Chris
tianity.
Again; If you would secure the secular
! press as mightier reinforcement of religion
and the pulpit, extend widest and highest
courtesies to the representatives of journal
ism. Give them easy chairs and plenty OF
room when they come to report occasions.
For the most part they are gentlemen of ed
ucatiOn and refinement, graduates of colleges,
with families to support by their literary
craft, many Of them weary with the push Of
a business that is precarious and fiuctuating,
each one Of them the avenue Of information to
/ thousands Of readers, their impression Of the
services to be the impression adopted
/ by Inultitudes. They are connecting
links between a sermon or a song
or a prayer and this great popula-
tion that tramp up and down the streets day
by day and year by year with their sorrows
uncontrolled and their sins unpardoned.
More than eight hundred thousand people in
Brooklyn and less than seventy-five thousand
in churches, so that our cities are not so
much preached to by ministers of religion as
L. Ill ia
prayers and sermons or all the hundred
thousand sermons preached today, there will
not be three preached to journalists, and
probably not one. OF all the prayers offered
for classes of men innumerable the prayers
offered for this most potential class will be so
few and rare that they will be thought a
preachers idiosyncrasy. This world will
never be brought to God until some revival
of religion sweeps over the land and takes
into the kingdom of God editors and
reporters, compositors, pressmen and
newsboys. And if you have not faith
enough TO pray for that and toll for that,
you had better get out of our ranks
and join the other side, for you are the un-
believers who make the wheels of the Lords
chariot drag heavily. The great final battle
between truth and error, the Armageddon,
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 editors pen and re-
porter's pen and authors pen God save thu
penl 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 a re-en
forcement" Yes, | would have learned
to take things as they are. 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 fashioned Sun
day To say nothing Of other results, Sun
day newspapers are killing editors, reporters,
compositors and pFessmen. Every man,
woman and child is entitled to twenty-four
hours of nothing to do If the newspapers
put on another set of hands that does not
relieve the editorial and reportorial 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
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 1ll it
with moral and religious information; live
sermons and facts elevating. Urge them
that all divorce cases DO dropped, and in
stead thereof have good advice as to how
husbands and wives ought to live lovingly
together. Put i'll 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 a seaside sanitarium. Urge all managing
editors to put meanness and impurity in type |
pearl or agate, and charity and fidelity and
Christian consistency in BREWER or bour-
geois. II we cannot drive out the Sunday
newspaper let us have the Sunday newspaper |
converted The fact is that the 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 I
ing out Of his coat pocket. What editorialsl
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 20 per cent inn
provement Who knows that by prayer and I
kindly consultation with our literary friends 4
we may have it lifted into 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 tho
Lords, and telegraph and telephone and
type will yet announce nations born in day /
The first book ever printed was the Bible By
Faust and his son-;n-law, Schoelfer, in 1860
and that conservation Of type to the Holy
Scriptures was prophecy Of the great mis-
sion Of printing for the eyangelizatioA Of all
the nations Tho father Of the American
printing press was a 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.