Charlotte messenger. [volume] (Charlotte, Mecklenburg Co., N.C.) 1882-18??, 1888-07-14


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 cd
| 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 fluctuating,
each one of them the avenue of information to
thousands of readers, their impression of the
services to be the impression adopted
by multitudes. They are connecting
links between a sermon or song
| or 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
by reporters Put all journalists into our
prayers ard sermons. OF all the hundred
thousand sermons preached to-day, 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 he 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 re-
4 porters, compOsitors, pressInen and news
boys. 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 IN
believers who make the wheels of the Lords
chariot drag heavily. This great final battle
between truth and error, the Armageddon,
think viii not be fought with swords and
shells and guns but with pens, quill pens,
| steel pens, gold pens fountain pens, and, be-
fHn fNoF -t ha tod
I 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 the
penl The wing Of the Apocalyptic angel will
be the printed page. The printing press will
roll ahead of Christs chariot to clear the way.
But some one might ask would you
make the Sunday newspapers also a re-en-
forcement" Yes. would. l have learned
10 take things as they are l would like to
see tho 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 pressmen. Every man,
woman and child is entitled to twenty-four
hours OF nothing to do. II 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 IInplOre all those who
have anything to do with issuing it to ELL it
with moral or religious information; live
sermons and facts eleyating 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 swlndling church member, and in large
ype Jne conur1Du5on OF some CHRISTIAN man
toward an asylum for feeble minded children
or seaside sanitarium. Urge all managing
editors TO put msauness and impurity in type
pearl or agate. and charity and fidelity and
Christian consistency in BREWER or bour-
geois. If 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 beastly
thing was the Sunday newspaper thirty years
agol 1t was enough to destroy a mans re-
spectabillty to leave the tip end of it stick
Ing out of his coat pocket. What editorials
What advertisements What picturesl The
modern Sunday newspaper is as much an
improvement on the oil time Sunday news
paper as one hundred is more than twenty
five; in other words, about % per cent. inn
provement. Who knows that by prayer and
kindly consultat ON with our literary friends
we may have it lifted into positively re-
ligous sheet printed on Saturday night and
only distributed, like the American M,sssn-
ger, or the Missionary Journal. or the Sun
day School Advocate, on Sabbath mornings!
All things are possible with God,
and my faith IS up until nothing
in the way of religious victory would sur
&t.<
presses of the earth are going to be the
LoEds, 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 onin-iaw, Schoeffer, in AGO.
and that conservation OF type to the Holy
Scriptures was prophecy OF the great mis-
sio1 of printing for the evangelizaton of all
the nations. Tho father of the American
printing press was clergyman, Rev. Jesse
Glover, and that was a prophecy of the re-
ligious uss that the Gospel ministry in this
country were to make Of the types.
Again, we sh1ll secure the secular press as
a mghtier Reinforcement of religion and the
pulpit by making our religious utterances
more interesting and spirited, and then the
press VIII reproduce them. On the way to
church some fifteen years ago a journalist
sail thing that has kept me ever sincs
points to-day" WHAT do you meanP 1
asked He said: Il mean by that anything
that will be striking enough to be remem-
bered." Then I 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 Paul's point blank utter
ance on righteousness, temperance and
judgment to come. nor the English King
any difficulty in remember -ng 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 seminaries is to file OH from our
young men all the sharp points and make
them too smooth for any kind Of execution.
What W. want, all of Us. is more point, less
humdrur. II we say the right thing in the
right way the press will be glad to echo and
re-echo it. Sabbath lool teachers, reform
ers, young men and Old men in the ministry,
what we all want Z 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 10 deal 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 issuing paper
.,r In reading t. either as producers or pa