The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1888-09-05
PUBLISHING THE SERMONS.
TALMAeE TALKS About NEWSPAPERS
How Twenty Millions OF Religious Dis
courses Get to the People-Brokers
and Merchants as Tract
Distributors.

letter in the place OF the report of
his Friday night talk. The subject for the
date, Aug. "a, is 1.-THE Newspaper Habit OF
Publishing Sermons" on which he says:
Recently there has been much said
about the Monday newspaper reports of
sermons, which is now becoming the rule
in all the great cities. Some ministers and
some ecclesiastical associations have
deplored the promulgation OF error in the
same paper with the PRONUNCIATION OF
truth. Broad churchism, and narrow
churchism, orthodoxy and heterodoxy,
infidelity and evangelism. 1t has recently
been called in editorial and repor-
torial columns newspaper theology"
We open our Monday morning or Mon
day evening papers and find great promi-
nence given to pulpit utterances OF the
previous day One newspaper gives six
columns of sermons, another three, an
other one. By the time the latter part of
the week arrives, in all our great reading
rooms, from Boston and Philadelphia and
Chicago. you will find newspapers contain
ing from one to six columns OF sermons.
Sermonic publication in newspapers is a
characteristic of the times and fraught
with veal or woe to uncounted multi
tudes. 1t is time that the church and
God awakened to vehement condemnation
of the practice or of grateful and unmis-
taxable approval
The habit of serrnonic reporting in sec
ular papers began in this wise: First,
there wer4 accounts of church dedications
1i,Na
pying quarter OF a column, then half
column, then whole column. Then there
came sketches of cha.ehes, and sketches
of ministers, and sketches OF persons at
tendant upon church services. But in
May, 1866, the New York Herald began
the systematic sermon reporting. ! lay
it down as a proposition capable OF
demonstration that sermonic publication
IN secular newspapers IS doing vast
good.
1t is estimated that each paper is read.
by five people. 1t is then within the
bounds to say that the Monday morning
and Monday evening papers OF the Amerl-
can cities put into the hands OF this nation
100000 religious treatises; 20,000OO0
religious discourses about God and the
soul, and the eternal world; 20,000,0O0
attacks upon infdelity, upon fraud. upon
vice; 100000 defenses OF the truth.
What q stupendous achievement, which
has not yet had the first acknowledgment
on the part OF any church court in the
United States. Our general ecclesiastical
courts pass resolutions commendatory
of some sectaran organ with
circulation OF 5000 or 10000 or $1,000
copies, but where is the public ecclesias-
teal recognition of this twenty-million-
utterance every Monday which, during
the course OF the year, and multiplied by
fifty-two, becomes a one billion, forty-Inil-
lion utterance2
say that man does not take an intelli-
gent account OF the moral progress OF the
day that does not take this fact into con-
sideration. The very objection made to
it is the argument in favor OF such pub
ication. 1t is said that this newspaper
habit mixes worldly business and religion.
One column a sermon, the next horse
race; the one defense of the family in
stitution, the next divorce case.
Ny friends. what we most want is more
mixing of religion and business. Ii the
stock dealers OF this country had mixed
more religion and less water with their
stock there would not have been so many
impoverished people. What will cure
this epidemic OF frauds, forgeries and TAIL
ures is the religion of Jesus Christ.
"Oh," you say, "some of them were cid
ers and trustees and yestrymen IN
churches"
Yes; but they stood their religion in
one place and their business in another
place. They ought TO have mixed them.
1t is not religion standing on the spire of
Trinity church at the head of WaIl-st.
that Will send the right kind of influence
through that main artery of American
finance; but religion starting from the
foot of that architectural pile, walking the
whole length OF Wall-st., from Trinity
church to the ferry, going down
on one side and going back on
the other. 1t is not religion wor-
Shipping in Grace church, but re-
hgion starting from the shadow of the ca
thedral, and going to the battery, down
one side of Broadway and up the other.
Do the Monday morning and Monday
evening newspapers of New York and
Brooklyn mix religion and business. Then
] say, let them mix away. 1t is high
time this delusion is scattered that man
may serve the Lord so well on Sunday
that he can serve the devil all the rest of
the week.
What is that in the pocket of those
bankers and brokers and merchants, and
In all the hotel reading of our great
cities? 1t is "a immense tract distribu-
tracts in her heavenly mission, and pack
age in hand, attempt to enter these places
in business hours, and she would meet
with cold reception, or be roughly treated.
But these business men not only take the
tracts in newspaper form, but pay for
them. Last Monday there were sermons
on the desk Of every intelligent man in
New York and Boston, and Philadelphia,
and Chicago, and America. He is a bat
who has not eyes to see this The business
man may have only seen the text OF script
ure, but one textsaved Martin Luther, and
one text saved Jonathan Edwards, and l
can pick out fifty texts, any one OF which
is enough to save world.
Toward night the business man says,
swell, guess it's time to 60 home" and
he locks the freproof safe, he puts his
newspaper tracts in his pocket, takes car
at the ferry and goes home, and in that
way becomes tract distributor. Wife
and children get hold Of the newspaper,
and after the family have retired the ser
wants get bold OF it and read the sermons,
and the next day bundle is sent out and
wrapping paper is needed, and the Grand
boy reads the sermon on the bundle while
he is carrying il and after awhile the per-
son 10 whom the bundle is delivered takes
IL up and reads it. So every week our
newsboys and our bankers and brokers
and merchants are turned into tract dis
tributors.
But you insist that there is something
incoheient in having that which is bad in