The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-06-18

and che pulpit let us make it the avenue or
religions information. If you put the 1acts
of churches and denominations of christians
only into the column of religious papers,
which do not in this country have an aver
age of more than ten thousand subscribe
what have you done as compared with
what you do if YOU put these facts through
the daily papers which have hundreds OF
thousands of readers. Every little denoml-
nation must have its little organ supported
at great expense, when with one-ha1 the
outlay column or half column OF room
might be rented in some semi-omnipotent
secular publication, and so the religious in
formation would be sent round and round
the world. The world moves SO swiftly to-day
that news a week old is stale. Give us all
the great church facts and all the revival
tidings the next morning or the same even
ing My advice, often given to friends
who propose to start a new paper, Is;
"Don'tl Don't Employ the papers already
started The biggest financial hole ever
dug in this American continent is the hole
in which good people throw their money
when they start newspaper. 1t Is almost
as good and as quick way of getting rid
of money as buying stock in gold mine in
Colorado. Not more printing presses but
the right use of those already established
All their cylinders, all their steam power,
all their pens, all their types, all their edl-
torial chairs and reportorial rooms are
available if you would engage them in
behalf of civilization and christianity.
Again: If you would secure the secular
press as a mightier reinforcement of relig-
ion and the pulpit, extend widest and high
est christian courtesies to the representa-
tives of journalism. Give them easy chairs
and plenty of room when they come to re-
port occasions. For the most part they are
gentlemen of education and refinement,
graduates of colleges, with families to sup
port by their literary craft many of them
weary with the push Of 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 multitudeS They are connecting links
between a sermon or a song or prayer
and this great population 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 and 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 sofew and rare
that they will be thought a preachers lido
syncrasy. 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 I'M
believers who make the wheels of the
Lords chariot drag heavily. The great
final battle between truth and error, the
.Armageddon, l think, will not be fought
with swords and shells and guns, but with
pens, quill pens, steel pens, gold pens, foun
tain pens and, before that, the pens must
be converted. The most divineiy honored
weapon of the past has been the pen, and
the most divinely- honored weapon of the
future will be the pen; prophets pen and
evangelist's pen and apostles pen followed
by EDITORS pen and reporters pen and au-
thor's pen. God save the 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 re-en-
forcementF Yes, would. have learned
70 take things as they are, / would like to
see the much-scoffed at old Puritan Sab
baths come back again. do not think the
modern Sunday will turn out any better
men and women than were your grand
fathers and grandmothers under the old
fashioned Sunday. To say nothing of other
results, Sunday newspapers are killing ed
ltors, reporters, compositors and preSsmen.
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 response
l,fl n
without killing them with Sunday work
But the Sunday newspaper has come to
stay. 1t will stay good deal longer than
any of us stay. What, then, shall we dol
1mplore all those who have anything to do
with issuing it - fill 1t with moral and re-
ligious inform &;'l; live sermons and facts
elevating. Urge them that all divorce cases
be dropped, and instead 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 a
seaside sanitarium. Urge all managing ed
itors 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 newspa-
per converted. The fact is that the modern
Sunday 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
a mans responsibility TO leave the tip end
of il sticking 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 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 Satur-
day night. and only distributed, like the
American Messenger, or the Missionary
Journal, or the Sunday School Advocate,
on Sabbath mornings. All things are posi-
bic 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 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 AGO, and that conservation of type to the
holy Scriptures was prophecy of the great
mission of printing for the evangelization
of all the nations. The father of the
American printing press was a Clergyman,
Rev. Jesse Glover, and that was prophecy
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