Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1888-06-30

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 Sunday newspaper IS a great
improvement on the old Sunday news
paper. What a beastly thing was the
Sunday newspaper thirty years ago. II
was enough to destroy n man rcspecta-
bility to leave the tip end of it sticking
u of his coat pocket. What editorials
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; III
other words, about seventy five per cent.
improvement. Who knows that by
prayer and kindly consultation with ouI
literary friends we may have it lifted
into a positively religious sheet printed
on Saturday night and only distributed,
like the American Messenger. or the
Missionary Journal, or the Sunday Adyo-
cate on sabbath mornings. All things
are possible with God and my faith is NJ
until nothing in the way of religious vict-
DRY would surprise me. All the news
paper printing presses OF the earth arc
going TO be the Lords, and telegraph and
telephone and type Will yet announce
nations born in a day. Tho first book
ever printed was the Bible by Faust ant
his son-iulaw. Schocifer, in 1860. and
that consecrctation of type to the Holy
Scriptures was a prophecy OF the great
mission of printing for the evangclizatior
of all the nations. The father of tho
American printing press was a clergyman
Rev. Jesse Clover, and that was a pro
phccy of the religious use that the Gospe
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 II religious
u%tteranccs more interesting and spirited,
and then the press viii re produc" them.
On the way to church some fifteen years
ago Il Journalist said a thing that has
kept me ever since thinking: Are you
going 10 give Us any points to-day?'
"What doyou mcanY' Iasked. He said:
Il mean by that, anything that will be
striking enough TO be remembered. =
Then | said to myself: What right
have we in Il pulpits and
Sunday schools to take the time Of people
if we have nothing to say that IS memoir
able. David did not have any difficulty
in remembering Nathan's thrust: Thou
art the man nor Felix in remembering
pauIs point blank uttcrance on righteous
ness, temperance and judgment TO come;
nor the English king any difficulty in
remembering what the court preacher
said, when, during thcscrmon against sin
the preacher threw his handkerchief 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 forany kind Of eX-
c%cUtion. What we want, all Of US, is
more point, less humdrum. If we say
the right thing in the right way the press
will bc glad to echo and re-echo it. Sab
bath school teachers, refermers, young
men and old men in the ministry, what
We all wan if we are to make the priHl-
ing press an ally in Christian work is that
which the reporter spoken OF suggested
points, sharp points, memorable points.
But if the thing be dead when uttered by
living voice, it will be "A hundredfold
more dead when it is laid out in cold
type.
Now, as You all have something 10 &c
with the newspaper press either in issu-
ing "A paper or in reading il. either rs pro
ducers or PATRONS, either as sellers or
purchasers OF the printed sheet, propose
on this sabbath morning, June l., 1888. a
treaty to be signed between the church
and the printing press, "A treaty 20 be rati-
fled by millions OF good people if we
rightly fashion il, "A treaty promising that
we will help each other in our work Of
try ing TO illuminc and felicitate the world.
we by voice. YOU by pen, we by speaking
only that which is worth printing. YOU by
printing only that which is fit to speak.
You help us and We will help YOU. Side
by side be these two potent agencies un-
I'll the judgment day, when We must both
be sCrutiniZcd for our work healthful or
blasting. The TWO worst Off men in that
day will he the minister of religion and
the editor if they wasted their oppOrtu-
nifty. Both Of us are the engineer Of long
express trains of intlu.ncc, and we will
run them into a depot Of light or tumble
them off the embankmcnts.
What IA useful life and what n glorious
departure Was that Of the most famous Of
all American printers, Benjamin Frank
lin, whom intdels in the perjury Of their
resources have often fraudulently claimed
tor their own, but the printer who moved
that the Philadelphia convention be
opened with prayer, the resolution lost
because a majority thought prayer un-
necessary, and who wrote at the time he
was ~yiciously attacked: My rule is to
90 straight forward in doing what appears
to me to be right, leaving the conse-
Quences TO Providence" and who wrote
this quaint epitaph showing his hope OF
resurrection, an epitaph that | hundreds
Of times read while living in Philadel
phia:
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