The Atlanta constitution. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1885-19??, 1888-06-19

the most part they are gentlemen of education
and refinement, graduates OF colleges, with
families to support by their literary craft,
many of them weary with the push
OF business that is precarious and
iiuctuating, each one of them tte avenue of
information TO thousands of readers, their I'M
preston of the services to be'the impression
adopted by multtudes. They are connecting
INKS between Il sermon or song or a 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 i'll Brooklyn and less than
seventy-tive thousand in churches so that our
cites are not so much preached to by minis
tiers OF religion as by reporters. Put all jour
ndllStS INTO our prayers and sermons. OF all
the hundred thousand sermons preached to-
day, there will not be three preached to jour
prayers offered for classes of men
lnnumerable, the prayers offered for this most
potential class will be so few and rare that
they will be thought preachers idiosyn-
Grassy. This world viii 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, press
men and newsboyS. Ana 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
Qnbeievers who make the wheels of the
Lords chariot drag heavily. The great final.
battle between truth and error, the Arranged
don, think, will not be fought with
swords and shells and guns, but with
pens, quill pens, steel pens, gold
pens, fountain pens, and before that, the pens
must be converted. The most divinely hon
ored weapon of the past has been the pen and
the most divinely honored weapon of the fu-
ture viii be the pen; prophets pen and evan
gelist's pen and apostles pen followed by edi-
tors pen and reporters pen and authors pen.
God save the penl The wing of the Apooalyp-
tic angel will be the printed page. The print
ing press will roll ahead of ChriSt's chariot to
clear the way.
But" some one might ask, "would you
make the Sunday newspaper also reinforce
mentY' Yes, would. L have learned to
take things as they are. would like to see
the much scotfed at old Puritan Sabbaths come
back again. l do not think the modern Sun
day will turn out any better men and women
than were your grandfathers and grandmoth-
ers under the old-fashoned Sunday Io say
nothing OF other results, Sunday news
papers are killing editors report
ers, 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 reportoral room of its cares
and responsibilities. Our literary men die fast
enough 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 do? Implore all those who have any
thing to do with issuing it to fill it with moral
and religious information, live sermons and
facts elevating. Urge them all that 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 q sea-
side 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 bourgeois. If we
cannot drive out the Sunday newspaper let us
have the Sunday newspaper converted. The
fact is that the modern Sunday newspaper is q
great improvement on the old Sunday news
paper. What beastly thing was the Sunday
newspaper thirty years ago! 1t was enough
to destroy mans responsibility to
leave the tip end of it stick
ing out of his coat pocket. What
editorias What advertisements! What pic
lures! The modern Sunday newspaper is as
much an improvement on the old time Sunday
newspaper as one hundred is more than TWEEN
tY-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 Saturday night and
only distributed, like the American Messenger,
or the Missionary Journal, or the Sunday
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 surprise
me. All the newspaper printing presses of
the earth are going to be the Lords, and tele-
graph and telephone and type will yet an
nounce nations born in day. The first book
ever printed was the Bible by Faust and his
son-in-law Schoeffer in 1460, and that conse-
Grafton 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
clergyman, Rev. jesse Glover, and that was q
prophecy of the religious use that the gospel
ministry in this country Were to make of the
types.
Again: we shall secure the secular press as
a mightier reinforcement of religion and the
pulpit by making our religious utterances moro
interesting and spirited, and then the press
some fifteen years ago. q journalist said
thing that has kept me thinking: Are YOU
going to give us any points today?" "What
do you mean?" asked. He said: 81 mean
by that anything that will be striking enough
to be remembered" Then l said to myself:
What right have we in our pulpits and Sun
day-schoos to take the time of the
people if we have nothing to say that
is memorable. David did not have any
difficulty in remembering Nathan's
thrust: "Thou art the man - nor Felix in
remembering Paul's point blank utterance on
righteousness, temperance and Judgment to
come; nor the English king any difficulty in
remembering what the court preacher said,
when, during the sermon against sin, the
preacher threw his handkerchief into the
kings pew to indicate whom he meant. The
tendency Of criticism in the theological semi
nares is to file off from our young men all the
sharp points and make them too smooth for
any kind of execution. What we want, all of
us, is more point, less humdrum. III we say
the right thing in theoright.way the press will
be glad to echo and re-echo it. Sabbath-school
teachers. reformers, young men and old men in
the ministry, what we all want, if we are to
make the printing press an ally in Christian
work, is that which tho reporter spoken of
suggested-points, sharp points, memorable
points. But If the thing be dead when ut
tered by living voice, it will be a 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 a paper
or reading it, either as producers or patrons,
either as sellers or purchasers of the printed
sheet, 1 propose on this Sabbath morning,
June H. 1888, treaty to be signed between
the church and the printing press a treaty to
be ratified by millions of good people if we
rightly fashion it, treaty promising that we
will help each other in our work Of trying to
illumine and felicitate the world, we by voice,
aIxt