Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1888-06-27

1
monstrosity in body, mind and soul. Their
were millions of people who believed tha
there was large sofa in this pulpit, a
though we never had anything but chail
and that during the singing by the congre
cation I was accustomed to lie down on tina
sofa and dangle my feet over the end. Lynn
New York correspondents for ten years mis-
represented our church services, but W
waited, and people from every neighbor
hood of Christendom came here to find th
magnitude of the falsehoods concerning th'
church and concerning myself. A reaction
set in and TOW we have justice, full justice
more than justice, and as much over-praist
as once we had under appreciation, and NJ
| man that ever lived was so much indebted
to the newspaper press for opportunity tt
preach the Gospel as / am. Young men in
| the ministry, yonng men in all professions
| and occupations, wait. You can afford tc
wait. Take rough Misrepresentation as a
Turkish towel to start up your languid cir
culation, or system of massage or Swedish
movement whose pokes and pulls and twists
and thrusts are salutary treatment. There
is only one person you need to manage and
that is yourself. Keep your disposition
sweet by communion with the Christ, who
answered not again, the society of general
people, and walk out in the sunshine with
your hat off and you will come out all right.
And don't join the crowd of people in our
day who spend much of their time damning
newspapers.
Again In this effort to secure the secu-
lar press as mightier reinforcement of
religion and the pulpit, let US make it the
avenue of religious information. If you
put the facts of churches and denomina-
tions of Christians only into the column of
religious papers, which do not in this coun-
try have ap average of more than ten thous-
and subscribers, 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 denomination must have its little
organ, supported at great expense, when
with one half the outlay column or half a
column of room might be rented in some
semi.omnipotent secular publication, and
SO the religious information would be sent
round and round the world. The world
moves so swiftly today that news week
old is stale. Give US all the great church
facts and all the revival tidings the next
morning or the same evening. My advice,
often given to friends who propose to start
a new paper, is: "Don't 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 news
paper. 1t is almost as good and as quick a
way of getting rid of money as buying
stock in a gold mine in Colorado. Not
more printing presses, but the right use of
those already established. All their cylin-
ders, all their steam power, all their pens,
all their types, all their editorial 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 re-
lgion and the pulpit, extend widest and
highest Christian courtesies to the represent
atives 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 huctuating, each one of
them the avenue of information to thous-
ands of readers, their impression of the SER
vices to be the impression adopted by null
titudes. They are connecting links between
d SeTuoH VI d sung VI d PiaJcA Hio ohio
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 hum
dred 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 SER
mons preached to-day there will not be
three preached to journalists, and probably
not one. OF ell 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 be thought
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-
porters, compositors, pressmen and news
boys. And if you have not faith enough to
pray for that and toll for that, you had bet
ter get out of our ranks and Join the other
side, for you are the unbelievers who make
the wheels of the Lords chariot drag
heavily. The great final battle between
truth and error, the Armageddon, 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 diyinely-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 authors pen. God
save the pen The wing Of the Apocalyp-
tic angel will be the printed page. The
printing press will roll ahead of Christs 8
chariot to clear the way.
But" some one might ask, ''would you
make the Sunday newspaper also reen-
forcement ?'' eyes, l would. l have
learned to take things as they are. I would
like to see the 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 grand
fathers and grandmothers under the old
fashioned Sunday. To say nothing OF
other results, Sunday newspapers are kill
ing editors, 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 r0lieve the edi.
torial and reportorial 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 dea
longer than any of us stay. What ther
shall we do? Implore all those who have
anything to do with issuing it to fill it witt
moral and religious information live ser
mons and facts elevating. Urge them thai
all divorce cases be dropped and instead
thereof have good advice as to how hus
bands and wives ought to live lovingly
together. Put in small type the behavior
of the swindling church member and il
large type.the contribution OF some Chris
tan man toward an asylum for feeble
minded children or seaside sanitarium.-
Urge all managing editors to put meannes
and impurity in type pearl or agate ant
charity and fidelity and Christian consist
ency in BREWER or bourgeois. If we canno
drive out the Sunday newspaper let III
have the Sunday newspaper converted
The fact is that the modern Sunday news
paper is great improvement on the olt
Sunday newspaper. What beastly thing
was the Sunday newspaper thirty year
ago 1t was enough to destroy man.
respectability to leave the tip end Of i
sticking out of his coat pocket. What ed
itorials What advertisements Wha
pictures The modern Sunday newspape
is as much an improvement on the old tim