Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1890-03-14
REV. DIR. TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIFINE'S sun
DAY SERMON.
Subject: "Henry w. Grady. the Ed
itor and Orator"

Tvx7. "TaE> thee q great roll and write
IN II nth a mans pen."-lsaiah viii, l.
To Isaiah, with royal blood in his veins
and a habitant of palaces, does this divine
- rone. He is TO take a roll, a large
roll and write on it with pen. not an an
e,oTs neD but a mans pen. So God honored
tbe nen and 50 He honored manuscript. In
our dav the mightiest roll Is the religious and
aeouIar newspaper, and the mightiest pen is
the EDITORS pen, whether for good or evil.
And God SAYS now to every literary man
and especially to every journalist: Take
thee great roll and write in it with mans
pen.
Within a few weeks one Of the strongest
most vivid and most brilliant of those pans
was lad down on the editorial desk in At
lanta never again to be resumed. was far
away at the time. We had been sailing up
from the Mediterranean Sea, through the
Dardanelles, which region is unlike anything !
ever saw for beauty. There is not any other
water scenery earth where God has done
50 many picturesque things with islands.
They are somewhat like the Thousand Islands
Of our American st. Lawrence but more
like heaven. Indeed we had just passed
PatmOs, the place from which John
had his apOcalyptic vision Con
stantinople had seemed to come out to
greet US, for your approach to that city is diff
ferent from any other city. Other cities as
you approach them seem retire, but this
city, with It's glttering Ininarets and
plnnacIes, seems almost to step into the
water TO greet you. But my landing there
that would have been to me an exhilaratiOn,
was suddenly stunned with the tidings Of the
death Of my intimate friend, Henry w.
Grady. could hardly believe the tidinGS,
for l had left my study table at home
letters and kilograms from him those
letters and kilograms having a warmth
and geniality and a wit such he
only could express. The departure of
no pu oiic man for many years has affected
me. For days walked about as in a dream,
and | resolved that getting home, would,
for the sake OF his bereaved household, and
for the sake of his bereaved profession, and
for the sake of what he had been to me and
shall continue to be as long memory lasts,
l would speak a word in appreciation Of
him. the most promising Of Americans, and
learn some of the salient lessons of his de-
parture,
have no doubt that he had enemies for
no man can live such active life he
lived or be so far IN advance of his time
without II aking enemies, some because he
defeated their projects and some because ne
OutshOne them. Owls and bats never did
like the rising sun. But | shall tell you how
he appeared to me, and [ am glad that
told him while he was in full health what L
thought of him. Memorial Orations and
gravesJOne epitaphs are often mean enough,
for they say of after he is dead that
which ought to have been said OF him
while living. One garland for a living
brow Is worth more than a mount
heaped on a funeral casket. By little black
volume of fifty pages containing the eulo-
gums and poems uttered and written at the
demise of Clay and Webster and Calhoun
and Lincoln and Sumner, the world tried to
pay for the forty years of OblOquy it heaped
upon those living giants If l say nothing in
praise of a man while he lives L will keep s.
lent when he is dead. Myrtle and weeping
willow can never do what ought to have been
done 10y amaranth and palm branch No
pf in
from hig organs at the ObSeduieS atone
for misrepresentation Of the man before ne fell
on sleep. The hearse cannot do what ought
to have been done by chariot. But there are
important things that need to be said about
friend, who was prophet i'll American
journalism and who only a few years ago
heard the command of my text: Take thee
great roll, and write III it with a mans
pen
His father dead. Henry w Grady, a boy
fourteen years of age, took up the battle of
life. 1t would require a long chapter to re-
cord the names Of orphans who have come
to the top. When God takes away the head
Of the household He very often gives to some
lad in that household special qualification.
Christ remembers how that His own father
died early, leaving Him TO support Himself
and His mother and His brothers in
the carpenters shop at Nazareth,
and He is in sympathy with
all boys and all young men in the struggle.
You say: "Oh, il my father had only lived
would have had better education and l
would have had a more promising start, and
there are some wrinkles my brow that
would not have been there" But have no.
tced that God makes a special way for or
phanS You would not have been half the
man you are il you had not been obliged
from your early days to fight your own bat
ties What other boys got out OF y ale or
Harvard you got in the University of Hard
Knocks. Go among successful merchants,
lawyers, physicians and men of all Occupa-
tlOnS ard professions, and there are many OF
them VINO will tell you AT ten. or twelve, or
fifteen years of age | started for myself;
father was sick, father was dead
But somehow they got through and
got up [ account for it by the fact that
there is a special dispensation of God for
orphans. All hail, the fatherless and the
motherless. The Lord Almighty will see
you through. Early obstacles for Mr.. Grady
were only the means for development Of his
intellect and heart. And 10! when at thirty
nlne years Of age he put down his pen ana
closed his lips for the perpetual silence, he
mad done a work which many man who
years never accompliSheS. There Is great
deal Of senSeless praise of longevity, as
enough 1t We're wonderful achievement TO
1--WE a good while. All, my friends, it is not
now long We live, but how well we hive and
now uSetully we live. A man who lives to
eighty years and accomplshes nothing for
God or humanity might better have never
lived at all. Methusaleh lived nine hundred
and slxty-nine years, and what did 1t
amount to? In all those more than nine
centuries he did not accomplish anything
which seemed worth record Paul lived
only little more than sixty, hut how manT
MethuSalehs would it take to make one Paul?
Who would net rather have Paufs sixty
years than Methusaleh's nine hundred and
Sixty-nine? Robert McCheyne died at thirty