The Russellville Democrat., 1890-03-06
THE MIGHTY PEN.
Sermon by Rev. T. Dewitt Tal-
 mage in Brooklyn.
.sThe Life and Death of Henry W. Grady,' the Fearless Man, and the Chris tian Editor Measured by
 Pulpit Standards.

AS the SuU1ecb ot ESCtHt ScIHAon Asi the Brooklyn.Academy of Music, Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage took "The Life and Death of Henry W. Grady" His text was:
 Take thee a great roli, and write In it with asman's pen.--Isaiah viii., l.
 To Isaiah, with royal blood in his veins, and habitant of palaces, does this Divine order come. He is to take a roll largo roll, and write on it with a pen, not sf angels pen, but mans pen. So God honored the pen and so Ho honored manuscript. In our daytime migbtiest roll is the religious and secu- lar newspaper, and the mightiest pen is the editors pen, whether for good or evil And God says now to every liter ary man. and especially to every jour nalist; Take thee great roll, and write in it with mans pen.
 Within few weeks one of the strong ast, most brilliant and most vivid of those pens was laid down on the edito- rial desk in Atlanta, never again to be resumed. l was far away at the time. We had been sailing up from the Med iterranean sea, through the Dardanelles, which region is unlike any thing ever saw for beauty. There Is not any other water scenery on earth where God has done so many picturesque things with islands. They are somewhat like the Thousand Islands of our American St. Lawrence, but more like Heaven. In- decd, we had just passed Patmos, the place from which John had his apoca- lyptic vision. Constantinople had seemed to come out to greet us, for your approach to that city is different from any other city. Other cities, as you app proach them, seem to retire, but this city, with it's glittering minarets and pinnacles, seems almost to step into the water to greet you.
 But my landing there, that would have been to me an exhilaration, was sud denly stunned with the tidings of the death of my intimate friend, Henry w.. Grady. could hardly believe the tid- ings, for I had left on my study-table at home letters and telegrams from him, those letters and telegrams having a warmth and genialty and wit such as he only could express. The departure of no public man for many years has so affected me. For days walked about as in a dream. and resolved that get ting home, 1 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 as memory lasts, l would speak word in apprecia- ton of him-the most promising of Americans, and learn some of the salient lessons of his departure.
 I have no doubt that he had enemies, for no man can live such an active life as he lived or be so far in advance of his time without making enemies, some be- cause he defeated their projects, and some because he outshone them. Owls and bats never did like the rising sun. But l shall tell you how he appeared to me, and l am glad that told him while he was in full health what l thought of him. Memorial orations and grave stone epitaphs are often mean enough, for they say of man after he is dead that which ought to have been said of him while living. One garland for Q living brow is worth more than mount ain of japonicas and ealla lilies heaped on a funeral easket. By little black volume of fifty pages, containing the eulogiums and poems uttered and writ ten 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 I say nothing in praise of a man while he lives l will keep silent when he is dead. Myrtle and weeping willow can never do what ought to have been done by amaranth and palm branch. No amount of Dead March in Saul'' rumbling from big organs at tho obsequies can atone for non-apprecia- ton of the man before he fell on sleep. The hearse can not do what ought to have been done by chariot But there are important things that need to be said about our friend, who was a prophet in American journalism and who only few years ago heard the command of my text;
 Take thee great roll, and write in 1t with & mans pen.
 His father dead, Henry W. Grady. boy fourteen years of age, took up the battle of life. It would require a long chapter to record the names of orphans who have come to the top. When God takes away the head of the household be very often gives to some lad in that household a especial qualification. Christ remembers how that His own father diod early, leaving Him to support Him. self and His mother and His brothers in the carpenters shop at Nazareth, and He is in synlaathy with all boys and all young men in the struggle. You say: "Oh, if my father had only lived 1 would have had a better education, and l would have had a more promising start, and there are some wrinkles on my brow that would not have been there" But l have noticed that God makes special way for orphans. You would not have been half the man you are if you had not been obliged from your early days to fight your own bat ties. What other boys got out of Yale or Harvard you got in the University of Hard Knocks. Go among successful merchants, lawyers, physicians and men of all occupations and professions, and there are many of them who will tell you: At ten or twelve or fifteen years of age l started for myself father was sick, or father was dead.
 But somebey, they got through and got ap. 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 win see you through. Early obstacles for Mr Grady were only the means for of his intellect and heart And, lol when at thirty-nine years of age he put down his pen and closed his lips for his perpetual silence, he has done work which many man who lives on to sixty and seventy and eighty years never accomplishes. There is great deal of senseless praise of lon gevity, though it were a wonderful to 1.-Two good while An, my friend, it is not how long we live, but how well we live and how usefully we live. A man who lives to eighty years and accomplishes nothing for God or humanity might better nave never