The weekly intelligencer., 1896-03-28
THE NEWSPAPER.
DR.. Talmage Discourses on It's
Divine Mission.
How the Athenians Spent All Their Time
In Telling or Hearing Something
New-The Question of
the Day.

The latest sermon preached at Wash
ington by Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
was on the mission of newspapers. Hi:
text was: And the wheels were full
| of eyes."-EzekieI, x:i2. For all the
Athenians and strangers which were
there spent their time in nothing else
but either to tell or to hear some new
thing."-Acts xvii:2i. DIR. Talmage
| said:
What is a preacher to do when he
finds two texts equally good and sug'
gestive? In that perplexity l take
both. Wheels full of eyes? What but
the wheels of newspaper press? 9th
er wheels are blind. They roll on,
pulling or crushing. The manufac-
turer's wheel, how it grinds the oper-
ator with fatigues, and rolls over
nerve and muscle and bone and heart,
not knowing what it does. The sew
ing machine wheel sees not the aches
and pains fastened to it-tighter than
| the band that moves it, sharper than
the needle which it plies.
Every moment of every hour of ev-
cry day of every month of every year
there are hundreds of thousands of
| wheels of mechanism, wheels of en-
terprise, wheels of hard work, in mo-
ton, but they are eyeless. Not so the
wheels of the printing press. Their
entire business is to look and report
They are full of optic nerves, from
axle to periphery. They are like
those spoken of by Ezekiel as full of
eyes. Sharp eyes, near sighted, far
sighted. They look up. They look
down. They look far away. They
take in the next street and the next
hemisphere. Eyes of criticism, eyes of
Investigation; eyes that twinkle with
mirth; eyes glowering with indigna-
tion; eyes tender with love; eyes of
suspicion; eyes of hope; blue eyes,
black eyes, green eyes, holy eyes, evil
eyes, sore eyes. political eyes, literary
eyes, historical eyes, religious eyes,
eyes that see everything. "And the
wheels were full of eyes" But in my
second text is the worlds cry for the
newspaper. Paul describes a class of
people in Athens who spend their time
either in gathering the news or telling
| 1t. Why especially in Athens? Be-
cause the more intelligent people be-
come, the more inquisitive they are
not about small things, but great
things
The question then most frequently
| Is the question now most frequently
| asked, what is the news? To answer
that cry in the text for the newspaper
the centuries have put their wits to
work. China first succeeded, and has
at Pekin a newspaper that has been
printed every week for 1000 years,
printed on silk. Rome succeeded by
| publishing the Acta Dinrna, In the
same column putting fires. murders,
marriages and tempests. France sue
ceeded by a physician writing out the
news of the day for his patients En-
gland succeeded under Queen Eliza
beth in first publishing the news of
the Spanish Armada, and going on I'M
til she had enough enterprise, when
the battle of Waterloo was fought, de-
Gliding the destiny of Europe. to give
| 1t oue-third of a column in the London
Morning Chronicle, about as much as
the newspaper of our day gives q small
fire. America succeeded by Benjamin
Harris first weekly paper called Pub
lie Occurrences, published in Boston in
1890, and By the first daily, the Amer
lean Advertiser, published in Phila-
delphia in 1884.
The newspaper did not suddenly
spring upon the world, but came grad
ually. The genealogical line of the
newspaper is this: The Adam of the
race was a circular or news letter, cre-
ated by Divine impulse In human ma
ture; and the circular begat the PAM
phlet, and the pamphlet begat the
quarterly, and the quarterly begat the
weekly, and the weekly begat the
semi-weekly, and the semi-weekly be-
gat the daily. But alasl by what a
struggle it came to its present devel-
opmentI No sooner had its power been
demonstrated, than tyranny and su
perstition shackled 1t. There is moth
ing that despotism SO fears and hates
as a printing press.
1t has too many eyes in the wheel
A great writer declared that the king
of Naples made it unsafe for him to
write of any thing but natural history.
Austria could not endure Kossuth's
journalistic pen, pleading for the re-
demption OF Hungary. Napoleon l..
trying to keep his iron heel on the
neck of nations, said: Editors are
the regents of sovereigns and the tu-
tors of nations, and are only fit for
prison" But the battle for the free
dom OF the press was fought in the
court rooms of England and America,
and decided before this century began
by Hamilton's eloquent plea for ].
Peter Zenger's Gazette in America and
Erskine's advocacy of the freedom of
publication in England. These were
the Marathon and Thermopylss in
which the freedom of the press was es-
tablished in the United States and
Great Britain, and all the powers of
sarth and hell will never again be able
to put on the handouts and hopplss of
literary and political despotism- 1t
IL notable that Thomas jefferson,
who wrote the declaration of Amer
ican independence. wrote also: .'If
had to choose between a government
without newspapers or newspapers
without q government, should prefer
the latter"
But discourse now on q subject you
have never heard-the immeasurable
and everlasting blessing of a good
newspaper. Thank God for the wheel
full of eyes Thank God that we do
not have-like the Athenians-to 60
about to gather up and relate the It'd
ipgs Of the day, since the omnivorous
newspaper does both for US. The
grandest temporal blessing that God
has given to the ninteenth century Is
the newspaper. We would have bet
ter appreciation of THE blessing If we
knew the money. the brain, the losses,
the exasperations, the anxieties, the
wear and tear of heartstrings involved
in the production of a good
newspaper. Under the impression that
almost anybody can make q newspa-
per, scores of inexperienced capitalists
sVery year enter the lists. and, conse-
quently. during the last few years, a
newspaper has died almost every day.
The disease is epidemic The larger
papers swallow the smaller ones, the
whale taking down fifty minnows at
one swallow. With more than 1000
dailies and weeklies in the United
States and Canada, there are but SO
half centuary old. Newspapers do not
average more than five years exist
ence. The most OF them die of cholera
infantum. 1t 10 high time that the
people found out that the most sue.
cessful way to sink money and keep it
sunk is to start a newspaper. There