The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1896-03-27

men who will climb up without such
aid into editorial power and efficiency.
So do men climb up to success in other
branches by sheer grit. But If we want
learned institutions to make lawyers and
artists and doctors and ministers, we
much more need learned institutions to
make editors, who occupy position OF
influence a hundredfold greater. I do
not put the truth too strongly when
| say the most potent influence for good
on earth is a good editor and the most
potent influence for evil is bad one.
The best way to re- enforte and improve
the newspaper is to endow editorial pro-
fessorates. When will Princeton or Har-
ward or Yale or Rochester lead the way?
Another blessing of the newspaper is
| the foundation it lays for accurate his
tory of the time in which we live We
for the most part blindly guess about
| the ages that antedate the newspaper
and are dependent upon the prejudices
| of this or that historian. But after
hundred or two years what splendid
opportunity the historian will have to
teach the people the lesson of this day.
Our Bancrofts got from the early news
papers of this country, from the Boston
Newsletter, the New York Gazette,
and The American Rag Bag, and Royal
| Gazetteer and Independent Chronicle,
and Massachusetts Spy, and the Phila-
delphia Aurora, accounts of Perry's vic
torv, and Ramilton's duel, and Wash
ington's death, and Boston massacre,
| -. faxy Inv
uries which turned Boston harbor into
teapot, and Paul Revere's midnight
| ride. and Rhode Island rebellion, and
| South Carolina nullifaction. But what
field for the chronicler of the great flu
| ture when he opens the files OF a hun
| bred standard American newspapers,
giving the minutia of all things occur
ring under the social, political, ecclesl-
astical, international headings! Five
hundred years from now, if the world
lasts so long, the student looking for
stirring, decisive history will pass by
the misty corridors of other centuries
and say to the libraries, "Find me the
volumes that give the century in which
the American presidents were assassinat-
|
ton gin, the steam locomotive and tele-
graph and electric pen and telephone
and cylinder presses were invented.
Front Wheel of the Lords Chariot.
Once more I remark that good
newspaper is blessing as an evangelist
ic influence. You know there is great
change in our day taking place. All the
secular newspapers of the day-for'l am
not speaking now of the religious news
papers-all the secular newspapers of
the day discuss all the questions of
God, eternity and the Dead and all the
questions of the past, present and fu-
ture. There is not single doctrine OF
theology but has been discussed in the
last ten years by the secular newspapers
of the country. They gather up all the
news of all the earth bearing on rell-
gious Subjects and then they scatter the
news abroad again.
The Christian newspaper will be the
right wing of the apocalyptic angel The
cylinder of the Christianized printing
| press will be the front wheel of the
| Lords chariot. | take the music OF this
+ day, and 1 do not mark it diminuendo
i mark it crescendo. A pastor on
Sabbath breaches to few hundred, or a
few thousand people, and on Monday,
or during the week, the printing press
will take the same sermon and preach 1T
to millions of people. God speed the
printing press God save the printing
press! God Christianize the printing
pressl
When l see the printing press standing
with the electric telegraph on the one
side gathering up material, and the
lightning express train on the other side
waiting for the tons of folded sheets of
newspapers, pronounce it the mlghtlest
force in our civilization. So commend
You to pray for all those who manage
the newspapers of the land, for all type
settlers, for all reporters, for all editors,
for all publishers, that, sitting or stand
ing in positions of such great influence,
they may give all that influence for God
and the betterment of the human race.
An aged woman making her living by
knitting, unwound the yarn from the
ball until she found in the center of the
hall there was an old piece of newspa-
DER She opened it and read an adver-
tisement which announced that she had
become heiress to large property and
that fragment of newspaper lifted
her from pauperism to affiuence. And l
do not know but as the thread of time
unrolls and unwinds little further
through the silent yet speaking newspa-
per may be found the vast inheritance Of
the worlds redemption.
Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
Does his successive journeys run,
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore
| Till suns shall rise and set no more.
| Manning X. Shankland.