Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1896-04-03
REV. DR.. TALMAGE.
The Eminent Washington piVine's
Sunday Sermon.
Subject: "NeWspapers and Their
Influence"

strangers which were there spent their time
| In nothing else but either to tell or to heal
Some new thing. Acts xviii, FL:
What is preacher to do when he finds two
texts equally good and suggestive? In that
| perplexity lake botb Wheels full of eyes,
! What but the wheels Of a newspaper print
| Ing press? Other wheels are blind. They
lol on, pulling Or crushing. The manufac-
turer's wheel-how it grinds the operator
! With fatigues and rolls over nerve and mus
Gle and bone and heart, not knowing what
II does. The sewing machine wheel sees not
the aches and pains fastened to it-tghter
than the band that moves 1t, sharper than
the needle which 1t plies Every moment OF
every hour of every day of every month OF
every year there are hundreds OF thousands
of wheels Of mechanism, wheels OF enterprise,
wheels OF hard work, ih motion, 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, neal
sighted, far sighted. They look up. They
look down. They look far away They take
hihe next street and the next hemisphere.
Eyes QfRriticism, eyes Of investigation, eyes
that tWihkle with mirth, eyes glowering with
indignation. eyes tender with love, eyes OF
suspicion, eyes OF hope, blue eyes, black
eyes, green eyes, holyeyes, evil eyes, sore
eyes, political eyes, literary eyes, historical
eyes, religious eyes, eyes that see every
thing. "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 spent their time either
In gathering the news or telling 1t. Why
especially in Athens? Because, the more in
telligent people become, the more !nquisi-
tive 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 is the text
for the newspaper the centuries have put
their wits TO work. China first succeeded
and has at Pekih newspaper that has been
printed every week for 1000 years; printed on
silk. Rome succeeded by publishing The
Acta Diurna in the same column putting
fires, murders. marriages and tempests
France succeeded by physician writing out
the news OF the day for his patients. Eng
land succeeded under Queen Elizabeth in
first publishing the news of the Spanish
armada, and going on until she had enough
enterprise. when the battle Of Waterloo was
fought, deciding the destiny OF Europe, to
give it one-third of column in the London
Morning Chronicle, about as much as the
newspapers OF our day gives of small fire.
America succeeded by Benjamin Harris's first
weekly paper called Public Occurrences, pub
lished in Boston in 1890, and by the first
daily, The American Advertiser, published
in Philadelphia in 1854.
The newspaper did not suddenly spring
upon the world but came gradually. The
genealogical line Of the newspaper is this:
The Adam of the race was circular or news
letter. treated by divine impulse in human
nature, and the circular begdt the pamphlet,
and the pamphlet begdt the quar- erly; and
the quarterly begat the weekly, and the
weekly begat the semi-weekly, and the semi
weekly begat the daily But alas, by what
struggle it came to its present developments
No sooner had its power been demonstrated
than Tyranny and superstition shackled it.
There is nothing that despotism so fears and
hates as printing press. 1t has too macy
eyes in its wheel. A great writer declared
that the king of Naples made 1t unsafe for
him to write OF anything but natural his
tory. Austria could not endure Kossuth's
journalistic pen pleading for the rejemp-
ton of Hungary. Napoleon l., trying te
keep his iron heel on the neck of Nations,
said, "Editors are the regents OF sovereigns
and the tutors of Nations and are only lit for
prison." But the battle for the freedom 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 j. Peter Zenger's Gazette in
America, and Erskine's advocacy OF the
freedom of publication Id England.
These were the Marathon and Their
fnopyle in which the freedom of the press
was established IN the I'm tod States and
Great Britain, and all the powers OF earth
and hell will never again be able to put ON
the handouts and hopp'es Of literary and
political despotism. 1t is notable that
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration
of Independence, wrote also: "It had to
choose between q government Without news
papers or newspapers without government,
| should prefer the latter" Stung by some
base fabrication coming to us in print, we
come 20 write or speak OF the unbndled
printing press; or. our new book ground up
by an unjust critic, we come TO write or
speak Of the unfairGess Of the printing press;
or, perhaps, through our own indstinctness
of utterance, we are reported as saying just
the opposite of what we did say, and there is
small riot Of semicolons, hyphens and
commas, and we come TO speak or write oil
the laundering printing pressi or, seeing
raper filled with divorce cases or social
Scandal we speak and write Of the filthy
printing press; or, seeing journal, through
bribery. wheel round from one political side
to the other in one night, we speak OF the
corrupt printing press, and many talk about
the lam poonry, and the empirlcism and the
sens culottism of the printing press.
But discourse now on sublet You have
never heard-the immeasurabl and everlast-
Ing blessing of 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 tiding5
of the day, since the omnivorous newspaper
does both for us. The grandest temporal
blessing that God has given to the nineteenth
century is the newspaper. We would have
better appreciation of this blessing II we
knew the money, the brain the losses, the
exasperations, the anxieties, the wear and
tear Of heartstrings, involved in the produc-
ton of q good newspaper. Under the I'M
preston that almost anybody can make
newspaper, scores of inexperienced capital
lists every year enter the lists, and conse-
quently during the last few years news
paper has died almost every day. The dis
ease 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 thirty-slX nalt
century old. Newspapers do not average
more than five years existence. The most
of them die of cholera infantum. 1t Is high
time that the people found out that the most
successful way 10 sink money and keep 1t
sunk is to start a newspaper. There comes
a time when almost every oneissmitten with
the newspaper mania and starts one, or have
stock in one he must or die.
The course of procedure is about this:
sterary man has an agricultural or scientific
s political or religious idea which he wants
@ Yentilate. He has no money OF his own
il crary men seldom have. But he talks OF
iii ideas among confidential friends until
h become infamed with the idea, and
o. ihyith they buy type and press and rent