Democratic Northwest and Henry County news. [volume] (Napoleon, O. [Ohio]) 1894-1905, 1896-03-26
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS
REV. Or. TALMAGE FINDS TWO
UNIQUE TEXTS.

row, as 1t Is called here In Washington,
the long row Of Offices connected with
prominent journals throughout the land,
pays so much attention to DR.. Talmage
they may be glad to hear what he thinks
of them while he discusses q subject in
which the whole country Is interested.
His texts today were, And the wheels were
full of eyes, Ezekiel K, 12), 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, 2D.
What Is preacher to do when he finds
two texts equally good and suggestivei
In that perplexity take both. Wheels
full of eyes2 What but the wheels of a
newspaper printing pressS Other wheels
are blind. They roll on, pulling or crush
ing The manufacturer wheel-how 1t
grinds the operator with fatigues and rolls
over nerve and muscle and bone and heart,
not knowing what it does. The sewing
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
muir VI Every uuy VI ONOIJ lllOhoh VI oNOiy
year there are hundreds of thousands of
wheels Of mechanism, wheels Of enterprise,
wheels of hard work, in motion, bT6 they
are eyeless.
Not SO the wheels of tho 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,
nearsighted, farsighted. They look up.
They look down. They look far away.
They take in the next street and tho next
hemisphere. Eyes of criticism, eyes of in
vestigation, eyes that twinkle with mirth,
eyes glowering with indignation, eyes ten
der 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 class of peo-
pie in Athens who spent their time either
in gathering the news or telling it. Why
especially in AthensP Because the more
intelligent people become tho more inquis-
tive they are-not about small things,
but great things.
What Is the News?
The question then most frequently Is
the question now most frequently asked,
What Is the news? To answer that cry in
tho text for the newspaper the centuries
have put their wits to work. China first
succeeded and has at Peking a newspaper
that has been printed every week for ,000
years, printed on silk. Rome succeeded
by pdr 'ishing The Acta Diurna, in the
same Column putting fires, murders, mar
riages and tempests. France succeeded
by physician writing out the news of the
day for his patients. England succeeded
under Queen Elizabeth in first publishing
the news of the Spanish armada and go
ing on until she had enough enterprise,
when the battle of Waterloo was fought,
deciding the destiny Of Europe, to give ii
one-third of a column in the London
Morning Chronicle, about as much as the
newspaper of our day gives of small fire.
America succeeded by Benjamin Harris
first weekly paper, called Public Occur
rences, published in Boston in 1890, and
by tho first daily, The American Adver.
tiser, published in Philadelphia in 1884.
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 a circular o1
news letter created by divine impulse IL
human nature, and the circular begat the
pamphlet, and the pamphlet begat the
quarterly, and the quarterly begat the
weekly, and the weekly begat the semi
weekly, and the semiweekly begat the
daily. But, alas, by what struggle ii
came to its present Development Nc
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 toe
many eyes in its wheel. A great writer
declared that the king of Naples made ii
unsafe for him to write of anything bat
natural history. Austria could not endure
Kossuth's journalistic pen pleading for the
redemption of Hungary. Napoleon I, try.
ing to keep his iron heel on the necks OF
nations, said, Editors are the regents OF
sovereigns and the tutors of nations and
are only fit for prison" But tho battle
for the freedom of the press was fought in
tho courtrooms 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 in
England. These were the Marathon and
Thermopyl@ in which the freedom of the
press was established in the United States
and Great Britain, and all the powers Of
earth and hell will never again be able to
put on the handouts and hopples Of lit
erary and political despotism. 1t is nota.
BILE that Thomas jefferson, who wrote the
Declaration Of American Independence
wrote also, IF had to choose between q
government without newspapers, or news
papers witt >ut government, I should
prefer the latter" Stung by some base
fabrication coming to us in print, we come
to write or speak of the unbridled printing
press, or, our new book ground up by an
unjust critic, we come to write or speak
of the unfairness of the printing press, OF
perhaps through out own indistinotness 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
Of the blundering printing press, or, seeing
paper filed with divorce cases or social
scandal, wo 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 lampoonery, and the empiric
ism, and the sans oulottism of the print
ing press.
A Good Newspaper.
But l discourse now on a subject you
have never heard-the immeasurable and
everlasting blessing of good newspaper
Thank God for the wheel full Of eyes
Thank God that we do not have, like the
Athenians, to go about to gather up and
relate the tidings 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 appre
ciation of this blessing if we knew the
money, the brain, the losses, the oxaspera
tions tho 0nYietieS tho xrear apd toar of