The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1901-04-03
drug heavily. The great final battle be

a.
The most divinely honored weapon of the
past has been the pen, and the most di.
vinely honored weapon of the future will
be the pen-prophet's pen, and erangel.
lists pen and apostles pen, followed by
editors pen and authors pen and report.
er's pen. God save the pen! The wing
of the Apocalyptic angel will be the
printed page. The printing press will roll
ahead of Chrisi's chariot to clear the way
But" some one might ask, would you
ment?" I have learned 10 take things as
they are. / would like to see the much
scoffed at old Puritan Sabbaths come back
again. I do not think the modern Sunday
will turn out any better men and women
than were your grandfathers and grand.
mothers under the old.fashioned Sunday.
To say nothing of other results. Sunday
newspapers are killing editors. reporters,
compesitors and pressmen. Every man,
woman and child is entitled to twenty.
four hours of nothing to do. If the news
papers put on another set of hands, that
torial room of its cares and responsible
ties. Our literary men die fast enough
without killing them with Sunday work.
All things are possible with God, and
nv faith is up until nothing in the way of
religious victory would surprise me. All
the newspaper printing presses of the
earth are going to be the Lords. and tele-
graph and telephone and tyne will yet an
nounce nations born in dav. The first
book ever printed was the Bible, by Faust
and his son-in-law, Schoefer, in l460, and
that conservation of type to the Holy
Scriptures was a prophecy of the great
of all the nations. The father of the
American printing press was a clergyman,
Rev. Jesse Glover, and that was a pro-
phecy of the religious use that the gospel
ministry in this country were to make of
the types.
The tendency of criticism in the theo-
logical seminares is to file off from our
young men all the sharp points and make
them too smooth for any kind of execu-
ton. What we want, ali of US, is more
point, less humdrum. If we say the right
thing in the right way, the press will be
glad and echo and re-echo it. Sunday
school teachers, reformers, young men
and old men in the ministry, what we all
want if we are to make the printing press
an ally in Christian work is that which
the reporter spoken of suggested-points.
sharp points, memorable points. But if
the thing be dead when uttered by living
voice it will be hundredfold more dead
when it is laid out in cold type:
Now, as you all have something to do
with the newspaper press, either in issu
ing paper or in reading it, either as pro.
ducers or patrons, either as sellers or pur-
chasers of the printed sheet, propose on
this Lords day treaty to be signed be-
a treaty to be ratified by millions of good
people if we rightly fashion it, a treaty
promising that we will help each other in
our work of trying to illumine and felici-
tate the world, we by voice, you by pen;
we by speaking only that which is fit to
speak. You help us, and we will help you.
Side by side be these two. potent agencies
until the judgment day, when we must
both be scrutinized for our work. health
full or blasting. The two worst off men in
that day will be the minister of religion
and the editor if they was ted their oppor..
tunity. Both of US are the engineers of
will run them into depot of light or tum-
BILE them off the embankments.
What q useful life and what a glorious
departure was that of the most famous of
all American printers, Benjamin Franklin,
whom infidels in the penury of their re.
sources have often fraudulently claimed
as their own, but the printer who moved
that the Philadelphia convention be
opened with prayer, the resolution lost be.
cause majority thought prayer unneces-
sary, and who wrote at the time he was
straight forward in doing what appears to
me to be right, leaving the consequences
to Providence" and who wrote this
quaint epitaph showing bis hope Of resur::
rection, an epitaph that | hundreds OF
times read while living in Philadelphia:
That Providence intends the profession
of reporters to have a mighty share in the
worlds redemption is suggested by the
fact that Paul and Christ took a reporter
along with them, and he reported their
addresses and their acts.
Luke was reporter, and he wrote not
only the book of Luke, but the Acts of
the Apostles, and without that reporters
work we would have known nothing OF
martyrdom, and nothing of Tnbitha's res.
direction, and nothing of the jailing and
unjailing of Paul and Silas, and nothing
of the shipwreck at Melita.
Strike out the reporters work from the
Bible, and you xiii large part of the
New Testament. 1t makes me think that
in the future of the kingdom of God the
reporters are to bear a mighty part.
About twenty-five years ago a represen-
tative of an important New York news
paper took his seat in my Brooklyn church
one Sunday night ,about, five pews from
the front of the pulpit. He took out pen
Gil and reporters pad, resolved to carica-
ture the whole scene. When the music be-
gan, he began, and with his pencil he de-
rided that, and then derided the prayer,
and then derided the reading of the
Scriptures, and then began to deride the
sermon. But, he says, for some reason
his hand began to tremblee, and he,, rally.
ing himself, sharpened his pencil and
started again, but broke down again and
then put pencil and paper in his pocket
and his head down on the front pew and
began to pray. At the close of the service
he came up and asked for the prayers of
others, and gave his heart to God. And,
though still engaged in newspaper work,
he is an evangelist and hires hall at his
own expense and every Sunday afternoon
breaches Jesus Christ to the people.
And the men OF that profession are
going to come in a body throughout the
country. I know hundreds Of them. and a
more genial or highly educated class of
men it would be hard to find, and, though
the tendency of their profession may be
toward skepticism, an organized common
sense gospel invitation would fetch them
to the front of all Christian endeavor.
Men of the pencil and pen in all depart
ments, you need the help of the Christian
TeilglOH. Ill Lnc udy NHeh PeoPie M"hI W
get their newspapers at two cents, and
are hoping for the time when they can get
any of them at one cent, and as conse-
quence the attaches of the printing press
are by the thousand ground under the cy-
linders, you want God to take care of you
and your families.
Some of your best work is as much un-
appreciated as was Milton's Paradise
Lost" for which the author received $25,
and the immortal poem "Hohenlinden"' of
Thomas Campbell when he first offered it
for publication, and in the column called
Notices to Correspondents' appeared the
words: "To II. C.-The lines commencing
'On Linden when the sun was low are not
up to our standard. Poetry is not T. C.'s
forte"