The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-03-15

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circulation, or a system of massage or
Swedish movement, whose pokes and
pulls and twists and thrusts are salu-
tary treatment. There is only one per-
son you need to manage, and that is
yourself. Keep your dispositions sweet
by communion with Christ, who answer
ed not again, get society Of genial peo-
pie and walk out in the sunshine with
your hat off, n you will come out all
right. And don't join the crowd Of peo-
pie in our day who spend much Of their
time damning newspapers
Again, in this effort to secure the secu-
lar press as a mightier reinforcement of
religion, let US make it the avenue of re-
ligious information. My advice, often
given to friends who propose to start a
new paper, is: Don't! Don't! Employ
the papers already started" The biggest
financial hole ever dug in this American
continent is the hole in which good peo-
pie throw their money when they start q
newspaper. 1t is almost as good and as
quick a way of getting rid Of money as
buying stock in a gold mine. Not more
printing presses, but the right use of
those already established. All their
cylinders, all their steam power, all their
pens, all their types, all their editorial
chairs and reportorial rooms are avail
able if you would engage them in behalf
of civilization and Christianity.
Reinforcement of Religion.
Again, if you would secure the secular
press as a mightier reinforcement of re-
ligion and the pulpit, extend widest and
highest Christian courtesies to the repre-
sentatives of journalism. Give them
easy chairs and plenty of room when
they come to report occasions. For the
most part they are gentlemen of educa-
ton and refinement, graduates of col
leges, with families to support by their
literary craft, many of them weary with
the push of a business that is precarious
and fluctuating, each one of them the
avenue of information to thousands of
readers, their impression of the services
to be the impression adopted by multi
tudes. They are connecting links be-
tween a sermon, or a song, or a prayer,
and this great population that tramp up
and down the streets day by day and
year by year with their sorrows uncom-
forted and their sins unpardoned. Oh,
the hundreds of thousands of people in
our cities who never attend churches!
Our cities are not so much preached to
by ministers of religion as by reporters.
Il III dl JUL ldllSlS III ouI pIdsSlS IL
sermons. OF all the hundred thousand
sermons preached today there will not be
three preached to journalists and proba-
bly, not one. OF all the prayers offered
for classes of men innumerable the pray
ers offered for the most potential class
will be so few and rare that they will be
thought a preachers ~idiosyncrasy. There
are many journalists in our church men,
berships, but this world will never be
brought to God until some revival of re-
ligion sweeps over the land and takes
into the kingdom of God all editors, re-
porters, compoSitorS, preSSmen and news
boys. And if you nave not faith enough
to pray for that and toll for that you had
better get out of our ranks and join the
other side, for you are the unbelieyerS
who make the wheels of the Lords char
lot drag heavily. The great final battle
between truth and error, the Arranged
don, / think, will not be fought with
swords and shells and guns, but with
pens-auill pens, steel pens, gold pens,
fountain pens, and before that the pens
must be converted. The most divinely
honored weapon of the past has been the
pen, and the most divineiy honored weap-
on of the future will be the pen; proph-
cts pen and evangelist's pen and apos-
ties pen, followed by editors pen n
authors pen and reporters pen. God
save the pen! The wings Of the Apoc-
nlyptic angel will be the printed page.
The printing press will roll ahead Of
Christ's chariot to clear the way.
But" some one might ask, would you
make Sunday newspapers also a re-en-
forcement?" | have learned to take
things as they are. 1 would like to see
| A. -,ral -oofoI 90 oll Drr@on 9 ohhothc
come back again. / do not think the
modern Sunday will turn out any better
men and women than were your grand
fathers and grandmothers under the old
fashioned Sunday. To say nothing Of
other results. Sunday newspapers are
killing editors, reporters, composftorS and
pressmen. Every man, woman and child
is entitled to "a hours of nothing to do.
If the put on another set of
hands, that does not relieve the editorial
and reportorial room of its cares and
responsibilities. Our literary men die
fast enough without killing them with
Sunday FORK.
God and the Printing Press.
All things are possible with God. and
my faith is up until nothing in the way
of religious victory would surprise ne.
| All the newspaper printing presses of the
| earth are going to be the Lords. and tele-
graph and telephone and type will yet
announce nations born in a day. The
first book ever printed was the Bible. by
| Faust and his son-in-law, Schoeffer. in
AGO, and that conservation of type to the
Holy Scriptures was a prophecy of the
great mission of printing for the evanscl-
ization of all the nations. The father of
the American printing press was a cler-
gyman, Rev. Jesse Glover. and that was
a prophecy Of the religious use that the
gospel ministry in this country were to
make of the types.
Again. we shall see the secular press
as a mightier reinforcement Of religion
and the pulpit by making our religious
utterances more interesting and spirited,
and then the press will reproduce them.
On the way to church sons 80 years
ago a journalist said a thing that has
kept ne ever since thinking. "Are you
going to give US any points todayr'
"Wha do you mean?" / asked. He