Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1897 — VOICE OF THE PRESS. [ARTICLE]

VOICE OF THE PRESS.

REV. DR. TALMAGE ON RELIGIOUS NEWSPAPERS. If They Have the Right Spirit, He Bajrs, Bach One Does More Good than Fifty Pulpits-Editorial Responsibility Is Very Great. Our Washington Pulpit. In a previous discourse Dr. T&lmage having Bhown the opportunities of the secular press, in this discourse speaks of the mission of religious newspapers. His text is, “Then I turned and lifted up mine eyes and looked, and behold a flying roll’’ (Zachariah v„ 1). In a dream the prophet saw something tolled up advancing through the heavens. It contained a divine message. It moved swiftly, as on wings. It had much to do with the destiny of nations. But if you will look up you will see many flying rolls. They come with great speed and have messages for all the earth. The flying rolls of this century are the newspapers. They carry messages human and divine. They will decide the destiny of the hemispheres. There are in the United States about 20,000 newspapers. The religious newspaper of which I am the editor was born nineteen years ago, but born again seven yeurs ago. In this brief time it has grown to about 200,000 circulation, and, by the ordinary rule of calculating the readers of a paper, it has about 1,000,000 readers. Our country was blest with many religious journals, edited by consecrated men, while their contributors were the ablest and best of all professions and occupations. Some of those journals for half a century had been dropping their benedictions upon the nation, and they live on and will continue to live on until there will be no more use for their mission, the world itself having become a flying roll on the tempests of the last day, going out of existence. There will be uo more use for such agencies when the world ceases, because, in the spiritual state, we shall have such velocity that we can gather for ourselves all the news of heaven, or, seeing some world in conflagration, may go ourselves in an instant to examine personally the scene of disaster. Was there room for another religious journal in this land, already favored with the highest style of religious journalism? Oh, yes, if undenominational, plenty of room. Nothing can ever talfe the place of the denominational newspaper. When the millennium comes in, it will find as many denominations as there are now. People, according to their temperaments, will always prefer this or that form of church government, this or that style. of worship. You might as well ask us' ail to live in one house as to ask us all to worship in one denomination or to abolish the regiments of an army in order to make them one greaj host.

Denominational Papers. Each denomination must have its own journal, set apart especially to present the charities, explain the work and forward the interests of that particular sect. The death of one denominational journal is a calamity to all the other denominations. I would almost | eel that a great misfortune had happened me if The Christian Intelligencer of the Reformed church (my mother church) did not come tg my house every week, for I was Brought tip on it, and it has Become a household necessity. Such a denominational journal had better be edited by some one who rocked, in the cradle of that church and, ordained at her altars, having become venerable in her service, sits spectacled and wise and, wita heart full of sacred memories, addresses the living of to-day. In the most sacred crypt of our memory stands the statue of the religious editors Abel Stevens and Joshua Leavitt and the royal family of the Primes, Irenaeus and Eusebius, while others linger on the banks of the Jordan, where they will not have long to wait for Elijah’s chariot, and when they go up, if we still be sitting at our editorial desks, we will cry out in the memoruble words, “M.v father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” But, then, there are great movements in which all denominations wish to join, and we want more undenominational newspapers to marshal and advance and Inspire such movements. Yet such journals have a difficult task, because all Christian men, if they have behaved well in their denominations, for some reason prefer the one of their natural and spiritual nativity and, even looking off upon the general field and attempting wider work, will be apt to look at things through denominational preference and to treat them with a denominational twist. The Undenominational Press.

Undenominational journalism is absolutely necessary to demonstrate the unity of the Christian world. Wide and desperate attempt is made to show that the religion of Jesus Christ is only a battleground of sects, and the cry has been: “If you want us to accept your religion, agree, gentlemen, as to what the Christian religion really is. This denomination says a few drops of water dripping from the end of the fingers is baptism, and another demands the submergence of the entire body. This one prays with book, and that one makes extemporaneous utterance. The rector of one delivers his sermon in a gown, while the backwoods preacher of another sect addresses the people in his shirt sleeves. Some of your denominations have the majestic dominant in the service and others spontaneity. Some of you think that from aH eternity some were predestinated to be saved and that from all eternity others were doomed.” Now, it is the business of Young Men’s Christian Associations and tract societies and Sunday school unions and pronounced undenominational journals to show the falsity of the charge that we are fighting among ourselves by gathering all Christian denominations on one platform or launching the united sentiment of all Christendom from one style of religious printing press. Unity, complete unity! Never was any other army on earth so thoroughly united under one flag and inspired by one sentiment and led by one commander as is the church militant. Christ commands all the troops of all denominations of Christians, and they are going to shout together in the final victory when the whole world is redeemed. But we have in all our denominations got tired of trying to make other people < think as we do on all points. The heresy hunters in all denominations are nearly all dead, thank God, and we are learning that when men get wrong in their faith, instead of martyrising them by arraignment we do better to wait for the natural xoll of years to remove them. Men die,

but tbe truth lives on. We may not all agree as to the number of teeth in uie jawbone with wbich Samson slew the Philistines, or agree as to what was the exact color of the foxes which he set on fire to burn up the corn shocks, but, on the vitals of religion, we all agree. If we could call into one great convention the 645,566 Episcopalians, the, 1,420,905 Lutherans, the 1,460,346 Presbyterians, the 4,153,857 Baptists, the 5,653,289 Methodists, putting unto them the following questions, we would get unanimous answer in the affirmative: Do you believe in a God, gpod, holy, just, omnipotent? Do you believe in Jesus Christ as a Saviour? Do you believe in the convicting,. converting and sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost? Do you believe that the gospel is going to conquer all nations? If you should put these questions to those assembled millions on millions, while there would not be a solitary negative, there would be an aye, aye, aye, loud enough to make the foundations of the earth tremble and the arches of the heavens resound. Let there be platforms, let there be great occasions, let there be undenominational printing presses to thunder forth the unity of all Christendom. One Lord. One faith. One baptism. One God and Father. One Jesus Christ. One cross. One heaven. So also there is room for a religious journal that stands for liberty as against all oppression. Civil liberty. Political liberty. Religious liberty. Old Fashionable Evangelism. Again, on this seventh anniversary I say there is room for a religious paper charged with old-fashioned evangelism. Other styles of religious newspapers' may do for advertising purposes or for the presentation of able essays on elaborate themes, but if this world is ever brought to God it will be through unqualified, unadulterated, unmixed, unmistakable evangelism. It was astounding that the Lord Almighty should have gone into great bereavement, submitting to the loss of his only Son, that Son stepping off the doorsill of heaven into a darkness and an abysm that no plummet has ever yet been able to fathom, and through that funeral of the heavens life is offered to our world. But how to get the tidings to all people and in such an attractive way that they will take hold of them is the absorbing question. The human voice can travel only a few feet away, and the world wants something further and wider reaching, and that is the newspaper press, and as the secular press must necessarily give itself chiefly to secular affairs let the religious newspaper give itself to the present and everlasting salvation of all who can read or, if not able to read, have ears to hear others read. If there be an opportunity higher, deeper, grander, than that offered to newspaper evangelism, name it and guide us to it, that we may see its altars, its pillars, its domes, its infinitude. ET. An Optimistic Press.l Again, on this seventh anniversary of a religious publication I notice that there is an especial mission for a religious journal truthfully optimistic. The most optimistic book I know of is the Bible, audits most impressive authors were all optimists. David an optimist. Paul an optimist. St. John an optimist. Our blessed Lord an optimist. I cannot look upon a desert but I am by the old book reminded that it will “blossom like as the rose.” I cannot in a menagerie look upon a lion and a leopard btit I am reminded that “a li£tl? child shall lead them.” I cannot see a collection of |£ms Tn a jewelers window without thinking of heaven aflash and ablaze and incarnadined and empurpled with all manner of precious stones. I cannot hear a trumpet but I think of that one which shall wake the dead. All the ages of time, bounded on one side by the paradise in which Adam and Eve walked and on the other side by the paradise which St. John saw in apocalyptic vision. The Scriptures optimistic and their authors optimistic, all religious newspapers ought to be optimistic. Not only should all ministers and all religious editors have their heart right, but their liver right. The world has enough trouble of its own without our giving them an extra dose in the shape of religion. This world is going to be saved, and if you do not believe it you are an infidel. None of us wants to get on board a train which, instead of reaching the depot, is surely going down the embankment. All aboard for the millennium! For the most part in a religious journal let the editorials be cheerful and the pictures cheerful. Publish in it more sermons on texts like “O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good,” and fewer on texts like “Out of the depths of hell have I cried unto thee, O Lord.” If any one has anything gloomy to say, let him say it to himself. If he must write it, let him not send it to editorial rooms, but put it in the pigeonhole of his own desk.

Prayers for Religious Papers. Pray for the religious newspaper of America because of the fact that if they have the right spirit each one does as much good as 5 or 60 or 200 churches. What are the 500 or 5,000 people making np a Sabbath audience compared with the 10,000 or 50,000 or 200,000 that the religious journal addresses? Such journals are pulpits that preach day and night They reach weekly those who through invalidism or through indifference never enter churches. They reach people in their quietude, when their attention is not distracted as in church by the fine millinery that appeals to the eye or the rustle of attire that attracts the ear. It will always be our duty and our privilege not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, but I believe the consecrated printing press is the chief agency under God to save the world. Pray also for the religious newspapers of America that they may resist the temptations to become acerb, harsh and damnatary of those who think differently from themselves. Pray also for religious journalism that it may be alert—not abreast of the times, but ahead of the times. The secular newspaper gives the secular news and does not pretend to give its religious meaning. The religious press ought to put all the events of the day in companies, regiments and brigades and show us in what direction that divinely disciplined host is marching and let us know what victories for God and righteousness they will win. The Christianized printing press is to do in our time on a large scale what the battering ram did in olden time on a smaller scale. That old war machine was a stout timber, hung by chains to a beam suported by posts, and many men would lay hold of the stont timber and swing it backward and forward until, getting under full momentum, it would strike into awful demolition the wall besieged. God grant that all of ua who have anything to do with the mighty battering ram of our century, the printing press, may be clothed of God with especial strength and oneness of purpose, and that,

haviaf puled it back for mighty la sault, we may altogether rush it forward. Crushing into everlasting ruin the last wall of opposition and the last fortress of iniquity. Editorial Responsibility. And now let all of us who are connected with either secular or religious journalism remember that we will be called into final account for every word we write in editorial or reportorial or contributors’ column, for every type we set, for every press we move and for the style of secular or religious newspaper we patronize or encourage. In Ezekiel’s prophecy the angel of God, supposed to be Christ, appears with an inkhorn hung at his side, as an attorney’s clerk m olden time had an inkhorn at his side. And I have no donbt the inkhorn will have an important part in the day of judgment, those who have used it well to receive eternal plaudit and those who have misused it to receive condemnation. On that great day of judgment all the power we have had on earth will be insignificant compared with the power that will pronounce our rapture-or our doom and that which might have been considered a joke in the “composing room,” because it humiliated an enemy, will be no joke at all amid the wreck of mountains and seas, and the inkhorn will there tell of all we wrote anonymously and under the impersonality of a newspaper, as well as that which was signed with our own name. But the inkhorn by the side of the angel of the new covenant will speak out and tell of what it had to do with all letters of kindness written, with all emancipation proclamations, with all editorial and reportorial eulogies of the good, with all the messages of salvation to a lost world. Not only the inkhorn which Ezekiel saw, but all the inkhornsJr ill come to judgment. “And I saw the small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened.” Copyright. 1897.