Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1898 — TALMAGES SERMON [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TALMAGES SERMON

FOR the first tin* Dr. Talmage in this discourse tells in what way his sermons have come to a multiplicity ■of publication such as has never in any other case been known since the art of printing was invented; text, Nahum ii., A, “They shall seem like torches; they shall run like the lightnings.” Express, rail train and telegraphic communication are suggested, if not foretold, in this text, and from it I stnrt to preach a sermon in gratitude to God and the newspaper press for the fact that I have had the opportunity of delivering through the newspaper press 2,000 sermons or religious addresses, so that I have for many lyears been allowed the privilege ot preaching the gospel every week to every neighborhood in Christendom and in many lands outside of Christendom. Many have wondered at the process by which it has •come to pas?, and for the first time in public place I state the three causes. Many years ago a young man who has since become eminent in his profession was then studying law in a distant city. He came to me and said that for lack of funds he mugt stop his studying unless through stenography I would give him sketches of sermons, that he might by the sale of them secure means for the completion of his education. I positively declined, because it seemed to me an impossibility, but after some month.) had passed, and I had redacted upon tie great sadness for such a brilliant young man to be defeated in his ambition for the. legal profession, I undertook to serve him, of course free of charge. Within three weeks there came a request for those stenographic reports from many parts of the continent. Time passed on, and some gentlemen of my own profession, evidently thinking that there was hardly room for them and for myself in this continent, began to assail me, and became so violent in their assault that the chief newspapers of America put special correspondents in my church Sabbath by Sabbath to take down such reply as I might make. I never made reply, ..except once for about three minutes, but those correspondents could not waste their time, and so they telegraphed the sermons to their particular papers. After awhile Dr. Louis Klopsch of New York systematized the work into a syndicate until through that and other syndicates he has put the discourses week by week before more than 20,000,000 people on both sides the sea. There have been so many guesses on this subject, many of them inaccurate, that I now tell the true story. I have not improved the opportunity as I ought, but I feel the time has come when as a matter of common justice to the newspaper press I should make this statement in a sermon commemorative of the two thousandth full publication of sermons and religious addresses, saying nothing of fragmentary reports, which would run up into mauy thousands more.

Nothing bnt Points. There was one incident that I might mention in this connection, showing how an insignificant event might influence us for a lifetime. Many years ago on a Sabbath morning on my way to church in Brooklyn a representative of a prominent newspaper met me and said, “Are you going to give us any points to-day?” I said, “What do you mean by ‘points?’ ” He replied, “Anything wo can remember.” 1 snid to myself, “We ought to lie making ‘points’ all the time in our pulpits and no* deal in platitudes and inanities.” That one interrogation put to me that morning started in me the desire of making points all the time and nothing but points And now how can I more appropriately commemorate the two thousandth publication than by sinking of the newspaper press as an ally of the pulpit and mentioning some of the trials u.' newspaper men? The newspaper is the great e locator of the nineteenth century. There , no force compared with it. It is book, pulpit, platform, forum, all in one. A .d there is not an interest—religious, literary, commercial, scientific, agricultural or mechanical —that is not-within its grasp. All our churches and schools and colleges and asylums and art gnlleries feel the quuking of the (printing press. It is remarkable that Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, also wrote these words, “If I had to choose between a government without newspapers and newspni>crs without a government, I would prefer the lutter.” Two Kinds of Newspapers. There are two kinds of newspuperß—the one good, very good, the other bad, very bad. A newspaper may be started with an undecided character, but after it has been going on for years everybody finds out just what it is and it is very good or it is yery bad. The one paper is the embodiment of news, the ally of virtue, the foe of crime, the delectation of elevated taste, the mightiest agency on enrth for making the world better. The other pnper is a brigand among mornl forces; it is a beslimer of reputation, it is the right arm of death and hell, it is the mightiest agency in the universe for making the world worse and battling ngninst the cause of God, the one an angel of intelligence and mercy, the other a fiend of darkness. Between this archangel nnd this fury is to lie fought the great battle which is to decile the fate of the world. If you have any doubt as to which is to be victor, ask the prophecies, ask God; Iho chief batteries with which he would vindicate the right and thunder down the wrong are now unlimbered. The great Armageddon of the nations is not to be fought with swords, but with steel pens; not with bullets, but with type; not with oatmon, but with lightning perfecting presses; and -the Suintors, and the Moultries, and the Pulaskis, nnd the Gibrnltnrs of that conflict will be the editorial and reportorial rooms of our great newspaper establishments. Men of the press, God has put a more stupendous responsibility

upon you than upon any other class of persons. What long strides your profession has made in influence and since the day when Peter Sheffer invented cast metal type, and because two books were found just alike they wore ascribed to the work of the devil, and books were printed on strips of bamboo, and Rev. Jesse Glover originated the first American printing press, and the Common Council of New York, in solemn resolution, offered S2OO to any printer who would come there and live, apd when the speaker of the House of Parliament in England announced with indignation that the public prints had recognized some of their doings, until in this day, when we have in this country many newspapers sending out copies by the billion. The press and the telegraph have gone down into the same great harvest field to reap, and the telegraph says to the newspaper, “PH rake, while you bind,” and the iron teeth of the telegraph are set down at one end of, the harvest field and drawn clean across, and the newspaper gathers up the sheaves, setting down one sheaf on the breakfast table in the shape of a morning newspaper, and putting down another sheaf on the ten table in the shape of an evening newspaper, and that man who neither reads nor takes a newspaper would be a curiosity. What.vast progress since the days when Cardinal Wolsey declared that either the printing press must go down or the church of God mu'st go down to this time, when the printing press and the pulpit are in hundreds of glorious combination and alliance. Trials of the Editor. One of the great trials of this newspaper profession is the fact that they are compelled to see more of the shams of the world than any other profession. Through every newspaper office, day by day, go the weakness of the world, the vanities that want to bo puffed, the revenges that want to be wreaked, all the mistakes that want to be corrected, all the dull speakers who want to be thought eloquent, all the meanness that wants to get its wares noticed gratis in the editorial columns in order to save the tax of the advertising column, all the men who want to be set right who never were right, all the crack, brained philosophers, with story as long as their hair and as gloomy as their finger nails, all the itinerant bores who come to- stay five minutes and stop an hour. From the editorial and reportorinl rooms all the follies and shams of the world are seen day by day, and the temptation is to believe neither in God, man nor woman. It is no surprise to me that in your profession there are some skeptical men. I only wonder that you believe anything. Unless an editor or a reporter has in his present or in his early home-a mbdel of earnest character, or he throw himself upon the upholding grace of God, he may make temporal and eternal shipwreck. Another great trial of the newspaper profession is inadequate compensation. The world seems to have a grudge against a man who, as they say, gets his living by his wits, and the day laborer says to the man of literary toil, “you come down here and shove a plane and hammer a shoe last and break eoblostones and earn an honest living ns I do instead of sitting there in idleness scribbling!” But there are no harder woj-ked men in all the earth than the newspaper people of this country. It is not a matter of hard times; it is characteristic at all times, Men have a better appreciation for that which appeals to the stomach than for that Which appeals to the brain. They have no idea of the immense financial and intellectual exhaustion of the newspaper press. Oh, men of the press, it will be a great help to you, if when you get home late at night, fagged out and nervous with your work, you would just kneel down and commend your case to God, who has watched all the fatigues of the day and the night, and who has promised to be your God and the God of your children forever!

Demands of the Public. Another great trial of the newspaper profession is the diseased appetite for unhealthy intelligence. You blame the newspaper press for giving such prominence to murders and scandals. Do you suppose that so many papers would give prominence to these things if the people did not demand them? If Igo into the meat market of a foreign city, nnd I find that the butchers hang up ou the most conspicuous hooks meat that is tainted, while the meat that is fresh and savory is put away without any special care, I come to the conclusion that the people of that city love tainted meat. You know very well that if the great mass of people in this country get .hold of a new: paper and there are in it no runaway inat< lies, no broken up families, no defamation of men in high position, they pronounce thd pnper insipid. They euy, “It is shockingly dull to-night.” I believo it is one of the trials of the newspaper press that the [ample of this country demand moral slush instead of healthy and intellectual food. Now, you are a respectable man, an intelligent man, and a pa|K>t comes into your hand. You ojien it, nnd there are three columns of splendidly written editorial, recommending some u oral sentiment or evolving some scientific theory. In the next column there w u miserable, contemptible divorce ease. Which do you read first? You dip into the editorial long enough to say, “Well, that’s very ably written,” and you read tiu divorce case from the “long primer” type at the top to the “nonpareil" type at the 1 >ottom, nnd then you ask your wife if she him read it! Oil, it is only a case •of supply nnd demand! Newspaper men are not f-*>ls. They know what you want, nnd they give it to you. I lielicvo that if the cbure’jr nnd the world bought nothing but puro, honest, healthful newspapers, nothing cut pure, honest nnd healthful newspapers would he published. If yoil should gather nil the editors nnd the reporters of this country in one great convention, and nsk of them what kind of n paper the/ would prefer to publish, I ls>!iove they would unanimously say, “We would prefer to publish an elevating pn•jcr.” 8a long as there is an iniquitous demand there will be nil iniquitous supply. I make wo apology for a debauched newspnpor, but I nm snylng these things in order to divide the responsibility between those who print nnd those who rend. Temptations of Journalists. Another temptation of the newspaper profession is the great n I lure men t that surrounds them. Every occupation nnd profession has.temptations peculiar to itself, nnd the newspaper profession is not an exception. The great demand, os you know, Is on the nervous force, and the brain is racked. The blundering political

speech must read well for the sake of the party, and so the reporter or the editor lias to make it read well; although qvery sentence were a catastrophe to the English language. The reporter must hear all that an inaudible speaker, who thinks it is vulgar to speak out, says, and it must be right the next morning or the next night in the papers, though the night before the whole audience sat with its hand behind its ear iu vain trying to catch it. This man must go through killing night work. He must go into heated assemblages and into unveutilated audience rooms that are enough to take the life out of him. He must visit court rooms, which are almost always disgusting with rum and tobacco. He must expose himself at "tte fire. He must write in fetid alleyways. Added to all that, he must have hasty mastieatiou and irregular habits. To bear up under this tremendous nervous strain they are tempted to artificial stimulus, and how many thousands have gone down tincß*r their pressure God only knows. They must have something to counteract the wet, they must have something to keep out the chill, and after a scant night’s sleep they must have something to revive them for the morning’s work. This is what made Horace Greeley such a stout temperance man. I said to him, “Mr. Greeley, why "a re yon more eloquent on the subject of temperance than any.other subject?” He replied, “I have seen so many of my best friends in journalism go down under intemperance.” Oh, my dear brother of the newspaper profession, what you cannot do without artificial stimulus God does not want you to do! There is no half way ground for our literary people between teetotalism and dissipation. Your professional success, your domestic peace, your eternal salvation, will depend upon your theories in regard to artificial stimulus. I have had so many friends go down under the temptation, their brilliancy quenched, their homos blasted, that I cry out this morning in the words of another, “Look not upon the wine when it-4»- red, when it giveth its color" in the cup, when it moveth itself aright, for at the last it biteth like a serpeht and it stingeth like an adder.” F.'ght Corruption. Let me ask all men connected with the printing press that they help us more and more in the effort to make the world better. I charge you in the name of God, before whom you must account for the tremendous influence you hold in this country, to consecrate yourselves to higher endeavors. You are the men to fight back this invasion of coivrupt literature. Lift up your right hand and swear new alle-ginnee-to the cause of philanthropy and religion. And when at last, standing on the plains of judgment, you look out upon the unnumbered throngs over whom you. have had influence, may it be found that you were among the mightiest energies that lifted men upon the exalted pathway that leads to the renown of heaven. Better than to have sat in editorial chair, from •which, with the finger of type, you decided the destinies of empires, but decided them wrong, that you had been some dungeoned exile, who, by the light of window iron grated, on scraps of a New Testament leaf, picked up from the earth, spelled out the story of him who taketh away the sins of the world. In eternity Dives is the beggar. TVell, my friends, we will all soon get through writing and printing and proofreading and publishing. What then? Our life is a book. Our years are the chapters. Our months are .the paragraphs. Our daya are the sentences. Our doubts are tile interrogation poipts. Our imitation of others the quotation marks. Our attempts at display a dash. Death the period. Eternity the peroration. O God, where* will we spend it? Have you heard the news, more startling than any found in the journals of the last six weeks? It is the tidings that man is lost. Have you heard the news, the gladdest that was ever announced, coming this day from the throne of God, lightning couriers leaping from the palace gate? The news! The glorious news! That there is pardon for all guilt and comfort for nil trouble. Set it up in “double leaded” columns and direct it to the whole race.

The Angel's Wing. And now before I close this sermon, thankfully commemorative of the “Two Thousandth” publication, 1 wish more fully to acknowledge the services rendered by the secular press in the matter of evangelization. All the secular newspapers of the day—for I am not speaking this morning of the religious newspapers—all the secular newspapers of the dny discuss all the Questions of God, eternity and the dead, nnd all the questions of the past, present and future. There is not n single doctrine of theology but has been discussed in the last ten years by the secular newspapers of the country; they gather up all the news of all the eurth bearing on religions subjects, and then they scatter the new* abroad again. The Christian newspaper will be the right wing of the Apocalyptic angel. The cylinder of the Christianized printing press will he the front wheel of the Lord’s chariot. I tnke the music of this day, and I do not murk it diminuendo —Lmnrk it crescendo. A pastor on a Sabbath preaches to a few hundred or a few thousand people, and on Mondny or during the week the printing press will take the same sermon and preach it to millions of people. God speed the printing press! God tjave the printing press! God Christianize the printing press! When I see the printing press standing with the electric telegraph on the one side gathering up material and the lightning express train ou the other side waiting for the tons of folded sheets of newspapers, I pronounce it the mightiest force in our civilization. 8o L, commend you to pray for all those who manage the newspapers of the land, for ull typesetters, for alt editors, for nil publishers, that, sitting or stumling in positions of such great influence, they may give all that Influence for God and the betterment of the human race. An aged woman making her living by knitting unwound the yarn from the bnlLuntil she found in the center of the bnll.lbcre was an old piece of newapnpor. She.. opened it and read an advertisement which announced that she had become heiress to a large property nnd that fragment of a uewspa|>cr lifted her up from pauperism to affluence. And I do not know hut as the thread of time unrolls and unwinds a little farther through the silent yet speaking newspnisrs may be found the vast inheritance of the world's redemption. w Copyright, 1808. * A German veterlunry surgeon him discovered a method by which horseshoes •can bo successfully manufactured from paper. It Is Impregnated with turpentine to make it waterproof. The Inventor claims that a horse wearing these shoes cannot slip on greasy roads.