263. Henry W. Grady

Henry W. Grady

Isa_8:1 : ’93Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’92s pen.’94

To Isaiah, with royal blood in his veins, and a habitant of palaces, does this divine order come. He is to take a roll, a large roll, and write on it with a pen’97not an angel’92s pen, but a man’92s pen. So God honored the pen, and so he honored manuscript. In our day, the mightiest roll is the religious and secular newspaper, and the mightiest pen is the editor’92s pen, whether for good or for evil. And God says now to every literary man, and especially to every journalist, ’93Take thee a great roll and write in it with a man’92s pen.’94

Within a few weeks, one of the strongest, most vivid, and most brilliant of those pens was laid down on the editorial desk in Atlanta, never again to be resumed. I was far away at the time. We had been sailing up from the Mediterranean Sea, through the Dardanelles, which region is unlike anything I ever saw for beauty. There is not any other water scenery on earth where God has done so many picturesque things with islands. They are somewhat like the Thousand Islands of our American St. Lawrence, but more like heaven. Indeed, we had just passed Patmos, the place on which John had his apocalyptic vision. Constantinople had seemed to come out to greet us, for your approach to that city is different from any other city. Other cities, as you approach them, seem to retire, but this city, with its glittering minarets and pinnacles, seems almost to step into the water to greet you. But my landing there, that would have been to me an exhilaration, was suddenly stunned with the tidings of the death of my friend. Henry W. Grady.

I could hardly believe the tidings, for I had left on my study table at home letters and telegrams from him, those letters and telegrams having a warmth and geniality, and a wit, such as he only could express. The departure of no public man for many years has so affected me. For days I walked about as in a dream, and I resolved that, getting home, I would, for the sake of his bereaved household, and for the sake of his bereaved profession, and for the sake of what he had been to me, and shall continue to be as long as memory lasts, I would speak a word in appreciation of him, the most promising of Americans, and learn some of the salient lessons of his departure. His going is a calamity, but we have a right to seek, as far as we can, explanation and solace.

I have no doubt that he had enemies, for no man can live such an active life as he lived, or be so far in advance of his time, without making enemies’97some because he defeated their projects, and some because he outshone them. Owls and bats never did like the rising sun. But I shall tell you how he appeared to me, and I am glad that I told him while he was in full health what I thought of him. Memorial orations and gravestone epitaphs are often mean enough, for they say of a man after he is dead that which ought to have been said of him while living. One garland for a living brow is worth more than a mountain of japonicas and calla-lilies heaped on a funeral casket. By a little black volume of fifty pages containing the eulogiums and poems uttered and written at the demise of Clay and Webster and Calhoun and Lincoln and Sumner, the world tried to pay for the forty years of obloquy it heaped upon those living giants. If I say nothing in praise of a man while he lives, I will keep silent when he is dead. Myrtle and weeping willow can never do what ought to have been done by amaranth and palm branch. No amount of ’93Dead March in Saul’94 rumbling from big organs at the obsequies can atone for non-appreciation of the man before he fell on sleep. The hearse cannot do what ought to have been done by chariot. But there are important things that need to be said about our friend, who was a prophet in American journalism, and who, only a few years ago, heard the command of my text, ’93Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’92s pen.’94

His father dead, Henry W. Grady, a boy fourteen years of age, took up the battle of life. It would require a long chapter to record the names of orphans who have come to the top. When God takes away the head of the household, he very often gives to some lad in that household a special qualification. Christ remembers how that the man who stood to him in the place of an earthly father died early, leaving him to support himself and his mother and his brothers in the carpenter’92s shop at Nazareth, and he is in sympathy with all boys and all young men in the struggle. You say: ’93Oh, if my father had only lived I would have had a better education, and I would have had a more promising start, and there are some wrinkles on my brow that would not have been there.’94 But I have noticed that God makes a special way for orphans. You would not have been half the man you are if you had not been obliged from your early days to fight your own battles. What other boys got out of Yale or Harvard, you got in the university of hard knocks. Go among successful merchants, lawyers, physicians, and men of all occupations and professions, and there are many of them who will tell you, ’93At ten or twelve or fifteen years of age I started for myself; father was sick, or father was dead.’94 But somehow they got through and got up. I account for it by the fact that there is a special dispensation of God for orphans. All hail! the fatherless and the motherless! The Lord Almighty will see you through. Early obstacles for Mr. Grady were only the means for development of his intellect and heart. And lo! when at thirty-nine years of age he put down his pen and closed his lips for the perpetual silence, he had done a work which many a man who lives on to sixty and seventy and eighty years never accomplishes.

There is a great deal of senseless praise of longevity, as though it were an achievement to live a good while. Ah! it is not how long we live, but how well we live and how usefully we live. A man who lives to eighty years and accomplishes nothing for God or humanity might better have never lived at all. Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and what did it amount to? In all those more than nine centuries he did not accomplish anything which seemed worth record. Paul lived only a little more than sixty, but how many Methuselahs would it take to make one Paul? Who would not rather have Paul’92s sixty years than Methuselah’92s nine hundred and sixty-nine? Robert Mc-Cheyne died at thirty years of age, and John Summerfield at twenty-seven, but neither earth nor heaven will ever hear the end of their usefulness. Longevity! Why, an elephant can beat you at that, for it lives a hundred and fifty and two hundred years. Gray hairs are the blossoms of the tree of life if found in the way of righteousness, but the frosts of the second death if found in the way of sin.

One of our able New York journals last spring printed a question and sent it to many people, and among others, to myself: ’93Can the editor of a secular journal be a Christian?’94 Some of the newspapers answered, No. I answered Yes; and, lest you may not understand me, I say, Yes, again. Summer before last, riding with Mr. Grady from a religious meeting in Georgia on a Sunday night, he said to me some things which I now reveal for the first time, because it is appropriate now that I reveal them. He expressed his complete faith in the Gospel, and his astonishment and grief that in our day so many young men were rejecting Christianity. From the earnestness, the tenderness, the confidence with which he spoke on these things, I concluded that when Henry W. Grady made public profession of his faith in Christ and took his place at the holy communion in the Methodist Church, he was honestly and truly Christian. That conversation that Sunday night, first in the carriage and then resumed in the hotel, impressed me in such a way that when I simply heard of his departure without any of the particulars, I concluded that he was ready to go. I warrant there was no fright in the last extremity, but that he found what is commonly called ’93the last enemy’94 a good friend, and from his home on earth he went to a home in heaven. Yes, Mr. Grady not only demonstrated that an editor may be a Christian, but that a very great intellect may be Gospelized.

His mental capacity was so wonderful that it was almost startling. I have been with him in active conversation, while at the same time he was dictating to a stenographer editorials for the Atlanta Constitution. But that intellect was not ashamed to bow to Christ. Among his last dying utterances was a request for the prayers of the churches in his behalf. There was that particular quality in him that you do not find in more than one person out of hundreds of thousands, namely, personal magnetism. People have tried to define that quality, and always failed, yet we have all felt its power. There are some persons who have only to enter a room or step upon a platform or into a pulpit, and you are thrilled by their presence, and when they speak your nature responds, and you cannot help it. What is the peculiar influence with which such a magnetic person takes hold of social groups and audiences? Without attempting to define this, which is indefinable, I will say it seems to correspond to the waves of the air set in motion by the voice or the movements of the body. Just like that atmospheric vibration is the moral or spiritual vibration which rolls out from the soul of what we call a magnetic person. As there may be a cord or rope binding bodies together, there may be an invisible cord binding souls. A magnetic man throws it over others as a hunter throws a lasso. Mr. Grady was surcharged with this influence, and it was employed for patriotism and Christianity and elevated purposes.

You may not know why, in a conversation which I once had with Mr. Gladstone, he uttered these memorable words about Christianity, some of which were cabled to America. He was speaking in reply to this remark: I said, ’93Mr. Gladstone, we are told in America by some people that Christianity does very well for weak-minded men and children in the infant class, but it is not fit for stronger-minded men; but when we mention you, of such large intellectuality, as being a pronounced friend of religion, we silence their batteries.’94 Then Mr. Gladstone stopped on the hillside where we were strolling, and said: ’93The older I grow, the more confirmed I am in my faith in religion. Sir,’94 said he, with flashing eye and uplifted hand, ’93talk about the questions of the day, there is but one question, and that is the Gospel. That can and will correct everything. Do you have any of that dreadful agnosticism in America?’94 Having told him we had, he went on to say: ’93I am profoundly thankful that none of my children or kindred have been blasted by it. I am glad to say that about all the men at the top in Great Britain are Christians. Why, sir,’94 he said, ’93I have been in public position fifty-eight years, and forty-seven years in the cabinet of the British government, and during those forty-seven years I have been associated with sixty of the master minds of the century, and all but five of the sixty were Christians. He then named the four leading physicians and surgeons of his country, calling them by name, and remarking upon the high qualities of each of them, and added: ’93They are all thoroughly Christian.’94

My friends, I think it will be quite respectable for you a little longer to be the friends of religion. William E. Gladstone a Christian; Henry W. Grady a Christian. What the greatest of Englishmen said of England is true of America, and of all Christendom. The men at the top are the friends of God, and believers in the sanctities of religion, the most eminent of the lawyers, the most eminent of the doctors, the most eminent of the merchants, and there are no better men in all our land than some of those who sit in editorial chairs. And if that does not correspond with your acquaintanceship, I am sorry that you have fallen into bad company. In answer to the question put last spring, ’93Can a secular journalist be a Christian?’94 I not only answer in the affirmative, but I assert that so great are the responsibilities of that profession, so infinite and eternal the consequences of their obedience or disobedience of the words of my text, ’93Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’92s pen,’94 and so many are the surrounding temptations, that the men of no other profession more deeply need the defenses and the re-enforcements of the grace of God.

And then look at the opportunities of journalism. I state a fact which you all know when I say that where the pulpit touches one person, the press touches five hundred. The vast majority of people do not go to church, but all intelligent people read the newspapers. While, therefore, the responsibility of the ministers is great, the responsibility of editors and reporters is greater. Come, brother journalists, and get your ordination, not by the laying on of human hands, but by the laying on of the hands of the Almighty. To you is committed the precious reputation of men and the more precious reputation of women. Spread before our children an elevated literature. Make sin appear disgusting and virtue admirable. Believe good rather than evil. While you show up the hypocrisies of the Church, show up the stupendous hypocrisies outside the Church. Be not, as some of you are, the mere echoes of public opinion; make public opinion. Let the great roll on which you write with a man’92s pen be a message of light and liberty and kindness, and an awakening of moral power. But who is sufficient for these things? Not one of you, without divine help. But get that influence, and the editors and reporters can go up and take this world for God and the truth. The mightiest opportunity in all the world for usefulness today is open before editors and reporters and publishers, whether of knowledge on foot, as in the book, or knowledge on the wing, as in the newspaper. I pray God, men of the newspaper press, whether you hear or read this sermon, that you may rise up to your full opportunity and that you may be divinely helped and rescued and blessed.

Some one might say to me: ’93How can you talk thus of the newspaper press, when you yourself have sometimes been unfairly treated and misrepresented?’94 I answer that in the opportunity the newspaper press of this country and other countries have given me week by week to preach the Gospel to the nations, I am put under so much obligation that I defy all editors and reporters, the world over, to write anything that shall call forth from me one word of bitter retort, from now till the day of my death. My opinion is, that all reformers and religious teachers, instead of spending so much time and energy in denouncing the press, had better spend more time in thanking them for what they have done for the world’92s intelligence, and declaring their magnificent opportunity, and urging their employment of it all for beneficent and righteous purposes.

Again, I remark that Henry W. Grady stood for Christian patriotism irrespective of political spoils. He declined all official reward. He could have been Governor of Georgia, but refused it. He could have been Senator of the United States, but declined it. He remained plain Mr. Grady. Nearly all the other orators of the political arena, as soon as the elections are over, go to Washington or Albany or Harrisburg or Atlanta to get, in city or State or national office, reward for their services, and, not getting what they want, spend the rest of the time of that administration in carping about the management of public affairs, or sharply criticising the President. When the great political campaigns were over Mr. Grady went home to his newspaper. He demonstrated that it is possible to toil for principles which he thought to be right, simply because they were right. Christian patriotism is too rare a commodity in this country. Surely the joy of living under such free institutions as those established here ought to be enough reward for political fidelity. Among all the great writers that stood at the last Presidential election on Democratic and Republican platforms, you cannot recall in your mind ten who were not themselves looking for remunerative appointments. Ay, you can count them all on the fingers of one hand. The most illustrious specimen of that style of man for the last ten years was Henry W. Grady.

Mr. Grady stood for the new South, and was just the type of man we want to meet three other men’97one to speak for the new North, another for the new East, and another for the new West. The bravest speech made for the last quarter of a century was that made by Mr. Grady at the New England dinner in New York about two or three years ago. I sat with him that evening, and knew something of his anxieties; for he was to tread on dangerous ground, and might, by one mischosen word, have antagonized forever both sections. His speech was a victory that thrilled all who heard it, and all who read it. That speech, great for wisdom, great for kindness, great for pacification, great for bravery, will go down to the generations with Webster’92s speech at Bunker Hill, William Wirt’92s speech at the arraignment of Aaron Burr, Edmund Burke’92s speech on Warren Hastings, Robert Emmet’92s speech for his own vindication.

Who in conspicuous action will represent the new North as he did the new South? Who shall come forth for the new East, and who for the new West? Let old political issues be buried; let old grudges die; let new theories be launched. With the coming in of a new nation at the gates of our immigrant depots every year, and the wheat-bin and corn-crib of our land enlarged with every harvest, and a vast multitude of our population still plunged in illiteracy to be educated, and moral questions abroad involving the very existence of our republic, let the old political platforms that are worm-eaten be dropped, and platforms that shall be made of two planks, the one the Ten Commandments, and the other the Sermon on the Mount, lifted for all of us to stand on. But there is a lot of old politicians, grumbling all around the sky, who don’92t want a new South, a new North, a new East, or a new West. They have some old war speeches that they prepared in 1861, that in all our autumnal elections they feel called upon to inflict upon the country. They grow louder and louder in proportion as they are pushed back further and further, and the Henry W. Gradies come to the front. But the mandate, I think, has gone forth from the throne of God that a new American nation shall take the place of the old, and the new has been baptized for God and liberty, justice and peace, morality and religion.

And now our much-lamented friend has gone to give account. Suddenly the facile and potent pen is laid down, and the eloquent tongue is silent. What? is there no safeguard against fatal disease? The impersonation of stout health was Mr. Grady. What compactness of muscle! What ruddy complexion! What flashing eye! Standing with him in a group of twenty or thirty persons at Piedmont, he looked the healthiest, as his spirits were the blithest. Shall we never feel again the hearty grasp of his hand, or be magnetized with his eloquence? Men of the great roll, men of the pen, men of wit, men of power, if our friend had to go when the call came, so must you when your call comes. When God asks you what you have done with your pen or your eloquence or your wealth or your social position, will you be able to give satisfactory answer? What have we been writing all these years? If mirth, has it been innocent mirth, or that which tears and stings and lacerates? From our pen have there come forth productions healthy or poisonous? In the last great day, when the warrior must give account of what he has done with his sword, and the merchant what he has done with his yardstick, and the mason what he has done with his trowel, and the artist what he has done with his pencil, we shall have to give account of what we have done with our pen. There are gold pens and diamond pens and pens of exquisite manufacture, and every few weeks I see some new kind of pen, each said to be better than the other; but in the great day of our arraignment before the Judge of quick and dead, that will be the most beautiful pen, whether gold or steel or quill, which never wrote a profane or unclean or cruel word, or which from the day it was carved or split at the nib dropped from its point kindness and encouragement and help and gratitude to God, and benediction for man.

May God comfort that torn-up Southern home, and all the homes of this country, and of all the world which have been swept by this plague of influenza, which has deepened sometimes into pneumonia and sometimes into typhus, and the victims of which are counted by the ten thousand! Satan, who is the ’93Prince of the power of the air,’94 has been poisoning the atmosphere of all nations. Though it is the first time in our remembrance, he has done the same thing before. In 1696 the unwholesome air of Cairo, Egypt, destroyed the lives of ten thousand in one day; and in Constantinople, in 1714, three hundred thousand people died of it. I am glad that by the better sanitation of our cities and wider understanding of hygienic laws and the greater skill of physicians, these Apollyonic assaults upon the human race are being resisted; but pestilential atmosphere is still abroad. Hardly a family here but has felt its lighter or heavier touch. Some of the best of my flock have fallen under its power, and many of our homes have been crushed.

The fact is, the biggest failure in the universe is this world, if there be no heaven beyond. But there is, and the friends who have gone there are many and very dear. Oh, tearful eyes, look up to the hills, crimsoning with eternal morn! That reunion kiss will more than make up for the parting kiss, and the welcome will obliterate the good-by. ’93The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’92 Till then, O departed loved ones, promise us that you will remember us, as we promise to remember you; and some of you, gone up from the city by the sea, and others from under Southern skies, and others from the homes of the more rigorous North, and some from the cabins on great Western farms, we shall meet again when our pen has written its last word and our arm has done its last day’92s work and our lips have spoken the last adieu.

And now, thou great and magnificent soul of editor and orator, under brighter skies we shall meet again. From God thou camest, and to God thou hast returned. Not broken down, but ascended; not collapsed, but irradiated. Enthroned one! Coroneted one! Sceptered one! Emparadised one! Hail and farewell!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage