351. Religious Journalism

Religious Journalism

Zec_5:1 : ’93Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold, a flying roll.’94

In a dream the prophet saw something rolled 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 seventeen thousand newspapers. The religious newspaper of which I am editor was born nineteen years ago, but born again seven years ago. In this brief time it has grown to about two hundred thousand circulation (A.D. 1897) and, by the usual rule of calculating the readers of a paper, it has about one million 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 no 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 the 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 take 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 all 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 great host. 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 feel that a great misfortune had happened me if The Christian Intelligencer, of the Reformed church (my mother church), did not come to my house every week, for I was brought up 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 with heart full of sacred memories, addresses the living of today. In the most sacred crypt of our memory stands the statues of the religious editors, Abel Stevens and Joshua Leavitt, and the royal family of the Prime’97Iren’e6us and Eusebius’97while others linger on the bank of the Jordan, where they will not have long to wait for Elijah’92s chariot; and when they go up, if we still be sitting at our editorial desks, we will cry out in the memorable words: ’93My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!’94

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. In the issuing of the religious journal whose anniversary I preach, that difficulty has been met and overcome by the fact that its publisher is a Methodist and in its editorial rooms there are a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, and a Congregationalist, and a line of denominational prejudice in editorial or reportorial column would run against immediate protest. Against John Wesley’92s free grace or Calvin’92s eternal decrees or Bishop McIlvaine’92s canonicals, or Dr. Bowling’92s baptistery, from year’92s end to year’92s end not a word is written or printed. On all these subjects we have convictions, but undenominational journalism is not the place to state them. He who tells all he knows and expresses all he thinks on all occasions and in all places, without reference to the proprieties, is a boor or a crank, and of no practical service, either to Church or State.

Undenominational journalism is absolutely necessary to demonstrate the unity of the Christian world. Wide and desperate attempts are made to show that the religion of Jesus Christ is only a battleground of sects; and the cry has been, ’93If 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 all eternity some were predestinated to be saved, and that from all eternity others were doomed.’94 Now, it is the business of Young Men’92s Christian Associations, and Tract Societies, and Sunday School Unions, and pronounced undenominational journals, to show the falsity of the charge that we are fighting amongst 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 martyrizing them by arraignment, we do better to wait for the natural roll of years to remove them. Men die, but the truth lives on. We may not all agree as to the number of teeth in the jawbone with which 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 essentials of religion we all agree. If we could call into one great convention the six hundred and forty-five thousand five hundred and sixty-six Episcopalians, the one million four hundred and twenty thousand nine hundred and five Lutherans, the one million four hundred and sixty thousand three hundred and forty-six Presbyterians, the four million one hundred and fifty-three thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven Baptists, the five million six hundred and fifty-three thousand two hundred and eighty-nine Methodists, putting unto them the following questions, we would get unanimous answer in the affirmative: Do you believe in a God, good, 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. No authority, political or ecclesiastic, must be permitted to make us believe this or that. Liberty of the Armenian to worship God independent of the Turkish government. Liberty of Cuba as against Spanish domination. Liberty of Hawaii as against all monarchical authority which it has thrown off. Civil liberty. Political liberty. Religious liberty. The religious journal on whose seventh anniversary I preach has had for its owner and publisher one who, in his ancestry, experienced just the opposite. His father, an exile from his native land because of his opinions, his property confiscated, his life imperiled, landed on American soil bereft of everything that foreign oppression could rob him of. Naturally, his son knows right well how to appreciate liberty. The most of us are descended from those who imperiled all to gain their natural and religious rights. Let the type and the printing-presses and the editorial chairs be overthrown which dare to surrender to any attempt again to put on the shackles. The movement has started for the demolition of all the tyrannies of Church and State. Religious newspapers must stand shoulder to shoulder in this mighty march for God and the world’92s rescue.

Again, on this anniversary, I say there is room for a religious paper charged with old-fashioned evangelism. Other styles of religious newspaper 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 farther 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!

Again, on this anniversary of The Christian Herald, I notice there is room for a religious paper thoroughly humanitarian. The simple fact is, the majority of the human race have not enough to eat or wear. The majority of the human race are in trouble. How to multiply loaves of bread and increase the fuel and heal the wounds and shelter the homeless, are questions that Christ met with the same promptness as he did spiritual necessities. The first heart to respond to the cry of sufferers from draught or flood or earthquake or cruelty should be the Christian heart. Therefore, let the pages of religious journalism spread out the story of all such woes, and collect relief, and disburse alms all around our suffering world. Religious journalism ought to become the aqueduct through which the Christian charities of the world should pour until there is no more hunger to be fed, and no more ignorance to be educated, and no more nakedness to be clothed, and no more suffering to assuage. In trying to do that practical thing, the religious paper whose anniversary I celebrate has, during the past seven years, raised and distributed over one million dollars for the relief of physical distresses.

Again, on this 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, and its 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 ’93blossom like as the rose.’94 I cannot in a menagerie look upon a lion and a leopard but I am reminded that ’93a little child shall lead them.’94 I cannot see a collection of gems in a jeweler’92s 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. If in one column there be a ghastly woodcut of the famine-stricken in India, in the next column have a list of contributions for alleviation of the suffering, or a picture of a ship carrying breadstuffs. If in one column there be the death of an old minister of the Gospel whom we cannot spare, in the next put the name of some young Elisha who can wear the mantle of Elijah. If some evil of society is depicted in one column, in the next show the Gospel machinery that is to drive it back into the perdition from which it ascended. More and more sunshine let there be in religious journalism. Publish in it more sermons on texts like ’93Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good,’94 and fewer on texts like, ’93Out of the depths of hell have I cried unto thee, O Lord.’94 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 pigeon-hole of his own desk for his heirs and assigns to read it further on, for probably they can stand it better than we. I once gave seven dollars to hear Jenny Lind sing; I never will give a cent to hear a man groan. Up with the blinds and throw back the shutters, and let the morning light come in! There is not so much religion in the dampness of a cellar as in the breath of an apple-orchard in blossom week. What a victory the Psalmist got over himself when he closed the Psalms with six chapters of ’93Praise ye the Lord,’94 saying it over and over again, until in any other book, it would have become monotonous. If in our diaries, and our family records, and our religious newspapers we would write two honest catalogues, the one a catalogue of blessings, and the other a catalogue of troubles, the former would be five times larger than the latter.

Pray for the religious newspapers of America, because of the fact that, if they have the right spirit, each one does as much good as five or fifty or two hundred churches. What are the five hundred or five thousand people making up a Sabbath audience compared with the ten thousand or fifty thousand or two hundred thousand 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 temptation to become acerb, harsh, and damnatory of those who think differently from themselves. In all denominations there are disappointed people who put mean things in religious newspapers about ministers and other prominent Christian workers. Unsuccessful men and women never like successful men and women. There are editors and reporters who, instead of writing with ink, dip their pens in oil of vitriol or lampblack. When a religious newspaper does lie it beats all secular journalism in contemptibility. As Adam Clarke, the commentator, said: ’93Some people serve the Lord as though the devil were in them.’94 That only is a helpful newspaper which, as we fold it up after reading, leaves us in a mood to pray for all men, and in a spirit that wishes prosperity for all Christian workers, whether they work our way or some other way; and we feel as though the angel, flying through the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach, had with the flapping of his wing stirred the air on our cheek and forehead.

Pray also for religious journalism, that it may be alert’97not abreast of the times, but ahead of the times. In this day, when by cablegram we seem to get from Europe news five hours before it starts, we do not want in our religious columns information scissored out of an old newspaper, or information sent by means of a letter which comes to us through the dead-letter post office because it was misdirected. Nor do we want it to take the pace of religious journalism as it was in 1815, when Nathaniel Wilson started his religious paper called The Recorder, or when The Watchman was born in 1819, or when The Christian Register made its first appearance in 1821. The canal-boat drawn by mules on a towpath did well in its time, but now we prefer the vestibuled limited express. Because a thing is pious it need not therefore be dull. The printing-press may beat the Argus of mythology, for that fabulous being had only a hundred eyes, while the newspaper has a thousand eyes, and a thousand ears, and a thousand arms. 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 Christainized 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 supported by posts, and many men would lay hold of the stout 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 us 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, having pulled it back for one mighty assault, we may altogether rush it forward, crushing into everlasting ruin the last wall of opposition and the last fortress of iniquity.

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’92 column’97for every type we set, for every press we move, and for the style of secular or religious newspaper we patronize or encourage. In Ezekiel’92s prophecy the Angel of God, supposed to be Christ, appears with an inkhorn hung at his side, as an attorney’92s clerk in olden time had an inkhorn at his side. And I have no doubt 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.

Piled up in all the world’92s printing offices, secular and religious, are the publications of past years, bound up year by year; and in those offices they can tell just what they printed any day for the last twenty years; and in the great Day of Judgment all that we have ever written or printed will be revealed from the mighty volumes of eternity. All those who have ruthlessly pried into the secret of unhappy domestic life and despoiled homes, come to judgment! All those who have by the pen assassinated character, come to judgment! All those who have had anything to do with salacious and depraved literature, come to judgment! All those who have produced pictures administrative of vice, come to judgment! No one will then dare say: ’93I knew it was not true, and I only intended it for a joke;’94 or, ’93I had to make my living, and the paper that I worked for paid me in proportion to the startling nature of the stuff I prepared;’94 or, ’93I corrected the falsehood in the next issue;’94 or, ’93I felt my power in the editorial chair, having opportunity to address such multitudes week by week, and I wanted to keep the Church and the world in awe of me.’94 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 ’93composing room,’94 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 what a beautiful day for a Frances Havergal, when she gets rewarded for all the kind things she ever wrote with the tears of her invalidism; or when the authors and authoresses of all lands and ages are told how many came to heaven through their instrumentalities; and for all those who use the influence of the press to correct the errors, and extirpate the wrongs, and break the serfdom of mankind! Then 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. Better in that day will it be to have set up the type for one line of Christian encouragement, or written one paragraph of useful sentiment, or published one page of helpful truth, than to have written books as big as Gibbon’92s five large volumes, concerning The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, if these volumes put Christianity at a disadvantage; or as brilliant as Voltaire’92s Discourses upon Man, if they inculcated injurious theories; or as rhythmic as Byron’92s Don Juan, if it sacrificed the decencies. On that day, the flying roll which Zechariah of the text saw thousands of years ago, and the rolls which we see flying over all our towns and cities, and flying from the swiftest printing-presses that were ever invented, will be found to contain messages divine or satanic. Not only the inkhorn which Ezekiel saw, but all the inkhorns will come to judgment. ’93And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage