SERMON BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE,
THE great Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N.Y., was crowded to-day, February 23, as it never had been before. Prominent in the congregation were most of the gentlemen who had attended the banquet of the Southern Society. Their presence was due to the intimation that Dr. Talmage was going to preach on the life and character of the Constitution’s late editor, Mr. Henry W. Grady. Dr. Talmage was at his best, in splendid voice, and his rounded periods made a deep impression upon all present. Taking for his text Isaiah viii., 1, “Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen,” the preacher said:
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, not an angel’s pen, but a man’s pen. So God honored the pen and so he honored the manuscript. In our day the mightiest roll is the religious and secular newspaper, and the mightiest pen is the editor’s pen, whether for good or evil. And God says now to every literary man, and especially to every journalist: “Take thee a great roll and write in it with a man’s pen.”