SPEECHES AT A DINNER GIVEN TO THE RELIGIOUS PRESS
Toast.—"The Religious Press and Literature."
First, what are sound views of literature; second, what is a religious paper? The speaker used two illustrations bound in one. A great book is the Nilometer which measures intellectual life as the original Nilometer measured the life and fertility of the land of Egypt. A description of the rise of the Nile and of the Divine Comedy of Dante, as such a measurer of the life of the Middle Ages, made up the speech.
Toast.—"Religious Press and Questions of the Day."
Eternity begins here. The paper must show on which side of any question the right lies. It should go even further than this. It should cover a wider range of topics and aim to secure the attention of the general public to the questions it discusses and so entitle it to circulate more widely.
Toast.—"Should Religious Papers Make Money?"
If I may make the paying papers, anybody may make the others. Money losing—soon comes, hic jacet. Money making proves usefulness and renders the issue of a paper possible. Letter from the oldest editor of New York in which he says the editor is under life sentence to hard labor.
Toast.—"The Religious Paper and Scholarship."
He laments that he has no letter from an editor to read (like the last speaker), and tells a story of a Methodist, on request, praying for rain; and when a terrible storm came, the man who asked, was heard to murmur: "How these Methodists do exaggerate." This was to show the excellence of the dinner. Two other stories were used by the speaker, about the length and discursiveness of his talk. The people need and will read deep, accurate, and scholarly productions. There ought to be a general paper for such. Something has been done in that direction by two religious papers.
The speaker treated his topic by giving a semi-humorous review of the preceding speeches. He showed how denominational traits affected each item in the work of the paper. He did not make just the kind of a paper he liked best, for some people were of the same taste as Artemus Ward, who always ordered hash at a restaurant, because he then knew what he was getting! The speaker also referred ironically to the mistaken idea that church papers could not pay, and gave striking instances to the contrary. He concluded that denominational papers may be as successful in their line as those purely undenominational and independent.