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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.”