27 How Our Lord and His Disciples Would Read Their Newspapers
XXVII HOW OUR LORD AND HIS DISCIPLES WOULD READ THEIR NEWSPAPERS
Very much what the Times is in the British Empire of our day, that the Acta Diurna was in the Roman Empire in our Lord’s day. The Acta Diurna contained the news of the city of Rome, and the news of the whole empire, very much as the great newspapers of London contain the news of that great city, and the news of the whole world. The Acta Diurna, true to its name, contained the whole news of every day; the births and the marriages and the deaths of every day; the floods and the fires; the weather and the crops; the accidents and the offenses; the public groups and the private sales; the games and the shows; the athletes and the gladiators; the latest news from the seaports, and the latest dispatches from the armies, so far as they were fit for the public. The publishers of the Acta Diurna had no printing-press to facilitate their task, but in room of it they had a well-trained staff of ready writers who so multiplied the sheets of news that the reading people of Rome had their .Acta on their breakfast tables, very much as we have our morning papers. And just as all her splendid roads brought up to Rome every day all kinds of correspondence from all corners of her mighty empire; so, down from Rome great bands of postmen rode and ran carrying the commands of the Emperor, and the decrees of the Senate, and the invoices and accounts of the merchants, and the notes of the bankers, and the newspapers of the city, east, west, north, and south, wherever there was a Roman officer or a Roman colonist or a Roman citizen who wished to keep himself in touch with the great metropolis. And just as occasional copies of the Times and the Scotsman will find their way to the remotest cottages and workshops of our land, so would occasional copies of the Acta Diurna be found in the cottages of far-off Galilee, and in the very workshops of Nazareth itself. And much more would the sacred news of Jerusalem be carried continually, both by tongue and by pen, into Joseph’s carpentry, as afterwards into all those hospitable houses where our Lord and His disciples sat down to sup and to talk together. Such things as these would be continually told and intensely listened to wherever our Lord and His disciples sat down to meat and to conversation. The difficulties and the dangers that were continually arising between the Roman residents and the Temple authorities. As thus: --"There were present at that season some that told Him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." Some others also brought to Him the sad account of those "eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew them." And Luke, always like himself, has been careful to preserve for our learning the verbatim observations that our Lord made when He was told the distressing news. Such things also as the scandalous affair of the golden shields, and the tremendous outburst of horror and rage that desecrating act awakened in Jerusalem. And again, such messages as that of Martha and Mary concerning the sickness of their brother Lazarus, and how He received that message, and what He said and what steps He took concerning it. The truth is, if we have at all learned to keep our eyes open when we are reading the life of our Lord among men, we can see for ourselves quite well just how He read and received both His letters and His newspapers, as also what lessons His disciples were continually learning from Him as to the way in which they should read and receive their letters and their newspapers also. To watch and see what were the things that most interested Him, and what were the things that did not interest Him at all; what were the things that rejoiced Him, and what were the things that distressed Him; what things He would have His disciples read over again and again to Him, and what things He dismissed as soon as He had tasted what spirit they were of; what things He loved to recall and dwell upon, and what things He discountenanced and suppressed all conversation about; to read such things as these between the lines of the evangelists is a great example and a great lesson and a great law laid down to us. The sharp judgments also He would pass on one occasion, as also the lenient judgments and the warm approval He would pass on another occasion on public men, both in His own country and in other countries; in all this also there are immense lessons for those whose chief interest in public affairs at home and abroad lies in as close an imitation as possible of their Master in heaven. Says an old divine in old London at a time when London had as few newspapers as old Rome--"A sanctified heart will distil holy, and sweet, and useful meditations, out of all he sees and hears. So did our Savior in the days of His flesh. All speeches of other men He heard; all accidents and all occurrences that happened to Him, did still occasion and raise in Him the most heavenly meditations and observations." The seraphic Jonathan Edwards was as like his Master in all these things as any disciple of His I know. For Edwards always and only read his "newsletter" in order to see how and where the kingdom of heaven was advancing on the earth. He recognized in statesmen, and in warriors, and in kings, and in peoples, not political transactions so much as "tokens and instruments of heaven and hell." And thus it was that he remained calm, and collected, and prepared, and resolved, and serene, amid all this tempest-tossed, and unhappy world. And in their own measure all those men attain to Edwards’s Christ-like mind, who ask themselves as they read their newsletters, how Christ would have read and felt and spoken over this piece of news and that; over this page of this day’s paper and that. When any alarming news is brought to me," said Epictetus to his disciples, "I instantly fall back on this reflection, that the only real suffering that can fall on me can only fall on me from my own evil. Can any worse news come to me than what I already know about myself? Impossible Or, has any one dear to me died? Well, then, all their times, and all my times too are in the hand of God. Has somebody written ill of me in the papers? If they have done so, that is their matter far more than mine. No man’s pen can really injure me but my own. Has my father become my enemy, and am I told that he has made his last will and testament to my disadvantage? My true advantage and my true disadvantage is not even in my father’s hand. God is my true Father, and His will is my everlasting enrichment. Have the jury and the judge pronounced against me? So they did in the case of Socrates, a far better, and a far more innocent man than I am. Their verdict and their sentence is their own affair. All that concerns me in the matter is that I make my defense as Socrates made his defense, with the love of truth, with submission to the will of God, with meekness and mildness, and withal with firmness toward my persecutors and my enemies. A bad tempered and an untrue defense is my only danger, while a bad sentence is their condemnation. These are some of my morning meditations over my paper," said Epictetus, "and I advise you all to imitate me in that."
Now, in doing my best to bring all that home to you and to myself, I am concerned to address the readers rather than the writers of our newspapers. I am not speaking to newspaper men; either proprietors, or editors, or reporters, or reviewers. If I did presume to instruct those men in the proper way to perform their duties they would soon turn on me and would tell me to mind my own business. And so I shall. They are not my business; whereas you are. It is not for the way they write, but for the way you read, that I shall be asked to give an account to Christ. Their writing will be their own account on that day when your reading will be your account, and when my preaching on this subject to-night will be part of my account. May we all three find each our own mercy on that awful day!
Now to what part of the paper do you turn first when you lift it up and open it? It is perhaps because I am no longer young; but, for my part, I always turn first to the deaths in the paper. "Forefancy your deathbed," said Samuel Rutherford to an old correspondent of his. "The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight," said Seneca to his young correspondent Lucilius; and Dante as you see has put it in an immortal line for all Christendom. My imaginative insertion of my own name among the dead men of every morning sends me to the rest of the paper a man of an altogether other mind than I used to be before I began to number my days, and to read in that way my own removal from among men. There are all kinds of ways in which men read the deaths in their papers. One reads as I have told you. Another reads, and before he has had patience to finish the paper, he feels compelled to take pen and ink and to write to that new-made widow to tell her to have the undertaker’s bill sent to him, and to assure her orphan son that he will be seen through college till he takes his degree. Another, or rather the same reader, explains these glorious words to his children at family worship, the paper lying open beside the Bible--"The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into glory." Another, when he glances at the births repeats this :--"Suffer the little children to come unto Me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." And then--May they all be born again; for, if not, it were better for all concerned that they had never been born at all! And as he thinks of this and that mother so full of joy that a man is born into the world, he repeats this Scripture--Her children arise up and call her blessed. And yet another reader when he comes to the marriages sees and hears in that happy list so many ships launched with huzzas and with clapping of hands; some to go to the bottom before they are well out to sea, and some to come to harbor through the stormiest of oceans, with their marriage banners still flying, and with the weighty spoils of a long and a godly life. Take one moment over every marriage announcement, and say concerning the newly-married pair--May they be married in the Lord! May they both be married in their immortal souls to the Heavenly bridegroom! And then if one had both the time and the talent he could spend the whole day over the advertisements. For the religious life of the city is to be read there: the charities of the city, the educational opportunities of the city, the booksellers’ announcements, the amusements and the entertainment’s, and the various ways of killing time supplied to the city, the manufactures and the merchandise of the city also; and so on in all that explicit and displayed kind. And then the anonymous and pseudonymous advertisements. What needs and what wants are to be read there; what hopes, what fears, and what racking anxieties; what losses, and what gains; what broken hearts, and what joyful hearts; what illustrations of the Scripture that every heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy! You do not need to go to the theater to see tragedies if you have a newspaper at home, and have also eyes and a heart to read it. You will be purified by terror and by love and by sympathy over that closely-printed sheet that nobody ever reads but those who have eyes to read nothing else. Take time some holiday and read through the whole of an advertisement page, and then tell me how you feel toward your nameless fellow-citizens at the end of your day’s experience. And then the police courts. Imprisonment; imprisonment with hard labor; imprisonment for life; imprisonment in solitary and speechless confinement; death by hanging, and so on. Take time, and think of the poor wretches and pray for them by name every day. Imagine yourself in their place. And learn to say as you see them led away to prison and to death—There goes John Newton but for the grace of God! And then this also. If you are an author, or an orator, or a singer, or an artist of any kind; if you belong by your genius to any of those over-sensitive and thin-skinned classes of men and women, make your newspaper a divinely-intended means of your self-mastery and salvation. Every morning when you expect your name to appear in your paper, that morning is again your foreordained opportunity. Do not ask the paper to be sent up to your room with your early cup of tea that morning. And if it comes up send it away and say that you are now occupied with other things and that you will see it in the evening. Ask at breakfast if there is any news of importance in the paper. Ask if there is any better news from Macedonia, and if Russia and Japan are coming to amicable terms in the Far East. And if the paper has been used up in the kitchen before you have had time to see it, say, never mind; no matter; and be thankful for your escape. You were far too easily puffed up by what you read the other morning, and far too much prostrated by what you read or did not read another morning. And all the time as the old Parliamentary hand said to the young Irish member in the lobby of the House--"Cheer up; nobody is thinking about your breakdown but yourself!" Be like everybody but yourself. Think about nothingness but your speech till it is delivered, and then think no more about it at all. Think only about your next speech and how to make it a better speech than your last. If there is loud praise of your speech or of your song or of your book in the paper, and if you eagerly read the praise, it will be to you like dram-drinking to a drunkard. If you drink it down greedily you must have more immediately, and you must have it stronger and stronger each new time, till if you do not get it, you will be for days after an absolutely intolerable nuisance to all those who have to live near you. Your praise in the paper is your poison; or else if you will make it so, your cure. And every such morning you have your soul-sickness or your soul-health in your own hand. You can make yourself either a bending and a bruised reed, or a stonewall standing four-square against every wind that blows. And your newspaper will do it. It will make you either a feather before every wind, or a strong, enduring, noble-minded man. And then are you controversially inclined? Are you of a disputing and a contradicting temper? Do you diet your soul on party speeches and party newspapers? Are you one of those unhappy men who think everybody in the wrong but themselves? William Law began like you. He was as hot-blooded, and as possessed with his own opinions, and as full of hatred and scorn of other people, as you can possibly be. Till this was one of the ways he took to cure himself, and to save his soul. When the post blew his horn at the market cross, and when all other men rushed out to get their letters and papers before their neighbors; as soon as he heard the bugle-call he rose from his desk and retired into a corner of his study where with confession of sin, never did anything but prayed for grace. And he remained there till he felt able to read in his letters and papers whatever God planned or permitted to come into the hand and the heart of His servant to try him. Law was one of the most brilliant controversialists that ever took pen in hand. If you are a party man, and if you wish to do great services for your party, as also for the literature and the religion of your day, read your Law day and night. Another method of cure is to read the best speeches and papers of the opposite side. Read the best that can be said for your opponent’s view; especially if it is spoken and written with the style of love and with the elevation of truth. Do unto other men’s opinions in this respect as you would have them do to your opinions. And always remember Butler’s warning, that you differ from other men just as much as they differ from you. And as you more and more accompany William Law to the party-man’s place of redemption and deliverance, it will more and more be borne in upon you, that all those confusions and controversies and contradictions, that are so agitating men’s minds, and are so darkening and depraving men’s hearts, are, after all, but things seen and temporal, whereas your own soul, with all its holy and unholy passions, is unseen and eternal. Let nothing then any more be done by you through strife and vainglory. But in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Let His pattern mind be always, and in all things, found in you, and in nothing more than in the way you read your daily newspaper.