Our Press Cut | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 12, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 49.

Our Press Cut.

The attention of our readers is called to the cut of an old printing press on page 6. It does not represent a beautiful machine. Truth is not always beautiful to the eye of flesh. Of personified Truth it was said, “And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa. 53:2), and yet he was the manifestation of God’s power and love to the world. So this old printing press is not beautiful, but, in the providence of Him that guides the affairs of nations, it had a part to do in proclaiming liberty to man.

This press is now owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. A description of it runs as follows:—

“It is a venerable specimen of what was known as the common printing press before the Columbian and Stanhope iron presses were invented, and therefore belongs to a more remote era than the Ramage presses, with which many old printers are still familiar. It is wholly of wood, except in those parts where the use of iron was necessary to prevent rapid wear or impart strength, such as the bar, the hooks on the platen, and the iron and steel ribs over which the bed and the coffin pass to and fro in the process of working off impressions. In this ancient press a vacant aperture, large enough to receive the stone or other substance intended for the bed, is formed by a surrounding wooden structure, and this was formerly known as the coffin. The stone used as the bed also accompanies the press. It is about as large as the page of a seven-column newspaper. It varies but slightly, if at all, from the common press described by Moxon, 1683, and used by the first printers of Philadelphia, Bradford, Keimer, and Franklin, as well as by their English contemporaries of the early portion of the eighteenth century. The wooden framework, and part of the covering of two balls, used as an inking apparatus, accompanied the press.”

But one interesting thing connected with this particular press is that upon it was printed the Declaration of Independence, not only in English, but in five other languages in which it was translated by Elder Peter Miller. It was also used to print continental money during the time when the Continental Congress sat at Lancaster, Pa. Besides this important work named above, the “Ephrata” press has to its credit a list of different works, aggregating upwards of seven thousand pages. Not all the works in the list are paged. The exact number of those that are amounts to 6,202, and they were honest pages in those days, no blanks were counted. Doubtless it printed many more. In 1876 the old press was again brought forth, and the Declaration of Independence was again printed on it, a copy of which lies before us as we write.

Another interesting thing in connection with this press is that it is a clean press. It has stood for the true in religious as well as civil matters. One writer says of it: “Like one of the old prophets, it has neither bowed the knee to Baal nor to Mammon.” It is a Sabbath-keeping press. During the time of its useful career it was owned by the Seventh-day Baptists. On account of religious persecution many Seventh-day Baptists fled to America about the year 1719, and settled at Germantown, on the Wissahikon, Pa., and on the Cocalico Creek, in Lancaster County. The branch at the latter place was led by a man of classical education, Conrad Beisel. The Rev. Peter Miller, educated at Heidelberg University, Germany, afterward became ruling elder. By him this press was procured. Its last owner was Mr. P. Martin Heitler, of Ephrata (whence the name, Ephrata press), who bequeathed it to the Historical Society. Says Mr. J. E. Pfantz, writing from Ephrata under date of Nov. 9, 1872:—

“The Seventh-day Baptists bought the press about the year 1745. It was the second printing press used in Pennsylvania. The said society printed on this press 1,300 of the large German ‘Book of Martyrs’ [1,514 pages]; also, immediately after the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence was printed on this press, which Declaration was translated into five different languages by Peter Miller, a Seventh-day Baptist clergyman.”

A fact worthy of notice in this connection is that the Sabbath truth has always been connected with principles of religious liberty, or vice versa. Not that the adherents of the Sabbath have always enjoyed liberty; for they have often, in nearly every age, been persecuted; but the man who espouses the Sabbath truth as it is in Christ Jesus, also espouses the principles of religious liberty; for they are both of One. It is so now; around the Sabbath banner are ranging the lovers of liberty, not for themselves alone, but for all the race.