Smyrna times., 1876-10-25
mise eIIUR3 e Gus.
Pulpit or Newspaper

feeling used to prevail among good
people, in New England at least, that re-
ligious Young man who received a college
education was under kind of presumptive
obligation to enter the ministry. In those
days the pulpit was net unreasonably held
to be the especial place of power, and the
best van.age-g ground for a moral leader of
men. TO some extent the old tradition
fingers, but the facts have greatly changed.
Take the community at large, it is not too
much to say that the center of power has
shifted from the pulpit to the newspaper.
The great mechanical inventions of modern
times have each in turn widened the scope
of the newspaper. 1t was the printing
press that made it possible. The steam
engine, the railroad, the telegraph, have
multiplied its power both to collect news
and to reach the public. The pulpit has
gained nothing from such helps; the
preacher has no greater facilities for gath
ering an audience to-day than he had five
hundred years ago, and his relative superb
ority to his hearers is less than it was then.
Nor is it probable that the limit of the
newspapers growth through mechanical
improvements has by any means been
reached.
The newspaper, too, addresses itself to
all sides of human nature. 1t may look at
first like a superiority in the minister's po-
sition that he deals wholly with moral
themes. In one way it is a superiority, but
in another it is limitation and weakness.
The great defect in the work of the Chris
tian ministery, the great drawback to its
usefulness, is the narrow view which minis
tiers are trained to take of human nature.
The Lord made man as many-sided as the
universe. He gave him the capacity for
mirth, for social pleasure, for enjoyment Of
beauty, for a ahundred forms of mental activ-
ity; He gave him body with capacities
for exquisite ministrations to the spiritual
nature, as well as possibilities of dragging it
down He set man encompassed with ten
thousand influences of Nature, of his Eel
low-man, of the all-brooding Deity himself,
and with that quality in him which should
respond to each. But the characteristic at
titude of the church has been that in this
wondrous organism of man only one or
two elements are really of vital account.
Men must be saved from going to hell when
they die; they must go through process
Of conversion; they must be held to certain
beliefs and certain exercises of Worship
and that covers the whole. And the
preaching based oR this view of life has
been such that nine-tenths of the things
people really care about and live for are
scarcely ever touched at all by the words
they hear from the ministers on Sunday.
We believe that reform is to come about in
this respect. But our present considera-
ton is of things as they are.
The newspaper makes it its business to
find out what people are interested in and
to give them just that. SO the newspaper,
in its best and typical examples, is marvel
ously broad in its range. It deals with poll
tics, commerce, social affairs, the news Of
the whole world it gives facts and opinions
and fun; it gives religious news as well as
secular; the last vote in Congress, the last
great oration, Bismarck's latest move
against the Pope, Moody's meetings, th'
weather probabilities, the new books, th'
crimes, the accidents, the jokes-every
thing that people want to hear about ii
there. And the consequence is, the whole
American people reaches for its newspaper
in the morning with an eagerness such as
it is to be feared, only q very few OF thu
saints feel toward their church privileges.
That man knows little Of human natur'
who does not see that tremendous infiu
snce upon life and conduct and characte
is welded by this great talksr to whom
everybody listens. sAnd, further, tits no
news alone for which people go to thei
newspapers; it is opinions and convictions
Very few people have energy enough 4
make mp their own minds on many subject
outside Of their personal affairs. Most mel
are glad to take their opinions rsady-mad
from the editor of their fayorite paper; o
oftner they do take them from him with
out knowing il. Ask each Of the men VIII
come of morning train into New-Y
what is his opinion ON the principal even
of the day before, and if you know before
hand what is in the papers, you can gene
ally tell by his answer whether he take
the 7riIsne, World or Herald. And th
same authority has an influence which pr'
oably the man himself does nor suspect
decidiag not only what ticket be votes, bu
-
what books he buys, what lectures
plays he attends, what opinion he holds
public men; In shaping much Of the gene