The Newspaper

The steam enjrinc does no day's work so niarvelous in its whole resultas that whioh is done by the steaui printing preas; the wire flashes no such weight of interest, tin railroad carries no such freight as the lait edition, while the artist has no Buch opening as this that transfers work at once to the block and then sends the picture flying into the hearts and brains of a million men. As the newspaper makes tributary to its purpose the fi nest results of art and science and discovery, so it captures some of the choicest powers in our current thought and life. Dr. Chahuers said, many years ago, that the best writing, and a good deal of the best thinking, of his day was done fiw the newspapers. It is not too uiucu to say that the newspaper articles are as rjuueh better now than they were then as the papers are better than those on which Chaltuers based his wonder. Not content witli the best thoughts, the newspaper secures the choicest enterprise. Do the hidden fore.-t break out in an earthquake ? A man spring, up with his note-book and pencil, while the land is rocking under his feet, and begios to write and flash his words over the first wire he can lay his hands on. Is the fire burning up the city? ïhere he is among the flames, scratching at his paper, THE COOI.EST MAN YOU SHALL FIND. Is the war far afield ? The newspapors wil] give you news of the battle far ahead of anything the government can get who are most deeply involvcd, and vastly more true, as a rule. Nothing escapes this ever-present and all-present eye. It mirrors the great markets in one page and tells you of an oyster supper in the basement of a church, and reporta impartially a murder or a sermón. Does the old lion roar over there in Europe, or the bear growl, or the eagle scream ? You hear theni all through this wonderful tclepUone uf tlm uewspaper. It brings to you the froth and foam of the chalice of our Hfe, and reports the vast and awful niovements whieh belong to all the centuries and are feit all around the world. So it is no great wonder that the Dewspaper should be about the most potent power we know of among visible things, or that fairminded men should be glad for the power and proud of it wherever it is held sacred to truth and virture in a wise and true sense. I would ventue, to say that we of all men should be glad of this power for good, because among newspapcrs of the first rank there are very few indeed that are not cenducted in a broad and liberal spirit whenever they touch the great questions which belong especially to the pulpit Indeed, I saw a paragraph not very long ago which professed to give the bias or the belonging of the most eminent editors in this country, and t was somethingof a wonder to find what numbers of them there were what we should cali liberal, until I remembered how hard it must be tofind a man of any othermind whooan conduct a great paper, orconductiog one, would not_ catch this spirit through the work. It is true of the great papers wuen they teach religión at all it is in a wide way ; they no 'u:uter t.i religión bigotry or bitter and narrow dogmas. For all these reasons and others the newspaper bas coaie to be beyond all doubt more popular and more widely read in thia country than the Bible, while no man has to make such a confession about it as quaint Maner Kuiler made about the leeson for the day : ' ' Forgiye me in this, that wtaen I set myself this morning to read Thy blessed word, I first turned the leaf to see if it was a long ohapter." You never turn the page of your paper in this spirit to see if it is a long ohapter, or find your long lost glasses in the t'oldcd sheets, while most men, 1 doubt not, are stirred by what they read there as they are seldom stirred by the great old book. And the reason for this is that the newspaper comes right home, and bears the thought and Hfe of the world about us, caught on the wing and transferred to the pages throbbing with Iotí and hate, with terror and joy, with life and death. If this were the whole sum and substance of the newspaper we would want NO BKTTER VIS1TOR IN OUR HOUHES, Or supporters of our schools and ohnnhes; no moie impregnable citadel tod ally of a free goverument, and no finer helper to our whole human lile than the daily and weck, ly pres. But the truth is, aswcallknowthat there is a divine, a human and an infernal element in the newspapers, as there is in all things that have come and do come out of the heart and life of man. The newspaper is glorious and good at its liighest and best, meaner as you search downward, and when you get clear down to the bmrt line, a.M mean as dirt. It is the old jreaiu over again in this respect also, that these elements stand for tioniethtnu outside the image itself. Fowerful and wonJert'ul as this ereation is of our new day, it is the image of the people who are looking t it in hope or fear, or aduiiration orhate. [t is, like the church, the drama, the conïress, the senate, and the administration, n outcome first, and then an income. At its worst it is like the stagnant pools and narshes that turn to sltme in the sun and !)reed pestilence and malaria, proof of the linship to evil some people tolérate about them or créate out of the slush and slinie of their own natures. That the American presa should distance'the world in enterprise is as natural as it is that we should do a hundred things besides that spring from our wide and free life. That it should be generally keen, bright, trenchant, quick, aud huuiorous in spots is also natural, because these are the oualities that lie within our free life also. Ihat the leading articles in our papers should contrive to pack all the sense into half the space of the leader iu a paper like the London Times is ulsn natural, because we live a hasty, fiery and impatient life, as different as possibis from the slow and sure processes of the life in England. That we should have buudreds of personal and impersonal items about everything of any interest, and every man and woman who happens to strike the public eye, is also natural, because there is no such curious and inquiitive race on the plmet as this of ours. We lie in wait no longer for the stranger to find out all about him, but we have created the interviewer, and he keeps us quiet in the full assurance that he can do a great deal better than we eau, and we shall get the whole truth in the next iásue of our paper, and, it may be, a touch of imagination to boot. It ia natural, also, that every horrible catastrqphe should be opened out to the minutest incident in 80ine of our papers, with deep head linos, secret and circumstance, not so much that ihe ends ofjustioa may be eerved, but that the dish of highest seaHoning may sell the most papers. It is natural, also, I Mippo.se, that below uil these linos there should Ie papers that minimier to the vilett passions of our common nature, to the devil within rather than the angel or man, because there are multitudes in whom the devil is master. One paper I have heard spoken of as "The Weekly Judgment Day." We have others that do not have to wait a week. They set the great white throne up every inorning against these festering evils that afflict our life. 1 say not one word, then, against a frank and fair discussion of any i{Ucstion, but what I do loathe and condemn is not the freedom but the license whioh will bear the breast of its own mother, it the public will pay to see a cáncer. And now what hope is there that this great power for good and evil will grow better andnotworse; that the gold and silver of it will gradually (rain on the brass, theiron and the mud ? There is hopo that the best of our journalisls are all the time growing better and winning their way into larger areas of power and the noblest use. I count it a signal altogether for good that the vast majority of our great papers are perfectly free, and, as I believe, perfectly honest. THEV STAND CLEAR OF ALL TAINT, And trust thetuselves utterly to the hqnest instiucts of' the clean AmericaD citizeD. Journals like (hese are the true leaders of the people. It is our business to sec that nothing shall enter our home in tbe shape of a tvswspaper that defi'.eth or maketli a lie. I believo that a great and good newspaper is as sacred in its own way as the Bible. It has souiething in it of the very pntrat word of God to man, and the very present word of man to God. A good paper is as trun a tiiinistrant to the soul'slife as good bread is to the life ot'the body, and it bas beconie about as indispensable. I feel now and thenas if I would like to read a great leader froui my paper in the pulpit as a sort of second lesson. The old Scotch minister used to say : " I read my paper to see what the Lord is doing on the earth. " I advocate no exclusive devotion to one book. The Bible is the divine book to me of all the world and all time, and there are other books that are also divine in their own measure, and then a good newspaper makes up the sum, and in its own way is divine also. I know of no position so tull of difficulty as this of the conductor of a great journal. His congregation is counted by tens of thousand.% and every man of them wants the paper run his way, frets and fumes if it is not so, and writes a scolding letter, or gives up his paper. This s all wmne, and a perpetual threat to one of the ünest treaaures we possess - the freedom of the press. Now, we love free speech, and say, with good John James Taylor: "I love the trutb, even when t goes against myself." It must be the first condition of the editorship of a great newspaper that the editor shall na farther and wider than we do, as it is the first condition of a minister that he shall see deeper and higher, and so it is the sign of a sad limitation in hearers and readers that they should want to narrow all down to their line of visión. Of all places in the world to beguarded from a narrow, bigoted and sectarian spirit I put the editor's sanctum next alter thechureb.