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uncandid, and so not trustworthy as a moral guide. Especially do our brighter young people share this feeling, those who go to college or push out into the world.

I have granted that, as a body, our ministers have had an original equipment adequate to their work. Had these men begun their ministry, say, in 1825, with a relatively good training, they might have worked for twenty-five years very successfully, without any special stimulus from without, because men's ideas of God's providence, of the Bible, and of the Christian life did not materially change from 1825 to 1850; Whereas the theological education given to our ministers even fifteen years ago, and the majority of them left the schools longer ago than that, unless it has been supplemented by somewhat diligent reading meantime, does not qualify them for spiritual guides of reading communities. And that hundreds and hundreds of them are simply drawing upon those old divinity school resources is painfully evident from the conditions already set forth.

What shall we? Arraign these men as recreants to their trust? In some instances, possibly; but as a rule, not so. For, unlike most other classes in New England, ministers do not have access to the professional books needed to keep them abreast of their duties. In some few centers of learning, and in the rare cases of ample salaries or independent reresources, this, of course, is not true. But when we recall that our public libraries, while catering to all other wants, do not buy theological books, - three to four per cent covers all the religious books in the average library, and not a tithe of these are suitable for professional helps to clergymen, and remember that less than a third part of our churches pay salaries of a thousand dollars, and many of the two thirds far less than that, we must have large charity for ministers who cease to read, and as a consequence fall behind in the race. For too often they simply cannot command books, even when they realize their need of them.

Because in this showing I made special reference to the matter of biblical criticism, do not think that I deem this the sole feature of the newer religious thought for our ministers to know. Far from it. There are larger conceptions of religion as a heritage of all mankind; there is knowledge of the ethnic religions, with their excellencies as well as their gross defects, which our ministers should grasp, that they may intelligently direct the missionary work of their churches. There are new methods of spiritual work, new lines of activity for Christian workers, adaptations of Christian principles to social and industrial problems, a score of directions in which the live pastor may be reaching out, and that without leaving his own legitimate sphere. For I am no apologist

for the minister who forgets that his distinctive functions are priestly and prophetic; and that there are to-day educators, journalists, sociologists, political economists, and other professional workers, trained for their spheres, who make it unnecessary for him to be such a factotum of learning as were his old-time predecessors.

And now what is this work to be done for our ministers? Nothing that schools or colleges can do. A little can be done and is being done by the seminaries, in the line of the work which Andover, for example, is attempting by gathering pastors for special instructions; but the men who can be reached by such work are few. Rather should our ministers outside the intellectual centers, the college and seminary bred men as truly as others, be furnished with professional books; such books, I mean, as they need to guide the thought of reading but not discriminating communities, whose half-knowledge is prejudicing them against eternal truths.

Every argument for public library work, free libraries, holds good for furnishing free to clergymen their needed books. That, some one says, would be a class charity, and there is already too much treating of ministers as semi-paupers. Of course I agree that ministers should be so paid as to make them independent of all discrimination in their favor; but as a matter of fact they are not so paid. As a class, they cannot command the tools of their trade equally with high-grade mechanics. And the public, so lavish with general libraries, and so penurious with clerical stipends, is actually discriminating against this most deserving body of public servants when it withholds from them a free and ample supply of their kind of books.

Existing professional libraries should be utilized, and these libraries, by more adequate support, should be enabled to do this work. Already it is being done in part. But the work should be put upon such a basis that not only the books may be made available to all clergymen at a nominal cost, but that bulletins may be regularly sent out, catalogues supplied, and other steps be taken which librarians understand. Only so can we supply the many ministers who actually hunger for books, rouse the topid who have forgotten their need of books, and generally enable our ministry to become masters intellectually of the present religious situation.

XIV. THE PRESS

HOW CAN THE PRESS EDUCATE THE PUBLIC RESPECTING THE PROGRESS AND MEANING OF THE

MISSIONARY MOVEMENT

MR. SILAS MCBEE

EDITOR THE CHURCHMAN, NEW YORK CITY

There would seem but one answer to this question: by printing missionary news. The primary work of the press is to inform the public, and a worthy cause can desire no better system of education than one founded on accurate information. The record of the life of a movement reveals at once its meaning and its progress. When, therefore, the press comes to print full and fair missionary news, it will become an enormous educational force for missions. This the press does not now do. The problem, therefore, is, not How can the press educate the public in this matter? but how can the press be induced to print missionary news? I do not lay the blame, certainly not the burden of blame, upon the press. A newspaper, like any other business, is largely controlled by the law of supply and demand. As the great majority of people know little, and therefore care little, about Christian missions, it would manifestly be unfair to expect the press to print missionary news beyond the demand for it, or to become a missionary for missions unless it did so from conviction.

But if the press is to be converted and is to become an instrument for Christian missions, or if a demand is to be created for missionary news which it will feel constrained to print, Christians themselves must accomplish this. There is a wide difference between political economy and Christian economy. In one the demand creates the supply, but in the other the supply creates the demand. A messenger of Christ does not wait until men demand the gospel, but he goes forth as a supply to create a demand for the gospel The economic principle is to get; the Christian principle is to give. Here is an essential difference, and it is the principle involved here that differentiates the religious and the secular press. The religious press, together with all other religious agencies, must furnish the supply which will in turn create a demand for information about religious life and work.

Passing by those instances in which the press willfully or ignorantly misrepresents Christian enterprise, the American press is especially

news

generous in printing news that has any vitality, regardless of the subject-matter of the news. I have heard a manager of press dispatches say that his company was willing to pay higher for "live religious " than for any other class of matter, because the demand for it was increasing with great rapidity, but that it was the hardest kind of news to get. I am disposed, therefore, to say that the blame―certainly the bulk of the blame-rests upon those who are responsible for missions, from the home to the farthest foreign field. If the religious press, with the aid of all these, cannot secure live news, if it cannot draw such news from the life of the Church, how can we expect the general press adequately to present the progress and meaning of missions? But in thus emphasizing the responsibility of the religious press, I do not minimize the responsibility of every Christian worker, official and lay. I only mean that the religious press ought to be able to make its demand for news so urgent that the news would be forthcoming. This the religious editor will never do until he is himself (and realizes that every member of the Church is) as much a missionary as those who are sent to the utmost bounds of the earth.

When once this conviction possesses and controls the policy of the religious editor, his opportunities and his advantages will multiply, and he will demand, not imaginative stories or pious dissertations that are worse than imaginings, but the actual facts of the Church's life as expressed in the lives of those who are endeavoring to extend the kingdom of their Lord and Master. In such a demand he has a right to expect the co-operation of all Christians. The press has justified its claim to be a power in the propagation of news, and the more good news, living, real, inspiring news, that can be given to the world through the press, the greater will become its power for the betterment of mankind.

It is unreasonable to expect a daily newspaper-I am glad to say that it is becoming impossible to require a religious newspaper-to print subjective and overpious interpretations of things, instead of the record of the things themselves. Let me illustrate. If a battle is fought, the story that is read the world round is the vivid picture of what took place. If a political victory is won, the same kind of story is printed and eagerly devoured from one end of the land to the other. In the same way the world wants to know, and to know in the most picturesque and vivid way, the victories of the Christian Church. It does not want the excursions into subjective personal experiences or the explanations of speculative causes that led up to certain results, with which we are overburdened in our missionary meetings, and which too often encumber, if they do not obliterate, the force of missionary appeals.

THE SUNDAY PRESS AS RELATED TO MORAL AND

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

REV. JOHN L. SEWALL

RANDOLPH, MASSACHUSETTS

The Sunday newspaper makes upon each of us a distinct impression. We are familiar with its look. We have at least a general idea of its contents. We are aware of certain attitudes of mind toward it, ranging from eager interest to strong aversion. I offer for your present thought a study of the Sunday press in its relation to moral and religious education. This calls for thorough and fair-minded inquiry concerning its motives, dimensions, and character, forming as it does a very living factor in the world of present-day thought.

It is easy to use strong language concerning some of our modern newspapers, the defects of whose week-day editions are accentuated in their Sunday issues. No one can deny the existence to-day of some "yellow," utterly unreliable journals, who thrive on scare-heads, and in dull times can always manufacture a sensation, if only to contradict it in a later issue. These papers certainly appear to be purely mercantile ventures, indiffernt to their influence if only they find purchasers with ready money. It seems almost absurd to discuss the relation of such sheets to moral and religious education. Such high themes exert no more constructive influence with these publishers than with the makers of steam-boilers, or overcoats, or breakfast foods. All their energy is centered on one plain, strenuous business proposition -how to get out a paper next Sunday morning that will eclipse last Sunday's, and distance all competitors in sales and profits. What difference does it make to them whether their voluminous sheets are used for Sunday school text-book or for carpet-linings, if once they are bought?

We need not mince terms in dealing with such literary phenomena; but, fortunately, they are the exception, and not the rule, in the newspaper world. We must discriminate between them and a different class, one of whose managers I have questioned, and from whose reply I make the following quotation: "The aims, motives, and policy of a Sunday paper do not differ from those of any other paper during the week. The main difference is in the size and quality of reading matter, which is carefully selected to entertain, instruct, and amuse the reader. In that particular it may antagonize the preacher, and in that

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