Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 1 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 1 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
* * * * *
Look next on the morals of Boston, as indicated by the Newspapers, the
daily and the weekly press. Take the whole newspaper literature of
Boston, cheap and costly, good and bad, study it all as a whole, and by
the inductive method construct the ethics of the press, and here you
find no signs of a higher morality in general than you found in trade.
It is the same centre about which all things gravitate here as there.
But in the newspapers the want of great principles is more obvious, and
more severely felt than in trade--the want of justice, of truth, of
humanity, of sympathy with man. In trade you meet with signs of great
power; the highway of commerce bears marks of giant feet. Our newspapers
seem chiefly in the hands of little men, whose cunning is in a large
ratio to their wisdom or their justice. You find here little ability,
little sound learning, little wise political economy; of lofty morals
almost nothing at all. Here, also, the dollar is both Pope and King;
right and truth are vassals, not much esteemed, nor over-often called to
pay service to their Lord, who has other soldiers with more pliant neck
and knee.
A newspaper is an instrument of great importance; all men read it; many
read nothing else; some it serves as reason and conscience too: in lack
of better, why not? It speaks to thousands every day on matters of great
moment--on matters of morals, of politics, of finance. It relates daily
the occurrences of our land, and of all the world. All men are affected
by it; hindered or helped. To many a man his morning paper represents
more reality than his morning prayer. There are many in a community like
this who do not know what to say--I do not mean what to think,
thoughtful men know what to think--about any thing till somebody tells
them; yet they must talk, for "the mouth goes always." To such a man a
newspaper is invaluable; as the idolater in the Judges had "a Levite to
his priest," so he has a newspaper to his reason or his conscience, and
can talk to the day's end. An able and humane newspaper would get this
class of persons into good habits of speech, and do them a service,
inasmuch as good habits of speech are better than bad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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