THE MINISTERS’ ASSOCIATION AND THE JOURNALISTS.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1774, 27 October 1879, Page 3

THE MINISTERS’ ASSOCIATION AND THE JOURNALISTS.

To the Editor of the “ Globe. Sib, —From a paragraph appearing in the letter of the Christchurch correspondent of the “ Saturday Advertiser,” I learn that some of the Evangelical ministers of Christchurch are greatly concerned as to the moral and religious welfare of the members of the journalitio profession in Christchurch. The paragraph further states that a society for the conversion of journalists was resolved to bo formed. I trust, sir, that such a marked display of bad taste, and what I may be permitted to call ecclesiastical snobbery is simply a coinage of the fertile brain of the correspondent. If it be not so, let mo tell these reverend censors that there exists amongst the journalistic fraternity in Christchurch, and I dare say elsewhere, as much if not more true morality and Christianity as does in the smug broad-clothed Pharisees who go to church three times a day and thank God they are not as other men are. The Rev. Dr. Talmage—who, I presume, will bo accepted by these would-be leaders of benighted journalists as a sufficient authority—in a recent sermon said that he was surprised, considering the petty meannesses and the hypocriais whiohj come professionally under the notice of journalists to find so many of them God-fearing men. Sir, I take the resolution, if it were passed, as an insult to a noble profession, one in which it is possible to find as good citizens and Christians as in any under the sun. Despite the fact that their profession loads them to look with some degree of distrust on human nature, I can assure our evangelical friends that the journalists of Christchurch discharge their duties as citizens, Christians, husbands and fathers quite as conscientiously, and I believe faithfully, as any other class of the community. Yours, &e., GEO. B. HART.