DE WITT TALMAGE ON NEWSPAPER MEN.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4998, 31 March 1877, Page 2 (Supplement)

DE WITT TALMAGE ON NEWSPAPER MEN.

The Rev. De Witt Talmage in the course of one of his sermons said—“ One ojt the great trials of this newspaper profession is the fact that they are compelled to see more of the shams of the world than any other profession. Through every newspaper office, day by day, go to the weaknesses of the world, the vanities that want to be puffed, the revenges that want to be wreaked, all the mistakes that want to be corrected, all the dull speakers that want to be thought eloquent, all the meanness that wants to get its wares noticed gratis in the editorial columns in order to save the tax of the advertising columns, all the men who want to be set right who never were right, all the crack-brained philosophers, with story as long as their hair and as gloomy as their finger-nails, in mourning because bereft of soap; all the itinerant bores who come to stay five minutes and stop an hour. From the editorial and reportorial rooms all the follies and shams of the world are seen day by day, and the temptation is to believe neither in God, man, nor woman. It is no surprise to me that in your professien there are some sceptical men. I only wonder that you believe anything at all. Unless an editor or a reporter have in his present or his early home a model of earnest character, or he throw himself upon the grace of God, he must make temporal and eternal shipwreck.”