The Newspaper and the “Good News”
By W. L. Burgan
The Interest of the Secular Press in Religious Questions PERHAPS the greatest agency for the heralding of the gospel is the newspaper. Many religious organizations are realizing the importance of this medium, and systematic campaigns are being carried on by clergymen for the voicing of their doctrines to the readers of the secular press. Newspapers are circulating in all parts of the world. The only thing that goes into every home in the city, that can carry the gospel with it, is the newspaper. Practically every person in the cities and the towns is, through the newspaper, made acquainted with the current news and happenings of the day. Out along every railroad line the newspaper goes. The trolley carries it to the villages and the towns, and the rural mail carrier delivers it to the homes along every country road and lane. Everywhere in America the newspaper is read. NEWS GATHERERS AND THE READERS
Editors, like missionaries and school-teachers, are always looking out for new fields to enter. The most persistent readers, however, are in the large cities. Here the newspaper is a daily necessity. Even the immigrant, newly arrived and long downtrodden, finds it impossible to wait until he can read English to have the newspaper. He must have his daily paper in his native language. The thirst for information is in the air. In the crowded cars that carry the people to the offices, the stores, and the factories in the morning, there is hardly a person who does not carry a paper; and returning from work in the evening, those who are not reading, or carrying papers as evidence that they intend to read, are very few. Many of the large morning dailies have set apart a page each Monday for news items from the churches. All denominations have the privilege of being contributors; and as a rule, the papers will give extracts of sermons delivered in various pulpits. Likewise, afternoon papers in many of the large cities have set aside a page in their Saturday edition for the presentation of religious topics. And when discourses delivered on other days of the week are unusual enough, the editors will gladly publish extracts of them along with the other news of the day. PERSISTENTLY THE MESSAGE HAS GONE
In recent years, considerable has been done in heralding the message of the second advent of Christ to millions of readers in all parts of North America, and also in different countries in South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as Australia and the islands of the sea. There are thousands of persons who will read reports on religious topics who never attend a church service nor would invite a minister or a Bible worker to their homes. In lauding the press, the Rev. John Compton Ball, a noted Baptist minister of Washington, D. C., recently said: “The spiritual awakening of the American press should be a cause for thanksgiving. The press has become one of the foremost mediums for furthering the Christian religion. Never before in the history of this country have the newspapers devoted so much space to religious news. The press is doing a grand work, and the people should thank God for what the newspapers have done and for what they can do.” The Very Rev. William MacCormack, in a specially prepared article on “The Pulpit and Press,” in the Los Angeles Tribune, said: “The relationship of these two institutions is very close. They are allies and not antagonists, and they do their best work in union rather than in separation. I always have attached a very great significance to the power of the press.” “The preacher speaks through the living voice; the newspaper preaches through the living word. The first reaches thousands, and the latter reaches tens of thousands. “I believe that much of the power of the church to-day would be curtailed were it not for the kindly and gratuitous cooperation of the press. Her programs are printed freely and scattered broadcast amongst all sorts and conditions of people. “There is no institution under the canopy of heaven that is so largely a legatee of the benefactions of the newspaper as the church, hence this vital and living bond of relationship that binds and holds these two servants of mankind together.”