Newspaper Reading by Christian Work

Pacific Press Publishing Company · MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA · Sep 27, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 39.

Newspaper Reading

By Christian Work

Newspaper Reading.—The press of to-day, especially in civilized countries, has become a vitalizing and essential part of the life of our times. That it has value even in the humblest and poorest of homes may be observed when, by pressure of circumstances, the household is obliged to retrench. Then the newspaper is often the last thing to be cut off. This dependence on the daily paper, which is born of a certain curiosity for an account of the latest happenings in the world, has its disadvantages as well as its advantages. The space of the daily is very largely given over to recording the things done by individuals, assemblies, and nations, a large proportion of which have only a temporary value, and one has only to reflect a short time to note the influence that reading of this kind must have on the average mind. It is often said that the excessive reading of newspapers makes unfit many minds for literature of a more substantial nature, but that is not the chiefest of its evils. Is it not true that newspaper reading tends to exaggerate in the mind the things of present value, and hinders that perspective which is so vital to sane thinking? A man is never living at his best until he can bring within his horizon some mental image of the future. There is a strong tendency in the present day to magnify out of all proportion our individual and national possessions, and the newspaper creates and fosters that tendency more than all other agencies combined.