The immoral newspaper stops not at the unclean advertisement. It is
so much for so many words, and in such a sheet it will cost no more
to advertise the most impure book than the new edition of Pilgrim's
Progress. A book such as no decent man would touch was a few months
ago advertised in a New York paper, and the getter-up of the book,
passing down one of our streets the other day, acknowledged to one of
my friends that he had made $18,000 out of the enterprise.
In one column of a paper we see a grand ethical discussion, and in
another the droppings of most accursed nastiness. Oh! you cannot by
all your religion, in one column, atone for one of your abominations
in another! I am rejoiced that some of our papers have addressed those
who have proposed to compensate them for bad use of their columns, in
the words of Peter to Simon Magus: "Thy money perish with thee!" But I
arraign the newspapers that give their columns to corrupt advertising
for the nefarious work they are doing. The most polluted plays that
ever oozed from the poisonous pen of leprous dramatist have won
their deathful power through the medium of newspapers; the evil is
stupendous!
O ye reckless souls! get money--though morality dies, and society is
dishonored, and God defied, and the doom of the destroyed opens before
you--get money! Though the melted gold be poured upon your naked,
blistered, and consuming soul--get money! Get money! It will do you
good when it begins to eat like a canker! It will solace the pillow
of death, and soothe the pangs of an agonized eternity! Though in the
game thou dost stake thy soul, and lose it forever--get money!
The bad newspaper hesitates not to assault Christianity and its
disciples.
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