Few editors can long retain a class of readers unlike themselves. "Like priest, like people," is not more just and true than "Like editors, like readers."

      Mean periodicals--mean people is as true as any other adage--neither proverb is true for a day nor for a year, but time for development is to be taken into the estimate. [554]

      If it were contemptible for one to say in the Jewish priesthood, Put me into the priest's office, that I may get a piece of bread: so now, it is contemptible to say, Put me into an editorial chair, that I may be paid for writing, because the brethren will not pay me for speaking. To write for bread is worse than to speak for bread.

      Christian editors should be pious, learned, dignified men; of whom their readers ought not to be ashamed: men capable of leading the public mind forward in the paths of learning; good taste, good morals; men of wisdom, prudence, and of forcible eloquence.

[A. C.]      

Source:

Alexander Campbell. Extracts from "The Crisis.--No. III." The Millennial Harbinger 15 (April 1844): 170, 171.

[MHA2 554-555]