Articles in your daily paper on diet, Influenza and other topics again suggest illness to you; even the advertisements suggest that you have Kidney disease or worse, and that to save your life it is necessary for you to take certain tablets or pills. The newspapers themselves do their best to suggest evil to you. The columns are full of the seamy sordid side of life. If any man commits a crime, it is reported in the papers. If however he resists temptation and instead does a good deed, no notice is taken. Therefore newspapers give an entirely false presentation of life. The press closes its eyes to the good and presents the evil and thus suggests evil to you, which if you do not watch it, will produce evil in your life.
For every bad deed reported in the papers, a thousand good actions go unrecorded.
The world is full of noble deeds and gracious thoughts, and they can be seen and realized by those who look for them.
Therefore be very careful what newspapers you read and how you read them.
Avoid reading of the evil, seamy side of life; instead, look for the good, and you will find it. When reading your paper devote your attention to the large things, those which will go down in history. Avoid that which is mean and petty . . thus will you avoid unwholesome and dangerous suggestion.
Newspapers, periodicals and some books would have you believe that life is an unlovely thing. Even some hymn writers have dared to describe the world as a vale of tears and life as a long drawn out woe. Do not believe these wicked suggestions. Life is a gracious and lovely thing. It is full of beauty and love and peace and happiness. Life is what we make it, we can make it sublime or we can make it savor of Hell. It is in our own hands.
Therefore do not read either papers, books or magazines that do not present life in a joyous and optimistic way. Avoid low class scrappy reading. Read instead good books by great minds. Imbibe noble thoughts. Read good poetry if you can. Seek the beautiful, the noble, the true, in your reading and in your fellow men, and you will find them and be richly blessed thereby.
Henry Thomas Hamblin
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