li 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
 Shelf .....tHt3 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
AMUSEMENTS, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 LIGHT OP REASON AND SCRIPTURE. 
 
 BY REV. H. C. HAYDN, D. Z>., 
 
 AUTHOR OF "LAY EFFORT," "DEATH AND BEYOND," ETC. 
 
 
 l.iu$..&b£t 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 I 50 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 
 
<: 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1880, 
 BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
 /*-3*£n 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following pages have at least the merit of 
 being written irom conviction, and of being addressed 
 to a subject of living interest to the church and the 
 world. Men are actually more alert to the question 
 how to be amused than how to be saved ; and more 
 money and time are spent upon amusements than upon 
 churches and missions. 
 
 Our present business is with the relation of the 
 church to this wide and fascinating domain. This 
 essay is an attempt at a fair and candid discussion of 
 this theme, which touches so vitally the interests of the 
 home and the church, and gives tone and color, 
 strength or weakness to our social life. 
 
 Are the advocates of a liberty which is ever passing 
 over into license, the true exponents of the life of 
 faith, whose throbbing heart we touch in the New Tes- 
 tament? Are the continuous deliverances of almost 
 every branch of the Christian church, for centuries to- 
 gether, to be regarded as the outcome of a needless 
 scare, or the stupid attempt to impose restrictions upon 
 the innocent and harmless pleasures of the dear people 
 of God? 
 
 These are, by no means, indifferent questions. 
 They hint at sharp antagonisms within the church, not 
 merely theoretical, but practical and actual, with more 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 or less of sympathy on either side, in almost every 
 local body of believers, in city, village, and country. 
 
 We do not anticipate for our views the endorse- 
 ment of the extremists on either side. We are by no 
 means sanguine of creating so much as a ripple upon 
 the surface of the well-satisfied worldliness of our day ; 
 but we venture to hope that we may be helpful to all 
 such as feel called to withstand the present trend of 
 the social life of the church in matters of amusement ; 
 and especially to that greater number of youth, who 
 are solicited so urgently and persistently to launch out 
 upon the fascinating currents of pleasure without fear, 
 and almost without restraint. Indeed, it is hoped that 
 all minds open to conviction may find something in 
 these pages worthy of their serious thought. To all 
 others it is useless to offer either fact or argument. 
 Let us be regarded as an honest seeker after the right 
 way, ready to welcome the riper thought and the wiser 
 suggestion of any one who may come after. 
 
 It is perhaps well to say that in preparing the his- 
 toric portion of this essay, the writer has had frequent 
 reference to the standard histories from Grote to 
 Lecky, and to Eschenburg's Manual ; and in the di- 
 dactic portion he is indebted especially to R. W. Dale 
 and Baldwin Brown of England, to Horace Bushnell 
 and J. M. Buckley, to little treatises of Drs. Breed, 
 Brainard, and Brooke, and to the current literature of 
 our time. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Introductory — The Situation page 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Mistaken Measures - 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Body — Soul — Nature 27 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Demand for Amusements 31 
 
 1. Childhood 34 
 
 2. Youth - 38 
 
 3. Mature Life 40 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Trend towards Dissipation — - 42 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Tests - 48 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Christian Attitude - 56 
 
 1. The New Life in Christ 58 
 
 2. Our Relation to Others - 61 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Exceptionally Popular Amusements 68 
 
 1. The Theatre 70 
 
 2. The Opera - in 
 
 3. The Dance - — 114 
 
 4. Cards and Billiards ----- 127 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The Grander Liberty — - 131 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Charity 138 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 Pleasant Fields and Babbling Brooks 144 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Conclusion 152 
 
The late Hon. Richard Fletcher of Boston, 
 Mass., by his last will, placed in the hands of the trus- 
 tees of Dartmouth College a fund from the income of 
 which they are to offer, once in two years, a prize of 
 Five Hundred Dollars for the essay best adapted 
 to accomplish his purposes, indicated as follows : 
 
 " In view of the numerous and powerful influences 
 constantly active in drawing professed Christians into 
 fatal conformity with the world, both in spirit and prac- 
 tice ; in view also of the lamentable and amazing fact 
 that Christianity exerts so little practical influence, even 
 in countries nominally Christian, it has seemed to me 
 that some good might be done by making permanent 
 provision for obtaining and publishing, once in two 
 years, a Prize Essay, setting forth truth and reasoning 
 calculated to counteract such worldly influences, and 
 impressing on the minds of all Christians a solemn 
 sense of their duty to exhibit in their godly lives and 
 conversation the beneficent effects of the religion they 
 profess, and thus increase the efficiency of Christianity 
 in Christian countries, and recommend its acceptance 
 to the heathen nations of the world." 
 
 In accordance with the said will, the trustees in De- 
 cember, 1878, offered the prize, the fourth time, for an 
 essay of the above-mentioned character, of which the 
 specific aim should be to set forth and impress the 
 relations and duties of Christians in the matter of 
 amusements. This was to be, for substance, the theme 
 of discussion, whatever the title adopted. 
 
 The Committee of Award consisted of Rev. J. H. 
 Means, D. D., Rev. Henry M. King, D. D., and Rev. 
 E. N. Packard, all of Roxbury, Mass. The prize was 
 awarded, by the unanimous vote of the committee, to 
 the essay contained in this volume, which proved to be 
 written by Rev. H. C. Haydn, then of Cleveland, Ohio, 
 now of New York. 
 
 S. C. BARTLETT, President. 
 
 Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H., November, 1880. 
 
A Christian's amusements must be blameless as well 
 as ingenious, safe as well as rational, moral as well as intel- 
 lectual. They must have nothing in them which may be 
 likely to excite any of the tempers which it is his daily task 
 to subdue ; any of the passions which it is his constant busi- 
 ness to keep in order. His chosen amusements must not 
 deliberately add to the " weight " which he is commanded 
 to " lay aside ;" they should not imitate the besetting sin 
 against which he is struggling; they should not obstruct 
 that spiritual -mindedness which he is told is life and peace ; 
 they should not inflame that lust of the flesh, that lust of the 
 eye, and that pride of life, which he is forbidden to gratify. 
 
 HANNAH MORE. 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRO D UCTOR V— THE SITU A TION. 
 
 The stricter habits of our fathers are being everywhere 
 relaxed, and there are very many who wish to do right, who 
 know not what to think of the change ; they yield to the cur- 
 rent of the times, but yield with hesitation, discomfort, and 
 apprehension. Rev. R. W. Dale. 
 
 That there is abundant need of a thorough and 
 wise discussion of the theme to which we now address 
 ourselves, must be evident to any one who has given 
 so much as a casual thought to the social features of 
 our times. We are in the midst of a strong reaction- 
 ary current from the thoughts and practice Reaction. 
 of fifty years ago — a reaction justified to a degree pos- 
 sibly by the inconsistencies of that practice and the 
 rigorous measures which enforced it. At any rate, if 
 the position was extreme then, .what is now going on 
 is, at least in part, but the natural rebound. 
 
 Amusments. 2 
 
io AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 The sorry attempt has been sometimes made "to 
 raise a conscience against play." Some have seemed 
 
 Extremes. to live, and to insist upon others living, as 
 if " the pleasant things of the world came from the 
 devil and the dreary things from God." And there 
 have been men to whom, as Richter says, " No time is 
 so much a burden as pastime;" and who were disposed 
 to put the yoke, which they perhaps wore without cha- 
 fing, upon the neck of the more playful life around 
 them. 
 
 But there are exceptional cases. By far the larger 
 number who have felt called upon to hold themselves 
 
 Exceptional a l°°f from the popular amusements of their 
 cases * time, or earnestly to oppose them, have 
 
 done so from the serious conviction that the Christian 
 life portrayed in the New Testament could only thus 
 be honored, and not because they were crabbed and 
 morose in spirit and out of harmony with the joyous 
 elements of human nature. 
 
 That they often went too far, that they were some- 
 times uncharitable, that they took unsound and inde- 
 
 inddentai fensible positions, and especially failed to 
 discriminate wisely, was perhaps incident 
 to their intense conviction, to the real evils which have 
 so uniformly attended certain forms of amusement, 
 and to the infirmity of one-sidedness which is common 
 to us all. The Puritans could not be simply moder- 
 ate. Indeed, to have been simply moderate were to 
 
INTRO D UCTOR Y. 1 1 
 
 have failed altogether. But their extreme measures 
 cannot be justified any more than they could be long 
 endured. They are blemishes upon one of the grand- 
 est movements of human history. The reaction meas- 
 ures one of the most shameful periods of English an- 
 nals, for which no sane man will presume to hold the 
 Puritans wholly responsible. The age was abomina- 
 bly corrupt and conscienceless. So here, it is not to 
 be laid at the door of the fathers, that at this moment 
 the church looks far more kindly than of The church 
 yore upon the theatre, the opera, the dance, of t0 " day * 
 the billiard and card table, and takes larger liberties in 
 all these things. It is puerile to say this is because 
 the fathers were so strict, and the blame of it is alto- 
 gether theirs. If here is excess, they are responsible 
 who run into it. It is not to spite a former generation 
 that so many Christian parents frequent the theatre and 
 take their children; and that matinees for children find 
 numerous patrons — that Christian parents not only 
 participate in the dance, but take pains to have their 
 children instructed by masters of the art in the latest 
 novelties of the fashionable and pleasure-loving world. 
 Nor is it because the theatre has improved in these 
 latter days and become a more healthful place of resort. 
 Its foremost advocates and apologists admit that the 
 drama has declined, and that they are only trying to 
 bridge over the chasm which lies between it and the 
 drama of to-morrow, which is to be sweet and lovely. 
 
12 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 It is not because the dance is more modest and becom- 
 ing to Christian sobriety that formerly, for notoriously 
 the dance was never more shameless since the choric 
 round dance of the Greeks accompanied the orgies of 
 Bacchus. 
 
 Right or wrong, wise or unwise, there is a change 
 in the Christian conscience in regard to these things 
 which is widely prevalent. Suffice it now to note the 
 fact. 
 
 Moreover, there is a restiveness under remonstrance, 
 a disdain of ecclesiastical authority, an indisposition 
 on the part of many to seriously inquire into the right 
 or wrong of these courses of conduct, and an eagerness 
 to catch at any justification from any source whatever, 
 to eulogize those leaders as liberal who wink at these 
 things, and to frown upon those who withstand them 
 as bigoted and narrow — all which indicates in many 
 a temper, to say the least of it, not just now open to 
 conviction. Many have made up their mind to have 
 certain liberties, as they call them, and the question of 
 their propriety is not open for debate. On the other 
 The strain up- nan d, there are those who "yield to the 
 on conscience. current w i t h hesitation, discomfort, and ap- 
 prehension." These are most hurt of all; and upon 
 such and the honestly inquiring, candid discussion will 
 not be wasted. 
 
 It is not surprising that many thoughtful and seri- 
 ous people stand confounded before this drift of the 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 13 
 
 social life of the church, all the more because they are 
 brought face to face with some of their capturing the 
 brethren, apparently no less sincere, to world ' 
 whom this capacity for turning from a prayer-meeting 
 or the inquiry-room to a dance, from a missionary con- 
 ference to the theatre, all in the same twenty-four hours, 
 is an evidence of a faith no longer childish, but robust 
 and venturesome, and of an advancing Christian senti- 
 ment which is destined to capture the strongholds of 
 Satan, and turn them over to those whom God has 
 appointed " heirs of all things." 
 
 To many there is here as yet an incongruity too 
 great to be got over. Their sober second thought does 
 not relieve their minds; and as yet they A doubtful 
 find themselves both pained and alarmed at ex P edient - 
 what, to them, is a gross inconsistency, full of mischief 
 to the piety of the church, and a hindrance in the way 
 of winning the world to Christ. 
 
 The ministry and the official boards of the churches 
 occupy much the same position, as is evident from the 
 discussions of church congresses, associa- The ministry 
 tions, and assemblies. We have either ex- not a § reed - 
 treme, and a mediating third party which advocates a 
 larger liberty than formerly, as a matter of Christian 
 expediency towards the world, and an assertion of the 
 abstract right of every Christian to any species of di- 
 version not positively sinful in itself. This sentiment 
 crops out, not only in debate, but in the newspapers 
 
14 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 and occasional sermons, and to it the practice of many 
 corresponds, in spite of the fact that, with rare excep- 
 The voice of tions, if any, the church of this country, in 
 the church. ^er re p resen tative assemblies, has always, 
 to this day, deprecated this falling away from the the- 
 ory and practice of the fathers. Their published reso- 
 lutions exhort members of the church to abstain from 
 the promiscuous dance, from frequenting the theatre 
 and the opera, and " other such questionable amuse- 
 ments." They enjoin upon church officials, 
 
 Presbytery of 
 
 Pittsburg on as in the Presbytery of Pittsburg no Ions: 
 
 discipline. . J J fe & 
 
 time since, to " use all reasonable and judi- 
 cious efforts to abate and remove the practice of pro- 
 miscuous dancing, and kindred amusements, from 
 among our people." On the occasion above referred 
 to, a resolution, which enjoined upon church sessions 
 " to make violations of the acts of the General Assem- 
 bly subjects of discipline," was withdrawn, after passage 
 by a close vote. This is a fair sample of the way this 
 matter is treated by ecclesiastical bodies at the present 
 
 time. Moreover, such resolutions as are 
 sessions and passed and go upon the records of the 
 
 church, in the hands of sessions, commit- 
 tees, and vestries, are far oftener ignored than pressed 
 upon the attention of the church and enforced. Why 
 not? since members of these boards practically set the 
 deliverances of church courts at defiance. Ecclesiasti- 
 cal authority weighs little with the present age, and to 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 15 
 
 insist upon discipline for such offences would rend the 
 church in twain. In reality, the church is to-day a 
 house divided against itself on the question of popular 
 amusements. The division creates no alarm, because 
 the issue is not pressed — because resolutions are not 
 enforced. 
 
 What a vexed question this is, is further seen from 
 the fact that the advocates of a larger liberty are no more 
 agreed among themselves than are their Th «, liber _ 
 brethren. There comes in the principle of jjjj^™* a t g h r ^ 
 discrimination, which nobody will presume selves * 
 utterly to set aside; but discrimination is a difficult 
 thing, especially when the attempt is made to get some 
 sort of agreement — some common platform upon which 
 even the ''liberal" church will consent to stand. These 
 liberal brethren all agree to withdraw the prohibition 
 against dancing, but some of them wish to discriminate. 
 For instance, a New York pastor says, " One cannot 
 much wonder at the disgust excited by 
 
 . . . Discrimina- 
 
 those importations irom rans brothels, the tion as to dan- 
 round dances which, with the present style 
 of female attire, really leave modest men at some loss 
 what to do with their eyes. Let us have as much 
 thundering at these as you will. Let us not mince 
 words. Let ridicule and sarcasm and denunciation 
 exhaust their armories, for these are abuses — positive 
 evils." This seems reasonable. We utter a loud 
 Amen to that, but dissenting voices drown us both. 
 
1 6 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 Another reverend brother agrees, so far as modesty in 
 apparel goes, but all the other immodest phases of this 
 immodest dance he can away with ; and there can be 
 no question but that he can have the suffrages of the 
 dancing world to-day. At any rate, they will be divi- 
 ded between him and another who poohs at all this 
 squeamishness, and vociferously asserts that " to the 
 pure all things are pure." The " round dance" is pre- 
 cisely the thing that the fashionable world will not have 
 discriminated away ; and most of those in the church, 
 who dance, are of the same mind. They want to be 
 fashionable. 
 
 We strike the same rock of difficulty when discrim- 
 ination is attempted in other directions. These all are 
 actual phases of the situation in this year of our Lord, 
 1880. 
 
 The Press but echoes the sentiment it has helped to 
 create. The secular press almost entirely favors the 
 The Press, looser views and practices, and the reli- 
 gious is by no means a unit, though, for the most part, 
 supporting timidly the conservative view. 
 
 That this reactionary movement should have sprung 
 into being in the face of widespread revivals of reli- 
 
 Reactionand g ion > and g one on when confessedly the 
 revival times. act i v i ty f t h e church was largely on the 
 
 increase, when Christian works were being multiplied, 
 missionary zeal and charitable offerings being doubled 
 and trebled, the Sunday-school growing into an insti- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 17 
 
 tution of commanding importance, and benevolent so- 
 cieties reaching out to cover almost every human need 
 or infirmity, is at first surprising. We need to be care- 
 ful in our judgments at this point. The reactionary 
 movement includes much more than the question of 
 amusements. Sabbath desecration is largely on the 
 increase. Suicide, murder, dishonesty in every form, 
 have come in as a tidal wave. None of these things 
 are to claim a moment's toleration, because they are 
 contemporaneous with a period of great Christian ac- 
 tivity. It is no part of our purpose to try to go to the 
 bottom of this apparent inconsistency. But it must not 
 be assumed on the one hand that the revivals are su- 
 perficial and the activity of our times unspiritual ; nor, 
 on the other, that because in such times good men put 
 billiard-tables in their houses, colleges open bowling- 
 alleys, and Christian associations rooms for amuse- 
 ment, and many go to the theatre, therefore this is the 
 legitimate outgrowth of increased spirituality. Let us 
 also be careful not to judge them unspiritual who in 
 some sense endorse these things, nor let them who op- 
 pose them account themselves the saints preeminent. 
 Facts would rebuke either assumption. 
 
 It is a question, and a very serious one too, deserv- 
 ing of most careful and charitable consideration, wheth- 
 er there be not some general principles 
 
 ' General prin- 
 
 which will command the suffrages and the cipies demand- 
 practical endorsement of the great majority 
 
1 8 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 of Christian people, relieve a great many burdened 
 hearts, recover a great many out of the snare of the 
 devil, and promote the unity and peace of the church, 
 because at once Scriptural and rational, recognizing 
 men as in the body, but also under law to Christ. If 
 there be any such common ground it is worth our 
 diligent search. 
 
MISTAKEN MEASURES. 19 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MISTAKEN MEASURES. 
 
 I tremble to think of the myriad ministers to vice and 
 degradation, to destruction of heart, soul, body, and the 
 health of coming generations, who infest and infect our great 
 cities ; and at the coarse, garish, unlovely, ignoble, and often 
 hateful character of the chosen public amusements of a great 
 class of our young men. Rev. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 It may fairly be questioned whether the church of 
 our time has brought to the consideration of the amuse- 
 ment question her best wisdom. Her offi- „, 
 
 1 I he wisdom 
 
 cial deliverances have very little of fresh- °* the church 
 
 J not conspicu- 
 
 ness or variety about them, very little to ous- 
 indicate that they have grown out of a wide survey of 
 a subject of such manifold bearings and such infinite 
 importance. Rather it seems as if the best talent of 
 the church thought it a matter beneath its notice, and 
 allowed the traditional resolution to go through with 
 the tacit understanding that individual action will be in 
 nowise trammelled thereby. 
 
 But this is a matter which concerns the youth of 
 every generation, and through the youth their times. 
 And we make a grave mistake if we belit- importance 
 tie the importance of a thoroughly Chris- of the subject ' 
 tian and philosophical attitude on the part of the 
 
20 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 church. It makes a vast deal of difference how the 
 church is amused — how children of Christian families 
 are to be entertained — where prohibition comes in and 
 why it comes in. No less are we concerned as to who 
 are the entertainers of the people. It is not foreign to 
 the work of the church to look sharply after this mat- 
 ter. It is no part of wisdom to treat it as if the last 
 The last word wor d has been said, and all that remains to 
 
 not yet said. be done J g tQ gay ft oyer and oyer The 
 
 last word on no phase of practical life has perhaps yet 
 been uttered, and we must be willing to listen and in- 
 quire, and, if need be, revolutionize our methods. The 
 latest phase of temperance work makes much of coun- 
 ter-attractions to the saloons; opens its inns and cof- 
 fee-houses, and gives men a chance for a choice be- 
 tween a loaf and a stone, an egg and a scorpion — and 
 it pays. 
 
 In Colne, Lancashire, England, somebody had the 
 good sense to build an elegant structure for the use of 
 The Coine " tne i rren g"i° us working-class." In it were 
 experiment. fountains, pictures, books, papers, and 
 games, quiet reading and refreshment rooms — even a 
 smoking-room and a schoolroom. There are enter- 
 tainments on certain nights, and religious meetings on 
 Sundays. It has been called " the house that beats the 
 public-house." Who will say that this is not practical 
 wisdom ? or that efforts of this sort ought not to be 
 vastly multiplied ? If so, then this is legitimate 
 
MISTAKEN MEASURES. 2 1 
 
 church work; and our only anxiety should be to be 
 right. 
 
 In seeking an impregnable position, there are cer- 
 tain theories which will most assuredly be passed by. 
 For instance : 
 
 . Impracticable 
 
 I. It has been soberly argued, in an es- theories and 
 
 measures. 
 
 say of great ability, that " for man, in the 
 maturity of his strength and intellect, there are no in- 
 nocent amusements." The argument is summed up in 
 this : that " all the recreation he needs he can get with- 
 out intermitting his efforts for usefulness." This is 
 doubtless true of some men, and their liberty so to do 
 should not be interfered with. But to erect this into a 
 canon of the church would be very unwise. To say 
 that for full-grown men there are " no innocent amuse- 
 ments," is so sweeping as to damage the good things 
 said in connection therewith. There is a time to play, 
 and there is a play-side to our nature which fits into it. 
 The instincts of the race are not all wrong at this point ; 
 and it does not help to a solution of the questions here 
 involved for those who can get on without play to insist 
 that everybody else shall do the same. It may well 
 enough be wished that more people could and would 
 find all needed recreation in pursuits helpful to them- 
 selves and others. Even so it is just possible that for 
 such the aggregate of life would be more and purer if 
 they now and then set apart an hour for play. The 
 position must be held to be extreme and untenable — 
 
22 . AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 all the more that the most of folks never come " to the 
 maturity of their strength and intellect." 
 
 2. It has also happened that good people have 
 looked upon the entire realm of amusements as hos- 
 tile to piety. Discovering how easily they are car- 
 ried to excess, how positively hurtful some are, in the 
 name of religion they have brought a raking fire upon 
 them all. They have done hurt in two ways : they 
 have not discriminated between the healthful and the 
 hurtful in themselves considered, and between the law- 
 ful and the excessive use of things innocent — thus put- 
 ting a shaky plank into their platform ; and they have 
 misrepresented the religion of Christ, clothing it with 
 an austerity at once forbidding and misleading. " The 
 Son of man came eating and drinking," and some then 
 said in consequence, " He hath a devil." In this re- 
 spect, as well as all others, it is enough for the disciple 
 that he be as his Master. Such positions, held as they 
 too often are in a dogmatic spirit, are by no means 
 helpful to gospel propagandism. Nothing is gained 
 for the church or for pure morality by an indiscrimi- 
 nate assault upon the world's amusements. 
 
 3. Nor can it be said that ecclesiastical legisla- 
 tion has availed one iota to restrain the latitude 
 taken by members of the church in this regard. Pro- 
 hibition does not prevent. The right to legislate is not 
 denied, but the expediency. The questions which arise 
 here are not to be settled by ecclesiastical courts, nor 
 
MISTAKEN MEASURES. 23 
 
 will the license of our time be abolished by discipline. 
 Nothing will stay settled till it is lodged in the convic- 
 tions of men and they come to see that there is a more 
 excellent way, a more Christian thing. 
 
 The reason why legislation is so* weak, and church 
 courts so powerless, is because they are not consistent 
 with themselves. Between what they pro- 
 hibit and what they allow, it is often impos- cy of kgisia- 
 .... . . tion - 
 
 sible to make a distinction in principle. 
 
 There is also a failure to discriminate between recrea- 
 tion and dissipation, between the lawful and Lack of dis _ 
 the unlawful use of things in themselves in- crimination - 
 nocent. And there is besides an indefiniteness which 
 must be fatal to practical usefulness. The indefiniteness. 
 phrase " kindred amusements," and others like it, with 
 which these resolutions so often wind up, have room 
 within their ample folds, in the judgment of many, to 
 include almost any innocent romp and to sweep the 
 lawn of so harmless a thing as croquet. In the judg- 
 ment of many it were better to have no legislation at 
 all, and leave every man do that which is right in his 
 own eyes. As it is, our people at large are doing just 
 that, and snapping their fingers at the courts. Is it 
 because the people are perverse, or because the legis- 
 lation is lacking in wisdom and consistency, or for 
 both reasons ? 
 
 4. On the other hand the reformers come in 
 with so much of ardor that they seem quite to over- 
 
24 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 leap the mark. It is boldly claimed by one that " the 
 gospel brought into contact with it will purify any- 
 thing ;" or, as another puts it, " The gospel assumes its 
 
 a hazardous own P ower to P uri fy anything, and there- 
 theory. f ore j a y S ^ 0wn as j ts g rea t j aw of operation 
 
 the law of contact." The gospel assumes no such 
 thing. The "law of contact" operates not always to 
 purify, but often to exscind. There are some things 
 that cannot be purified : that are of the devil, and are 
 to be exterminated, root and branch. Much as we 
 sympathize with the main drift of these endeavors, we 
 think the argument for it overdrawn, and we recoil 
 from some of the practical applications. It is a bold 
 thing to say, "We must be less afraid for the purity of 
 the truth, and throw Christian presence and Christian 
 participation and Christian sentiment boldly into the 
 midst of the people's amusements, with a view less to 
 exscind than to regulate." It is a no less hazardous 
 thing to do ; and if the exscinding and the regulation 
 do not go together, it is easy to forecast the outcome 
 of this attempt to reform by the "law of contact." 
 
 If, as is affirmed, " the separative policy of the 
 church has failed, utterly failed," we must not forget 
 The separa- tnat tnere ls a "separative policy" which is 
 tive pohcy. divinely insisted upon, and whose opera- 
 tion we must not obstruct, if we would be true to 
 Christ : " Come out from among them, and be ye sep- 
 arate, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will re- 
 
MISTAKEN MEASURES. 25 
 
 ceive you, and be a Father unto you, saith the Lord 
 Almighty." 
 
 It is a very popular notion that " the devil is to be 
 fought with his own weapons." Possibly, sometimes. 
 But it is gravely suspected that they who Fighting the 
 fight him only thus do not seriously wound, deviL 
 much less cripple him. And it is sheer nonsense to 
 talk as if the only reason why the church is baffled is 
 because she does not go down into the world's amuse- 
 ments and regulate them. Rather is it the worldliness, 
 the apathy, the uncharitableness, the selfishness, the 
 greed, the lack of integrity, honor, and love, often, alas, 
 met by young people and others as they come in con- 
 tact with members of the church. The search for the 
 failure of the church is almost wholly in the wrong di- 
 rection. The more thoughtful of the world would say, 
 " Stop ! what we want of the church is not to furnish us 
 cards, billiards, theatrical entertainments, The true work 
 and such like, as a means of grace ; but to of thechurch - 
 show us the life of Christ among men, at once strong 
 and beautiful, and divinely pervaded by whatsoever is 
 true, pure, lovely, and of good report." 
 
 That amusements have a place in such life I hope 
 to make evident before this essay is done. Between 
 these extremes and sharp antagonisms, and 
 
 r fe . The church 
 
 apart from what to us are mistaken no- to set her own 
 
 fashions. 
 
 tions, we seek a golden mean; or, rather, 
 we long and strive for a church setting a fashion of its 
 
 4 
 
26 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 own, true to nature and the gospel, reigning as kings 
 and priests unto God in this world, using and not 
 abusing it, doing all things to the glory of Him who 
 has called us by his own holiness and virtue. Rea- 
 son and Scripture, true science and true faith, ought 
 to give method and reasonableness both to work and 
 play. 
 
BOD } -SO UL—NA TURE. 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BOD Y—SOUL—NA TURE. 
 
 Very wonderful is the intimate connection, the subtle 
 interaction, between the forces of our physical and moral 
 nature — not only a mystery, but a fact of practical impor- 
 tance. R. W. Dale. 
 
 Natural things 
 And spiritual — who separates these two 
 In art, in morals, or the social drift, 
 Tears up the bond of nature, and brings death. 
 
 Mrs. Browning. 
 
 Possibly one reason why our notions, both in the- 
 ory and practice, in regard to amusements, are so often 
 in conflict, is because man is not studied in relation to 
 his environment. Indeed, with many this is no matter 
 of study at all ; but impulse, fashion, or worldly ambi- 
 tion lords it in the realm of play. And yet these same 
 people are creatures of intelligence, to choose their way 
 with reference to the will of God as they find it ex- 
 pressed in their bodies and souls and in nature around 
 them. I say nothing now of the Bible or the specific 
 claims of a Christian life. To go blindly or selfishly 
 on, impelled by the clamor of momentary indulgence, 
 vanity, or ambition, is to sin against the obvious laws 
 of our being and the dictates of natural religion. 
 
28 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 We are agreed that, originally, body, soul, and na- 
 ture were in delightful harmony. There was a delight- 
 The original m * equilibrium among all the powers of 
 harmony. body and soul, and a happy adjustment to 
 
 their environment, when God pronounced good his 
 finished work. It belongs to man, and especially the 
 Christian man, to work back towards that original 
 thought of God — to realize himself as under natural as 
 well as moral law, and to respect both in the conduct 
 of life. Here the physicist, the physiologist, and the 
 moralist should be in agreement ; and to them should 
 every man, who means to live rightly, give diligent 
 heed. 
 
 In this view, the body is the dwelling-place, the 
 temple, and instrument of the soul. Dr. Clarke says, 
 The body. "A human brain is the last, the highest 
 product, the consummate flower of nature's develop- 
 ment on this planet. No perfect brain ever crowns an 
 imperfectly-developed body. A brain cannot be made 
 except as the crown of the rest of the body, and to a 
 large extent out of the body." 
 
 This utterance fixes attention upon the necessity of 
 healthy bodily organs and functions in order to secure 
 the highest quantity and quality of mental and spirit- 
 Asceticism ual P ower possible to the man. It turns 
 not the rule. our ^^ summar ily upon the old asceti- 
 cism of the church, and the still widespread asceti- 
 cism of the East, which antagonizes matter and spirit, 
 
BOD Y—SOUL—NA TURE. 29 
 
 and is satisfied only with the destruction of the 
 flesh. 
 
 Nor are we brought into any closer sympathy with 
 the so-called muscular Christianity. As 
 
 . Nor muscu- 
 
 another has well said, "This threatens to lar Christian- 
 ity. 
 become as ridiculous, on the one hand, as 
 
 that which it seeks to cure is contemptible on the other." 
 It is quite safe to say that " a burly hunter or fighter 
 is not altogether, even physically, the Christian model 
 of a man." To build a brain and keep it in healthy 
 working order, something is needed besides muscular 
 development. So much as this the recent experience 
 of college regattas has proven. 
 
 The relation of soul and body is a theme for vol- 
 umes. So intimate is it that some theologians, as well 
 as scientists, find no place for the distinc- Soul and body. 
 tion : soul and body are to them an indivisible unity. 
 With no sympathy with either class of theorists, we 
 hold that the intimate relation, the subtle interaction of 
 soul and body, in the processes of life, is carefully to be 
 noted. How the health, the symmetrical development, 
 of the one affects the other : a cultured, spiritual mind 
 affects even the texture of the body, and the condition 
 of the bodily functions, as well as the processes of 
 thought and the exercises of devotion. Education, and 
 godliness too, can be satisfied with nothing less than a 
 training which yields the just and harmonious develop- 
 ment of every organ and faculty ; and we are brought 
 
30 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 under a moral obligation to preserve, as much as in us 
 lies, the healthy functioning of physical and spiritual 
 powers. 
 
 Then folio ws the still further obligation to adjust 
 ourselves to the world in which we are to live, and 
 Man and na- tnose ordinances of nature as to eating, 
 ture. drinking, and sleeping, day and night, work 
 
 and play, which were meant to be a guide to us in the 
 rational development of our powers, and the use of our 
 time and faculties. 
 
 So to do, is to take life out of the control of im- 
 pulse, ambition, and emulation, and put it under law, 
 and set it revolving: in an orbit of beauty 
 
 Life is to be ° J 
 
 brought under around the central sun. Thus adjusted, 
 
 a reign of law. 
 
 man is prepared to offer to God his body, 
 soul, and spirit a living sacrifice, and to hear his com- 
 mand, " Go here, go there, enjoy this and that," in the 
 highest liberty and with the greatest possible measure 
 of blessedness. Amusements are good so far as they 
 conduce to this health of body and soul, this harmoni-* 
 ous development of all the human powers, and this 
 wise adjustment to the world in which we are to live. 
 That this adjustment will be perfect in the kingdom of 
 God hereafter, we are not permitted to doubt. To- 
 wards the perfect we are bound ever to be working in 
 the conduct of life. 
 
THE DEMAND FOR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE DEMAND FOR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 No creature lives that must not work and may not play. 
 
 Horace Bushnell. 
 
 Where all are holidays, there is no holiday. Chas. Lamb. 
 
 Nature comes sometimes 
 And says, I am ambassador for God. 
 
 Mrs. Browning. 
 
 Fear not thou that a cheerfulness and alacrity in using 
 God's blessings — fear not thou that a moderate delight in 
 music, in conversation, in recreation, shall be imputed to thee 
 for a fault, for it is conceived by the Holy Ghost, and is the 
 offspring of a peaceful conscience. Donne. 
 
 It has been well said that "work and play are the 
 universal ordinances of God for the living races." For 
 most men, work is a necessity, and for the Work a ne _ 
 greater part of their lives. The Utopian cesslt y- 
 idea of a world where one half the day is spent in 
 work, and one half in honest recreation, is still far 
 from being realized. For workers, the need of relax- 
 ation and diversion calls for no argument. The need o{ 
 The more readily conceded is it when our play> 
 own land and the habits of the American people are 
 the subject of thought. What elsewhere may be con- 
 
32 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 ceded as a privilege comes to be urged as a duty 
 when the overstrained powers of body and mind so 
 often cry out against the excess of their burdens, and 
 life is at high pressure the live-long year. For length 
 of days, and comfortable and useful existence, it is 
 not only desirable, but often absolutely needful, that 
 frequent breaks in the routine of daily life occur, and 
 that mind and body be taken quite out of the ordinary 
 grooves of action. Here the wise physiologist and the 
 intelligent moralist are in perfect agreement. 
 
 It becomes, then, chiefly a question of what, where, 
 
 and how much. In respect to this the physiologist and 
 
 the moralist should both be heard. We 
 
 Interpreters 
 
 of the law of can never get a final answer in any other 
 
 work and play. 
 
 way. Either, apart from the other, may be 
 tempted to a one-sided, and so, a vicious deliverance. 
 Men, impatient with the moralist in the matter of 
 amusements, may be constrained to listen to the trust- 
 ed family physician. And he, happening to be indif- 
 ferent to the moral aspects of his patient's life, may 
 very much need to be supplemented by the wise pas- 
 tor, in order to the best results from his own endeavors. 
 In truth, the wise moralist and the wise physiologist 
 ought to be in agreement throughout the length and 
 breadth of this domain ; and let not that man think 
 himself ready for a fair investigation, and ready to 
 abide within the lawful and just bounds of privilege 
 and duty, who is not willing to listen to both, for 
 
THE DEMAND FOR AMUSEMENTS. 33 
 
 God speaks through the one as well as through the 
 other. 
 
 It may be well to notice, in passing, that those who 
 clamor most loudly for amusements, those most con-, 
 cerned for the " overworked masses," are p hl i a nthro- 
 those who do the least work themselves. P r y s of £ th ^ e u n se- 
 Their anxiety for the "dear people" has ments * 
 about it not a little the flavor of a quack medicine ad- 
 vertisement. It is more than surmised that those upon 
 whose hands time hangs heavy for lack of regular and 
 constant occupation, make the greatest demand upon 
 the venders and caterers at the stalls of amusement. 
 
 Of all people in the world, the hardest workers of 
 hand or brain are the most easily diverted and recre- 
 ated. Their diversion lies nearest to them and costs 
 them least. Naturally enough, they who made the 
 loudest outcry against the preaching of the gospel in 
 Ephesus were the makers and venders of silver shrines. 
 And they who have put their money into a theatre or 
 a circus, are interested in all ways to make the public 
 believe that they offer to this age of bent backs and 
 tired brains the panacea which is most needed. Nay, 
 that to turn away so much as to inquire into the merits 
 of their wares, is to stultify one's self. Not infrequent- 
 ly is the dear public smartly berated, as if guilty of a 
 serious moral blunder, for not coming up to the sup- 
 port of some theatrical show, or " moral " circus, or 
 horserace, by a liberal patronage. Lo ! once within 
 
 S 
 
34 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 the lifetime of a generation this rare opportunity came 
 within the horizon of its troubled existence, and was 
 let pass unimproved. Too late, the unappreciative 
 public shall awake to the vanishing wonder of moral 
 culture and side-splitting fun — cure for all sorts of dys- 
 pepsia and tight-laced bigotry. We mean to dispar- 
 age no reasonable plea for sensible recreation. But it 
 is well to understand that the demand is greatly exag- 
 gerated in the interest of the venders of amusements. 
 Conceding that there is a demand which is normal 
 The demand and reasonable, to frown upon which, in the 
 
 for play conce- - . . . 
 
 ded. name of religion, is neither to honor the 
 
 Master, nor to discriminate wisely, let it be said : 
 Sec. i. Child- I * As respects Childhood. It is the 
 age of romp and play. Upon it work can 
 rightly lay, at best, but the slightest restraint. Neither 
 mental nor bodily powers will bear to be tasked with 
 impunity. It is the vegetating period of life. Let the 
 bones harden and the mind absorb what comes in its 
 way, being careful only to prevent deformity in either ; 
 to give a wise direction to both. We may well love 
 the innocent glee of childhood, nor hesitate to sympa- 
 thize with the sentiment of a wise man, when he says, 
 " As play is the forerunner of religion, so religion is 
 the friend of play ; to love its free motion, its happy 
 scenes, its voices of glee, and never, by any needless 
 austerities of control seek to hamper and shorten its 
 pleasures, is enjoined upon us, . . . care being taken to 
 
THE DEMAND FOR AMUSEMENTS. 35 
 
 put them in no connection with vice or any possible 
 excess." And it is wisely added, " There is no possi- 
 bility to childhood of unrestricted play." 
 
 Our concern seems to lie chiefly in a wise regula- 
 tion — to make our way between two ex- Regulation 
 
 ■. 1 . 1 . . . the chief con- 
 
 tremes, one of which is hinted at in the 
 
 cern. 
 
 travesty of one of Watts' hymns, and put by Dickens 
 into the mouth of childhood : 
 
 " In work, work, work, in work alway, 
 Let my first years be past, 
 That I may give for every day 
 Some good account at last;" 
 
 the other extreme, of, if possible, more ruinous ten- 
 dency, and with less of reason in it, is seen in the bur- 
 densome excesses which fashion imposes upon the 
 young innocents. The diversions of a child D i vers i ons 
 ought to be the easiest and simplest of ° ught chil t o h °be 
 affairs ; but what hard work is often made simple " 
 of them. Looking into a Broadway toy-store, one is 
 astonished at the amount of capital and inventive brain 
 invested to provide entertainment for the little folks; 
 and by chance dropping into the nursery of some well- 
 to-do family, is again impressed by the fact that ad- 
 vanced civilization has made the bringing forward of a 
 family of children a burdensome thing. " It is seldom 
 dreamed that the true pleasures of children are cheap 
 and natural." 
 
 It is with toys as with reading for the little folks, 
 
36 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 the excess of to-day over that furnished fifty years ago, 
 Often bur- nas Dotn its bright and its shady side. It 
 is by no means an unmixed good. There 
 comes to mind the sharp rejoinder of an eminent phy- 
 sician, of whom we once asked, What shall we provide 
 for our crippled child's entertainment ? For substance 
 he replied, " Let him alone. It is you that want these 
 things, not the child. Arab children never cry, and 
 they have none of these modern appliances for diver- 
 sion. Turn him out, and let him dig in the dirt and 
 shift for himself." It was wisely said to another gen- 
 eration, " Only furnish them with a few simple and 
 harmless materials, and a little but not too much leis- 
 ure, and they will manufacture their own pleasure with 
 more skill and success and satisfaction than they will 
 receive from all that your money can purchase." 
 
 Does diversion lie so near the heart and hand of a 
 child, at little cost to anybody, only give the opportu- 
 nity? At any rate, let it be accepted, theirs is the 
 playtime of life. Let recreation be wholesome and 
 simple — a tonic to body and soul. 
 
 But, alas ! this by no means describes many a 
 child's entertainment. Quite too often are not only 
 the laws of health set at defiance, but the dear creatures 
 are put upon the stilts of fashion, in kid gloves, jewels, 
 silks, and late hours, to ape adult manners ; and every 
 simple, childish, and natural thing is banished from 
 sight. 
 
THE DEMAND FOR AMUSEMENTS. 37 
 
 Not many years since the metropolitan papers gave 
 an elaborate account of a fashionable children's party 
 in a neighboring city. The silly rivalries of " Baby bails." 
 mothers in decking out their darlings, the jewels and 
 laces they wore, the stiff etiquette they endured, their 
 arrival out when they ought to have been in bed, the 
 outlandish supper they ate at a more outlandish hour, 
 were duly sketched. These things had been to the 
 unsophisticated like the wonder-land of the Arabian 
 Nights, but for the matter-of-fact air of the details of 
 time, place, names, and so on; and withal, for the ap- 
 parent implication that this affair was exceptional only 
 in the profusion of jewels, laces, and other finery. 
 
 We are assured that " high life " both smiles upon 
 and apes these barbarous fashions, in which both mo- 
 rality, science, and common sense are scouted, and 
 nothing but vanity and ambition to outshine one an- 
 other are consulted. This is indeed a slaughter of the 
 innocents, of the guilt of which all sensible and Chris- 
 tian people should instantly wash their hands. This is 
 a matter of so great importance, that we are constrained 
 to add the judgment of a gifted author: Hannah More. 
 " 'To everything there is a season,' was said before the 
 invention of baby balls. This modern device is a sort 
 of triple conspiracy against the innocence, the health, 
 and the happiness of children. They step at once from 
 the nursery to the ballroom ; and by a change of hab- 
 its as new as it is preposterous, are thinking of dressing 
 
38 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 themselves, at an age when they used to be dressing 
 their dolls. ... To behold Liliputian coquettes pro- 
 jecting dresses, studying colors, assorting ribands, mix- 
 ing flowers, and choosing feathers; their little hearts 
 beating with hopes about partners and fears about 
 rivals ; to see their fresh cheeks pale after the midnight 
 supper, their aching heads and unbraced nerves dis- 
 qualifying the little languid beings for the next day's 
 task ; and to hear the grave apology that it 's owing to 
 the wine, the crowd, the heated room of the last night's 
 ball ; all this, I say, would really be as ludicrous, if the 
 mischief of the thing did not take off from the merri- 
 ment of it, as any of the ridiculous and preposterous 
 disproportions in the diverting hands of Captain Lem- 
 uel Gulliver." 
 
 Mrs. Browning stirred the heart of England with 
 her " Cry of the Children," as did Hood with his "Song 
 of the Shirt," to redress the wrongs of her injured 
 ones. It needs the pen of burning satire to scourge 
 this dreary fashionable monstrosity, whether in the 
 shape of parties or dances or theatricals, out of the do- 
 main of childhood, and let the era of simple, unsophis- 
 ticated childishness in childhood come back again to 
 gladden this arid waste, and make the diversion of our 
 children sensible. 
 
 Section 2. 2. As respects Youth, the case is dif- 
 
 Youth. ferent. Play now begins to retire more and 
 
 more into the background, and work begins to come 
 
THE DEMAND FOR AMUSEMENTS. 39 
 
 to the front. Education and discipline take the young 
 learner in hand to train a vigorous body and mind, 
 and give direction to an active brain and a formative 
 character. It would seem to be self-evident that, out 
 of school and study hours, our youth may claim the 
 privilege of healthful diversion ; and that of these, ath- 
 letic sports and the gymnasium may, for the average 
 boy or girl, claim the first place, and the library next. 
 This is not only well for the boy and the girl ; it also 
 removes from our practical Christianity the seeming to 
 throw contempt upon what our Lord speaks The temple 
 of as " the temple of the body," and which of thebody ' 
 one has called "just the grandest temple in the uni- 
 verse," " the Lord's presence-chamber," " the portion 
 of common dust cut off to be the enclosure of a soul." 
 The Greek has been called " the model pagan of the 
 world." And the model Christian will never be seen 
 till we learn to engraft upon our superior ethics and 
 the divinely spiritual gifts of the gospel the highest 
 pagan culture. Fortunately the department of physi- 
 cal training affords at once a cultus and an entertain- 
 ment. It meets a bodily, a mental, and a moral need 
 in the shape of a winsome diversion, in the open air, 
 or under wholesome restraints in inviting surroundings. 
 And the book or some domestic game is always wait- 
 ing to occupy a leisure moment around the fireside, 
 diverting, entertaining, and, if we so please, at the same 
 time instructive. 
 
40 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 Moreover, in our day a wide field is open to youth 
 in scientific and mechanical pursuits, in amateur art, 
 and the study of natural history, at once diverting and 
 ennobling. There is no occasion for the freedom of 
 the streets, for late hours, or feverish excitements, in 
 order to the happy and salutary adjustment of work 
 and play, on the basis of sound morals and a true 
 science. 
 
 Sec. 3 . Ma- 3- As respects Mature Life, generaliza- 
 tureLife. \\oxl$> used in reference to Childhood and 
 
 Youth here require further qualification. The need of 
 diversion will be far more variously felt, the method of 
 
 Methods of supplying it no less varied. Many more 
 play- will find all they need in a change of occu- 
 
 pation, from graver to lighter, from books to handi- 
 craft, from handicraft to books, pictures, music, a quiet 
 stroll, the dip of the oars, a dash in the saddle, a drive in 
 the country, a romp with the children, a domestic game. 
 Let us not be too hard upon those who do not know 
 how to play, or who feel no need of it — to whom time 
 is too precious and life too short to allow of recreation, 
 except such as is found in a change of occupation; or 
 who have learned to turn a ramble or a vacation into 
 the study of the rocks or the flora and fauna of a dis- 
 trict of country. It is here that the training of child- 
 hood and youth reports itself as truly as in the busi- 
 ness career. The resources of men and women for a 
 leisure hour are a test of quality and quantity of being, 
 
 
THE DEMAND FOR AMUSEMENTS. 41 
 
 from which many, in their utter poverty, may well 
 draw back. For such let the acrobats and clowns be 
 called in. 
 
 The Christian church should be ready in its ideal 
 of life to make a place for amusements. We The attitude 
 may not be able to go all the way with Bur- of the church - 
 ton, when he says, "Let the world have their May- 
 games, wakes, Whitsunds ; their dancing and concerts ; 
 their puppet-shows, hobby-horses, taboos, bagpipes, 
 balls, barley-breaks, and whatever sports and recrea- 
 tions please them best, provided they be followed with 
 discretion." We may not be able to see the wisdom 
 of trying to " capture from the devil," as is said, all that 
 the world runs after ; but, at any rate, let us not think, 
 nor give other people occasion to think, that we regard 
 all amusements as wicked; let it never so much as 
 seem that " Christianity is a dog Cerberus, barking at 
 the gates of festivity and galling the neck of innocent 
 pleasures." 
 
 " Provided they be followed with discretion" — there's 
 the pinch. Who will draw for us, or, better, how shall 
 any man draw for himself, the discreet line ? Are we 
 ready to let the physiologist and the moralist, both, 
 speak to the questions of What? and Where? and How 
 far? 
 
42 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TREND TOWARDS DISSIPATION. 
 
 Too much of innocent amusement is not innocent, but 
 even morally bad. Horace Bushnell. 
 
 The object of all recreation is to increase our capacity for 
 work, to keep the blood pure, and the brain bright, and the 
 temper kindly and sweet. R. W. Dale. 
 
 If all amusements were dull, there would be no 
 occasion for this essay. If those who enter into them, 
 just as they are, were commonly self-restrained and 
 careful to keep within the limits of " a wise discretion," 
 there would be far less division of sentiment in regard 
 Play a res- to them. But play is a restive steed, not 
 tive steed. easily kept within the fence of lawful re- 
 straint. And they who attempt to ride find themselves 
 sharing" her lawless pranks, and being carried beyond 
 the limits which have the sanction of the physiologist 
 and the moralist. 
 
 Fanny Kemble was extremely fond of dancing. On 
 one occasion she wrote in her journal : "I fear I am 
 very unreasonable about it, for my conscience smote 
 me the other day when I came to consider that the 
 night before, although my mother stayed at a ball with 
 me till three in the morning, I was by no means gra- 
 
THE TREND TOWARDS DISSIPATION. 43 
 
 cious in my obedience to her request that I should 
 spare myself for my work." 
 
 In any careful investigation of this subject, for our 
 own guidance or that of others, this trend of the more 
 popular forms of amusement towards dissipation and 
 perversion must be considered and noted. Certain 
 forms of recreation carry within themselves Limitations. 
 their own limitations. They have not sufficient fasci- 
 nation to long hold the mind captive ; or they are un- 
 social in their character ; or, calling for physical exer- 
 tion, the body reports when it has had enough and 
 signals a halt. Not so of many others. From the 
 dawn of civilization, in all times, among all races, the 
 ever popular forms of amusement have led Popu i ar 
 into excesses with almost absolute certain- diEkof 5m- 
 ty. We are concerned with this trend to- troL 
 wards dissipation, because, as Dr. Crosby well says, 
 " Only as a recreation can amusements be defended, 
 sustained, and used." When we have uncontrolled, 
 passed that limit, we are on forbidden asin> 
 ground; and trifling with dissipation is mischievous 
 and sinful. 
 
 Among the Greeks and Romans their national 
 games and festivals ran into excess with fatal procliv- 
 ity and shocking results. Their number 
 
 • c , m 1 1 r Greek and 
 
 was in excess 01 the possible need 01 an Roman excess- 
 
 es - 
 industrious people, controlled by any just 
 
 sense of the purpose for which life is given. The prod- 
 
44 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 igality of expense is incredible, except when we remem- 
 ber that the bulk of the people were slaves and served 
 the few, who were their masters. That which began 
 with some show of decency degenerated often into the 
 extreme of licentiousness, and ministered to the basest 
 passions and the destruction of every true interest. 
 
 Often for days and weeks together they absorbed 
 the public mind, making men oblivious of every moral 
 obligation and deaf to the claims of humanity. At one 
 time Rome, according to Gibbon, had three thousand 
 female dancers and as many singers. In times of fam- 
 ine, when strangers and even professors of the liberal 
 arts were banished the city, the dancers were allowed 
 to remain. Their performances were characterized by 
 "licentious farce, effeminate music, and splendid pa- 
 geanty." The banquetings of the festival of the god- 
 dess Flora often descended into the depths of profli- 
 gacy. 
 
 Nor can it be said that public festivals, theatricals, 
 
 races, and the like, improved in this respect as they 
 
 travelled westward and down the stream of time. 
 
 Michelet says of the three days' festivals of Charles 
 
 VI. at St. Denys : " Each day began with a 
 
 France in the , .. , .. . , 
 
 time of Charles Mass and attending church ceremonies, and 
 ended at night by a masked ball, which was 
 a true wake of Venus. Fantastic and immoral dresses 
 were impudently worn, many a damsel forgot herself 
 and many a husband suffered." 
 
 
THE TREND TOWARDS DISSIPATION. 45 
 
 No whit less reprehensible were the amusements of 
 
 the English court in many a notable period. The 
 
 stimulants were of the strongest, often of 
 
 the basest sort; and the influence of the court and coun- 
 try. 
 capital and of court life travelled out into 
 
 the rural districts and among the common people, for 
 
 good or evil — a thing only more true now than then. 
 
 No long time ago Dr. Dale of Birmingham said of 
 the races of England : " Horseracing has become a 
 mere pretext for gambling; and if a tithe English races 
 of what is reported of Doncaster and Ep- demoralizin s- 
 som during the race-week is to be believed, our ' Isth- 
 mian' games are disgraced by drunkenness and abom- 
 inable profligacy." This would seem amply to justify 
 a member of Parliament, though a man of the world, 
 with no predilections for religion, in saying that in his 
 judgment there was no institution that inflicted greater 
 moral injury on the community than horseracing ; and 
 that sooner than subscribe a single guinea to the 'mem- 
 bers' plate' to encourage it, he would forfeit his seat." 
 Dr. Dale adds, what will bear thinking of: " You can- 
 not see the horses run without becoming a party to the 
 gambling and to the vices worse than gambling which 
 races everywhere encourage." 
 
 The same is fast becoming true of the regatta and 
 of professional ball-playing on both sides The same 
 
 r 1 ^ r ' 1 thin § true ln 
 
 of the sea. Our country furnishes no excep- America. 
 tion to the universal drift towards excess of racing, 
 
46 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 gaming, theatricals, and festival occasions of almost 
 every sort. These are things which have seldom, and 
 never for long, been held within safe limits as to the 
 time and expense demanded, or the moral influence 
 exerted. 
 
 Just now we have upon us a " Pedestriamania," 
 showing us how so simple and wholesome a thing as 
 Pedestriama- walking may be carried to shocking excess 
 York a n n d 2s* by a *" ew P ersons > an d encouraged to a lu- 
 where. dicrous and immoral degree by thousands 
 
 of spectators, and innumerable people watching bulle- 
 tin-boards, and reading closely-printed columns of sen- 
 sational newspapers. " Sixty thousand dollars gate- 
 money in a single week to see three men in tights walk 
 around a sawdust-track ; a bar, four hundred feet long, 
 with forty bartenders, dispensing 'fuddling beer and 
 maddening whiskey' for one hundred and forty-four 
 hours without a stop ! Hundreds of ginmills posting 
 hourly bulletins of the match, and an amount of drink- 
 ing and all-night street-roaming which was simply 
 frightful. The whole police force and a regiment of 
 troops, held in readiness to suppress a possible riot :" 
 this is the picture, true to life, in the city of New York, 
 in the year of our Lord, 1878, which it might be well 
 to put alongside some of the demoralizing spectacles 
 of the ancients, and ask, How much worse were they 
 whom we take it upon ourselves to criticise as living 
 in a barbarous age, a people upon whom the light of 
 
 
THE TREND TOWARDS DISSIPATION. 47 
 
 our Christianity was but beginning to dawn, and for 
 whom our boasted science had done nothing ? 
 
 The right or wrong of engaging in these things, in 
 themselves considered, is not now under discussion; 
 but the fact that so innocent and healthful a This trend 
 thing as walking, rowing, driving, a social alarmin s- 
 festivity, or an evening party, may be thus perverted, 
 yea, is often thus perverted, and carried beyond all 
 bounds of reason or decency, throwing people off their 
 balance, mastering their judgment, and leading them 
 down the slippery paths of dissipation and even 
 profligacy, is something to arrest attention, and cer- 
 tainly to be taken into account when asking, How 
 shall I order my steps in the domain of recreation? 
 How shall I guide my family aright ? What ought the 
 church of Christ to do in these premises ? So soon as 
 an amusement, being innocent in itself, is The halting . 
 carried over from recreation into dissipa- pIace * 
 tion, or is perverted to immoral uses, or becomes closely 
 mixed up with immorality, it is time for anybody who 
 means to respect the laws of God, either in nature or in 
 the Bible, to quit ; and not only to quit, but to take his 
 family out of it, and with his friends seek or institute a 
 more wholesome diversion, and this both for personal 
 safety and as a protest against a social evil of fascina- 
 ting and dangerous tendency. 
 
48 AMUSEMENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TESTS. 
 
 We can insist on entertainment that gives the nobler part 
 of us some exercise, and declare that we find that to be un- 
 utterably wearisome which seeks its triumph in a perpetual 
 grin. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 I believe in reverence for the deliberate judgments of 
 good men ; what they have generally shrank from and con- 
 demned, must have had some evil in it. R. W. Dale. 
 
 Our amusements, like all things else that enter into 
 the warp and woof of life by our free consent, are 
 amenable to certain tests which science and morality 
 always insist upon applying to human life and conduct. 
 
 Things to be God has revealed his will in our bodies, in 
 conceded. Qur sp i r i tua i nature, and in the life and 
 
 words of Christ. It is our business to glorify him in 
 our spirit and in our body which are his. The law of 
 life for us is this : " Whether, therefore, ye eat, or drink, 
 or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." So 
 much as this must be conceded in order to any profit- 
 able discussion of our theme. The range of this prin- 
 
 Universai ciple is as broad as human life. There are 
 law- no conscious moments, nor settled pur- 
 
 poses, nor cherished loves, nor clamorous appetites, 
 nor ruling habits of any man's life; no walks of busi- 
 
TESTS. 49 
 
 ness or pleasure, of any sort ; no retreats on earth or 
 in heaven, upon which this inspired utterance is not 
 meant to break with the authority of a universal law. 
 The human soul is bound to hear and heed it. Not 
 Paris, nor Berlin, but the eternal God is back of this 
 emphatic code of life. If the spirit of fashion has car- 
 ried us away from it, we are bound, as soon as may be, 
 to get back to nature and to God. 
 
 Amusements, to be lawful, must recreate. If they 
 push the jaded body still farther down the declivity of 
 exhaustion, if they keep up the tension of Test No, i. 
 mind and sensibility, if they excite and at the same 
 time exhaust what is left of bodily and spiritual vigor, 
 then they do not recreate — they are the occasion of a 
 hurtful dissipation. They have become a snare, and 
 indulgence is a sin. To be lawful, amusements should 
 send us back to our work fresher and stronger in mind 
 and body, with a firmer tread, a clearer eye, a steadier 
 hand, a more elastic spirit, than we had before. They 
 are not an end in themselves ; they are to minister to 
 the supreme ends of life — the upbuilding of character 
 and capacity for doing good. Let us not call that 
 recreation which instead of " increasing health and 
 vigor, produces weariness and exhaustion." 
 
 They must also be free from the taint of impurity. 
 " If any recreation, however pleasant, in- Test No. 2. 
 volves a clear breach of moral laws, it must be bad for 
 all men, under all circumstances. Or, if, though 
 
 7 
 
50 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 harmless in itself, immorality has become inseparably- 
 connected with it, every good man will avoid and con- 
 demn it." These are the sober and just words of a 
 thoughtful man. The position is thoroughly defensible. 
 The supreme concerns of men are inseparable from a 
 pure morality. To imperil them, either by pleasurable 
 gratification, or the lust of gain, is not to live soberly, 
 righteously, and godly in this present world. Amuse- 
 ments, unsuited to a devotional frame of mind, or which 
 unfit for the essential duties of a Christian life, or whose 
 trend is uniformly, even though not of necessity, to a 
 breach of physical or moral law, are matters to be 
 considered farther on. 
 
 A third test of the lawful in amusements is that 
 they be " followed with discretion." To be temperate 
 Test No. 3. in all things is our bounden duty. The 
 regular and orderly habits of life, which lie at the 
 foundation of health and of success in any worldly 
 calling, as well as the growth of a sturdy virtue, must 
 not be interfered with. We are here concerned with 
 quantity quite as much as with quality. The end of 
 all recreation is finely put, as meant "to increase our 
 capacity for work, to keep the blood pure and the 
 brain bright, and the temper kindly and sweet." Those 
 amusements, however wholesome in themselves, must 
 become a snare which are allowed to engross an undue 
 amount of time or thought. So doing they may 
 easily become to us the chief end of existence, and 
 
TESTS. 51 
 
 interfere with our duties to ourselves, our homes, and 
 our neighbors. If a man can do more and better work 
 five days in the week, for taking one in the saddle, or 
 beating a mountain stream, by all means let him do it. 
 And for the same reason let him abstain from those 
 sports which turn night into day, or which, if entered 
 at all, are certain to become engrossing. If one hour 
 answers the purpose of recreation, it is a sin to take 
 two. These are some of the considerations which a 
 wise discretion must cover. 
 
 There must also be a due regard to expense. A 
 costly amusement must be objectionable on all grounds. 
 Few can afford them, and there are none Test No. 4- 
 who cannot better use the funds at their disposal. All 
 the more, as genuine recreation can always be attained 
 at comparatively little expense. It should not be for- 
 gotten that the immediate appointments of God for our 
 recreation are sleep, the rest of a hallowed Sabbath, 
 and the relief which the change of the seasons brings. 
 Other things being equal, the less expense in the recrea- 
 tion the better. 
 
 If to any person of wealth this seems a trifling 
 matter, let him be reminded of One, who, with all 
 things at His command, lived simply and Ex ense no 
 frugally, and who taught us to make to our- even^o^the 
 selves friends of the mammon of unright- wealthy - 
 eousness. He must be living in sad neglect of the 
 signs of the times and the calls of Providence, who can 
 
52 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 indifferently spend money on the vanity of a passing 
 hour, in rivalry of display, or in excessive indulgence 
 in a favorite pastime. If many seem not to know, or 
 not to care, that ignorance and want, physical and 
 moral degradation, are holding in thrall the larger half 
 of the human race, and that they are called upon to 
 pour light into their darkness, and lend a hand to 
 loosen these appalling chains, they are not the ones 
 whose example may safely influence any one desiring to 
 so use his stewardship as to answer a good conscience 
 and enable him to meet his final account with com- 
 posure. Of all ways of spending money foolishly, 
 extravagance in amusements seems the most inex- 
 cusable. 
 
 The annual cost of amusing the world is a matter 
 well calculated to awaken serious thought. It cannot 
 
 here be entered upon farther than to suggest 
 amusing the that just so far as the church of Christ 
 
 links its influence to swell the receipts of 
 costly and dissipating amusements she squanders the 
 Lord's money and fails to realize what stewardship 
 means. The receipts of the Paris Opera for the sea- 
 son 1878-9 were reported at $700,000, and those 
 of the Opera Comique at $340,000. Mr. Irving in 
 the London Lyceum took $180,000 the same season. 
 Mr. Ruskin notes the cost of the Covent Garden 
 theatre in one year in three departments: the vocal 
 cost £33,349, the ballet ,£8,105, tne orchestra ,£10,048; 
 
TESTS. 53 
 
 in all $257,510. In the London theatres four thousand 
 persons are employed, and the money spent in them 
 amounts to $1,750,000. The seating capacity of the 
 chief Paris theatres was put no long time ago at 15,550, 
 at a price per seat from twelve francs down, and the 
 demand is so great that it is difficult to find one unoc- 
 cupied. To come nearer home — the Mapleson Opera 
 Company's receipts in Chicago were nearly $60,000 in 
 two weeks; and John McCulloch drew nearly $1,500 
 from the pockets of Detroit people in a single night. 
 In other cities of the second or third class in size, it is 
 no uncommon thing for a week of opera or tragedy to 
 draw from the purses of members of the church sums 
 that would be thought astonishingly liberal if given by 
 these same persons to help to redeem Africa's lost mill- 
 ions, and lift a continent up nearer to God ; and this in 
 the last quarter of a century of missions such as the 
 world never saw before. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin forcibly says, " We talk much of money's 
 worth, yet perhaps may one day be surprised to find 
 that what the wise and charitable European public 
 gave to one night's rehearsal of ' Hypocrisy,' to one 
 hour's pleasant warbling of ' Linda ' or ' Lucia,' would 
 have filled a whole Alpine valley with happiness, and 
 poured the waves of harvest over the famine of many 
 a Lammermoor." 
 
 The church is to be held responsible for this prodi- 
 gal waste of money only so far as she goes with the 
 
54 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 multitude in it. We could wish that that meant far less 
 than it does. 
 
 It seems also in order to say — though this test can- 
 not be pressed on the same ground as those above- 
 Test No. 5. named — that our recreations should ap- 
 prove themselves to the sober judgment of the wise 
 and good. Not that the judgments of other men are 
 to be a law for us ; but surely something is lacking in 
 him who has no reverence for "the deliberate judg- 
 ments of good men." If certain amusements have 
 been uniformly disapproved by the wise 
 the good enti- and s:ood, men reverenced and respected in 
 
 tied to weight. ° r . 
 
 all other departments 01 thought and action, 
 century after century, it is at least well to halt before 
 them, and inquire on what grounds they turned their 
 back upon these things, and endeavored to break their 
 hold upon their votaries. What such men have gen- 
 erally shrunk from and condemned, Mr. Dale well says, 
 " must have had some evil in it." The conclusion 
 would seem to be just. It is quite too much to assume 
 that what, by far the larger part of the Christian church 
 — ministry and laity — has united to repudiate, is an 
 innocent and guileless thing. With some this consid- 
 eration will weigh more than with others. There are 
 
 those who will treat it with disdain — what 
 
 Sometimes . .. 
 
 treated with care they for the judgments 01 wise and 
 good - men ? What is it to them that cer- 
 tain amusements uniformly thrive best when the church 
 
TESTS. SS 
 
 is farthest from Christ, and retire from the field when 
 Christians are most engaged, prayerful, and earnest, or 
 are outgrown and become distasteful, as believers grow 
 in grace ; " they will judge for themselves." Indeed, 
 they must. This point is not pressed as though any 
 body of wise and good men had the right to impose a 
 yoke on their fellows; and nobody is just to himself or 
 true to his liberty as a man, who does so-and-so simply 
 because in the judgment of others he ought. But be- 
 fore those amusements upon which the deliberate judg- 
 ments of good men meet, as in a focus, for reprehen- 
 sion, any man, seriously in earnest to be right and do 
 right, will halt long enough to inquire whether with 
 reason — with God and nature on their side — they took 
 their position, and held it, essentially unchanged age 
 after age. If, then, in conscience bound to set their ver- 
 dict aside, it will be done in a spirit respectful to the 
 past, and tenderly solicitous not to imperil for any the 
 present and the future. These tests are not many, but 
 they are believed to be essential. Dissent from them 
 is not anticipated. Their application is a part of the 
 serious business of our lives. 
 
56 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE. 
 
 Men do not serve God with honesty and heartiness, and 
 they do not love him greatly, but stand upon terms with him, 
 and study how much is lawful, how far they may go, and 
 which is their utmost stretch of lawful, being afraid to do 
 more for God and their souls than is simply and indispensa- 
 bly necessary ; and oftentimes they tie religion and their own 
 lusts together, and the one entangles the other and both are 
 made less discernible and practicable. Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 Thus far we have made no distinctively Christian 
 issue. To so much must a man be held who is willing 
 to allow the physiologist and the moralist to be his 
 guide ; that is to say, natural religion holds a man to 
 so much as this. 
 
 As a Christian, a man may rightly say, As a matter 
 of ethics merely, what is fit and proper for anybody is 
 
 The ethical ^ t an< ^ P r0 P er f° r me - Christ does not CUr- 
 ground. ta «i m y r igh ts } n God's creation. I am the 
 
 child and heir of the Great Father ; liberty is mine in 
 the widest and best sense. Every creature of God — 
 not every invention of man — is good, and to be receiv- 
 ed with thanksgiving. Not everything that offers itself 
 to my acceptance has the impress of God's hand and 
 heart upon it. Yet " all things are yours," says the 
 apostle Paul ; all, without reservation. Some things are 
 
THE CHRISTIAN A TTITUDE. S 7 
 
 mine only to put under foot, and show how much more 
 royal and blessed a thing is the river of God's pleas- 
 ures — the hills and streams, the milk and honey of Ca- 
 naan — than the fleshpots of Egypt. " Godliness is not 
 the setting up of an antagonism between man and 
 God's creation, but rather the discovery of a harmony 
 between man and God himself, and all that is of God." 
 " Godliness is profitable unto all things." It has the 
 promise of two worlds. A Christian ought to walk 
 with uplifted, but reverent heart, as the child of such a 
 Father — the joint-heir with such an Elder Brother. 
 
 It ought then to be insisted upon that, as a matter 
 of pure ethics, the Christian has a right to do what any 
 man may rightly do : go any whither that 
 
 J & . J & / ■ The abstract 
 
 any one may rightly go, and stay as long, right the same 
 No one may judge him in this. He stands, 
 on this ground, amenable to his own Master. It may 
 not be expedient, it may not indicate a close affinity 
 with the spirit of Christ, to insist upon one's rights at 
 all times ; but that is a man's own matter, to be settled 
 in the forum of his own conscience by such light and 
 aid as he can get, and not by imposition from without. 
 
 Moreover, the ethical right is a thing for ecclesias- 
 tical bodies to keep in mind in their deliverances on 
 this and kindred subjects, and in the treatment of all 
 cases of conscience, from the pulpit or otherwise. 
 
 And if it be insisted that a man ought not to go to 
 the outer limits of his rights and exact the uttermost 
 
 8 
 
58 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 farthing, it should be clearly seen why not, and let each 
 case stand on its own merits. 
 
 There is in this world a body of people solemnly 
 pledged to go back to first principles ; to get back to 
 More ex- nature having got back to God, and to take 
 Ech than of tne i r inspirations of duty, and their law as 
 others. tQ t ^j n g S fa anc } p rQ per to be done, straight 
 
 from their Father in heaven — never from the spirit of 
 antichrist, never from men essentially worldly, sensual, 
 or atheistic. They are baptized into the order of re- 
 deemed manhood in Christ Jesus. They are not only 
 to keep within the limits of their rights, but to put on 
 Christ. They are the disciples of One who pleased not 
 himself. They are supposed to be in line with those 
 who, royal children of liberty that they are, have learn- 
 ed that rights are often to be waived in due obedience 
 to the law of the new life within them, and for the sake 
 of the higher liberty of regarding the weakness and 
 frailty of others. 
 
 For the Christian man there come in here two lim- 
 itations of the natural right. The first is the limitation 
 imposed by, 
 
 I. THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST. 
 
 It cannot be that a man thoroughly sympathetic 
 
 The new life w i tn Christ can insist upon participating in 
 
 has its own law. ever y thing not clearly shown to be wrong. 
 
 His own spiritual taste will recoil from such an asser- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN A TTITUDE. 59 
 
 tion of his rights. For many things, in themselves law- 
 ful, he will have no taste. He will outgrow them. He 
 will be occupied with matters too high and sacred and 
 satisfying to need or relish them ; and if he indulges, it 
 will be evident that it is simply that he may not seem 
 churlish or ascetic or selfish in his higher pursuits. 
 
 The truth we aim to express is clearly and forcibly 
 stated by Dr. Bushnell, in a very helpful sermon enti- 
 tled, " Free to Amusements, but too Free to Need 
 them." The text is from Paul's first epistle to the 
 Corinthians : " If any of them that believe not bid you 
 to a feast, and ye be disposed to go, whatsoever is set 
 before you, eat, asking no questions for conscience' 
 sake." The question of the right to go is not here 
 raised ; it is assumed. The duty to go, if at all, with- 
 out a doubting conscience, is insisted upon. But con- 
 sider how the preacher speaks of the higher kind of 
 liberty in Christ: " Thus He drops in, as it were in un- 
 dertone, at the middle of this sentence, this very brief 
 but significant clause, ' and ye be disposed to go ' — 
 putting, I conceive, a partly sad cadence into the words, 
 as if saying inwardly, 'I trust not many will be so dis- 
 posed ; for the dear love of God, in the glorious liberty 
 of our discipleship, ought to be a liberty too full and 
 sweet and positive and blessed to allow any such han- 
 kering after questionable pleasures and light-minded 
 gayeties. In that we are free, and in this more free ; 
 too free to want the other kind of freedom, or care any- 
 
60 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 thing for it.'" Herein is a great fact of the spiritual 
 life, which is trifled with only at cost to its vigor, fruit- 
 fulness, and peace. He further says, "To claim all 
 the justifiable amenities, and go as far in them as moral 
 safety may allow, they must descend a long way into 
 the spirit, as into the law of the world, and be really of 
 it themselves. These things we say are innocent ; but 
 they are not innocent to them because they bring down 
 a spirit lifted far above into better affinities and nobler 
 ranges of good." 
 
 How much there is in these truthful words, which 
 the church of our time seems quite to overlook, and 
 they in particular who are so zealous to see the church 
 "capture the devil's artillery" and sanctify all the 
 pleasures ot the world. This can never be done until 
 the process of growth in the spiritual life is reversed, 
 without indeed abandoning all distinctively Christian 
 ground. Many of these things the disciple of Christ 
 drops because he has no taste for them ; his new-born 
 liberty itself carries him away from them. It must be 
 so : "We have meat to eat which is better. We sit in 
 heavenly places, having it ever as our prime distinction 
 there, that we would rather fast with our Master than 
 be feasted without him, and would even willingly die 
 to behold his face." Nothing will so certainly win the 
 world as this. We gain nothing, we invariably lose, 
 by going over to its principles and practices ; we need 
 rather to show that there is a more excellent and satis- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE. 61 
 
 fying way, and, by so doing, to conquer. A more 
 "positive loyalty to God and goodness" would help 
 us greatly. 
 
 The second limitation comes from, 
 
 II. OUR RELATIONS TO OTHERS. 
 We have to remember that no man liveth to him- 
 self; that while all lawful things are lawful, not all such 
 things are expedient. This principle finds Re i a tions to 
 lofty utterance in the words of Paul when, ° urf eiiow-men. 
 having the right, and feeling himself free to all the 
 market-places of Corinth, considering what might be 
 the influence upon some weak brother if he chanced 
 to see his spiritual teacher and guide eating meat 
 which had been offered to idols, he said, " If meat 
 makes my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while 
 the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.' ' 
 This is like the Lord Jesus. It is sublimely unselfish ; 
 and to be a Christian is to have the mind of Christ. 
 Paul might have said, " An idol is nothing to me. It 
 does not hurt me to sit at meat in an idol temple. I 
 pay the idol no homage. I stand on my rights. If 
 others cannot do as I do, let them look to it. Is my 
 liberty to be fettered by the weak conscience of an- 
 other ?" How much nobler to say, " Having conscious 
 liberty to go or stay, I exercise the higher liberty of 
 abstinence, seeking not my own profit, but the profit 
 of many, that they may be saved." 
 
62 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 To the mind of the apostle, things lawful in them- 
 selves, or indifferent, by reason of their associations, 
 may be put into a new category, and necessitate a dif- 
 ferent attitude — not so much for one's own sake, as by 
 virtue of the possible influence upon others. We need 
 not to be taught, I hope, that there is a liberty of ab- 
 stinence and self-denial in things lawful, which is far 
 sweeter, in the circumstances, than indulgence; only 
 let it be done in liberty, as of love, and not by imposi- 
 tion from without. This is very like the New Testa- 
 ment type of Christian life. We confess to an admira- 
 tion for it that grows with our years. 
 
 The application of this principle is very broad and 
 very essential — certainly not less important in the realm 
 of amusements than elsewhere. And to press it upon 
 the attention and conscience of the church may be 
 more persuasive than any number of prohibitions 
 aimed against certain popular amusements. 
 
 Consider how, as a phenomenon of life, we are all 
 the time acting upon the principle of limitation. A 
 door of lawful entrance stands open to a 
 pie of limita- hundred men, in regard to food, drink, 
 reading, work, play. Possibly one in a 
 hundred can use his liberty to the full. As for the 
 rest there is every degree of limitation, if each for him- 
 self is to be temperate in all things. So much would be 
 true of the individual if he lived alone. 
 
 But we live in families and in social relations. In 
 
THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE. 63 
 
 the things we allow we have to consider those among 
 whom we live. Parents put themselves under limita- 
 tion for the sake of their children in mat- In the famil 
 ters of diet, reading, amusements, that, as and m societ y- 
 far as possible, what comes into the house may be free 
 to all the house. The apostle says we are to carry this 
 principle into church-life — the greater household of 
 faith. " If thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now 
 walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with 
 thy meat for whom Christ died. Let not your good 
 be evil spoken of." " It is good neither to eat flesh, 
 nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother 
 stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak." 
 
 Observe that the practical working of this principle 
 carries with it its own limitation. It shall not be al- 
 lowed to obstruct the ordinary and necessary workings 
 of human life. No man full of crotchets and conceits 
 shall be allowed to impose a yoke upon reasonable lib- 
 erty in lawful things. But flesh offered to idols is not 
 necessary to life. There are other foods in abundance. 
 Wine is not an essential beverage. There are drinks 
 enough if wine is abandoned. Certain popular and 
 fashionable amusements are not essential to health or 
 happiness. If they were quit altogether there would 
 still be enough to meet every rational demand. This 
 being so, admitting that to the individual conscience 
 these things are lawful, the good of abstinence to the 
 world at large far outweighs the good of indulgence 
 
64 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 to the individual ; therefore, for Christ's sake and the 
 sake of our brethren, let these things go. Destroy- 
 not him with thy meat — not essential to life — for whom 
 Christ died. It is not expedient in such a case to use 
 our liberty to the full. Another law — the law of be- 
 nevolence — comes in ; and " the rule of love is higher 
 than the law of liberty." Perfect love insures perfect 
 liberty, as free and glad in what it foregoes for Christ's 
 sake as in what it enjoys. 
 
 Possibly this principle of limitation may have some- 
 thing to do with the emphatic deliverances of ecclesias- 
 tical bodies against theatre-going, promiscuous dan- 
 cing, card-playing, wine-drinking, and, strange to say, 
 gambling, lotteries, horseracing, and such like. How 
 humiliating a thing it is that such resolutions must be 
 spread upon the minutes of religious assemblies — that 
 that there should be any need, as against gambling, 
 lotteries, and other immoralities ! 
 
 An essential immorality is a thing to be condemned 
 on its own account ; but, as to wine-drinking, it is not 
 a lkation su PP oSe d, for instance, that the General 
 pie, t i h To P w- Assembly of the Presbyterian Church urges 
 drinkmg. abstinence from every intoxicating bever- 
 
 age because of the essential iniquity of drinking a 
 glass of wine or beer, nor as if no man could do it law- 
 fully and with impunity, but because, if safe for any 
 man, it is not expedient for him to use that liberty, lest 
 his influence go to fill up the awful cup of intemper- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE. 65 
 
 ance, and to increase the number of those to whom a 
 little is a snare, and an enticement leading straight to 
 ruin. 
 
 As to the dance, it is supposed that the above- 
 named Assembly does not intend to condemn a rhyth- 
 mic movement, per se, in which there may 2 To dan _ 
 be no more sin than in a game of croquet. cing ' 
 Most likely the members that compose this venerable 
 body from year to year have discovered a difficulty in 
 keeping the dance within the bounds of modesty and 
 to suitable times and places. They may have observed 
 the postures assumed, the hours of the night into which 
 dancing is carried, and the public places into which it 
 is almost sure to go, and the excesses which, for very 
 many, are downright ruin, and for everybody who par- 
 ticipates in them a sin. 
 
 So that while condemning the immodest and the 
 dissipating dance, as the physiologist and the moralist 
 must do, they go farther, and say, " It is not expedient 
 to use at all the liberty to dance, lest it be an occasion 
 of stumbling to many who, if they dance, will dance 
 immodestly and to excess." 
 
 So of the theatre and the opera : it is probably not 
 questioned, by any who vote against countenancing 
 them, but that a dramatic representation may be harm- 
 less, even edifying ; or that some actors and actresses 
 are true men and women of genius, worth, and power ; 
 or that, in itself considered, in certain supposable cir- 
 
 Amusements. Q 
 
66 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 cumstances it would be wrong for a Christian man to 
 witness a play. But, observing how full of moral risks 
 the calling of an actor is, the question is raised whether 
 it is more lawful to encourage it than a tight-rope walk- 
 ing performance over Niagara river. Seeing what a 
 strange affiliation there is between the demon of drink 
 and lust and the playhouse ; so that a theatre without 
 a bar at hand, a theatre closed to the abandoned, is 
 not known to exist in our country ; made certain, also, 
 that the great bulk of plays caricature religion, glorify 
 vice, and sneer at sacred things — there was but one 
 thing to do : not only condemn the theatre as it is, and 
 theatre -going in general, but also to say even to him 
 who would pick a clean play and a genius of acknowl- 
 edged reputation, and else go not at all, " It is not ex- 
 pedient, all things considered, to do even this, if it were 
 possible. Your going will be misconstrued to the hurt 
 of your Christian influence." 
 
 So of other ecclesiastical bodies. If the principle 
 of limitation, for Christ's sake and the sake of others, 
 were more fully insisted upon, and their action were 
 then as futile as now, it would be a sorry comment on 
 the piety of our times. 
 
 When the spirit of self-sacrifice in things lawful, 
 self-sacrifice ^ or ^ e greater good of the greater number, 
 Hfe ent of to the nas died out of the church, one distinguish- 
 church. - n g. mar k f Christ-likeness will be want- 
 
 ing, and the power of the church for good a thing of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE. 67 
 
 the past. Towards things evil and dissipating a face 
 of flint; upon the line where recreation passes over 
 into dissipation an eagle eye, and a mind to keep on 
 the right side ; and in the use of liberty in things law- 
 ful the exercise of a Christlike and a Pauline charity is 
 the only attitude which the church may righteously 
 take in this her militant state — so to be the salt of the 
 earth, the light of the world. 
 
68 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE THEATRE, THE OPERA, AND THE 
 DANCE. 
 
 The question then, which with great deference I would 
 propose, is not whether those who risk everything may 
 not risk this also ; but whether the more correct and con- 
 siderate Christian might not find it worth while to consider 
 if the amusement in question be entirely compatible with his 
 avowed character ; whether it be entirely consistent with the 
 clearer views of one who professes to live in the sure and 
 certain hope of that immortality which is brought to light by 
 the Gospel. Hannah More. 
 
 If play be something from which you are to return with 
 renewed strength and interest to work, I doubt whether the 
 ballroom is the place where it is to be found. Late hours, a 
 feverish atmosphere and excessive exercise, tend to morning 
 slumbers, headaches, crossness and laziness. 
 
 Country Parson. 
 
 No discussion of our subject can be considered 
 complete which does not give specific attention to the 
 theatre, the opera, and the dance. For many centuries 
 they have thrown # fascinating spell over all civilized 
 nations ; they have, therefore, a history in the light of 
 which they are to be judged and an influence for which 
 they are responsible. The limits of this essay forbid 
 an exhaustive discussion of these themes, but their 
 importance justifies and indeed necessitates a treatment 
 somewhat full. 
 
THE THEATRE. 69 
 
 The actual presence of certain forms of amusement 
 among all civilized peoples, and for many continuous 
 centuries, has sometimes been brought for- 
 ward as a conclusive argument in their ment from their 
 
 universality. 
 
 favor ; as if to be everywhere found were 
 equivalent to being everywhere a necessity ; and being 
 a necessity were their adequate justification. 
 
 This inference may well be called in question. We 
 are not quite ready to tolerate and endorse everything 
 which can appeal to antiquity and say, Theinference 
 Since the days of old we have held our <i uestiona b le - 
 place ; why disturb us now ? why question our right to 
 be? There are many very unpleasant and vicious 
 propensities in human nature which have been always 
 cropping out since Cain slew his brother, fatal alike 
 to purity, to social happiness and the favor of God. 
 Antiquity, most remote, witnesses to the murderous, 
 licentious, intemperate tendencies of human nature; 
 and that, not among the barbarous and the degraded 
 only, but the representative men and women of any 
 given age; in the courts of kings, in the precincts of 
 temples and altars, within the sanctuary of home. 
 
 All that antiquity can do for the theatre and the 
 dance is to tell us what their influence has w . t „ r , r MT , 
 
 _ n istory can 
 
 uniformly been ; and this, put with what it glve us facts> 
 now is, furnishes reasonable data for determining our 
 duty towards them. "Whatsoever things are true, 
 whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are 
 
70 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
 lovely, whatsoever things are of good report," it is not 
 only well to think upon but to weave into the warp 
 and woof of life. 
 
 These matters then must be judged upon their own 
 merits. Their almost universal presence in history is 
 .a matter of curious interest, but it by no means proves 
 them innocuous. First in order let us take up 
 
 I. THE THEATRE. 
 
 At the outset, let it be clearly understood, that 
 
 .dramatic literature, as such, is but incidentally under 
 
 discussion. Between reading a dramatic 
 
 Dramatic lit- . . ... , 
 
 erature as put composition and seeing it put upon the 
 
 upon the stage. . .,,._. „, 
 
 stage, there is a substantial difference. The 
 theatrical surroundings, the pageant, the actors, their 
 tones, dress, gestures, the passion put into good acting, 
 the association with an assembly often brought to 
 cheer the most pernicious of sentiments, make the 
 stage a powerful agent for good or evil, taking one out 
 of the calm deliberative mood of reading into a whirl- 
 wind of excitement and an emotional craze. Many a 
 time is an audience moved to applaud what they would 
 never endorse in a calm, judicial frame of mind. 
 
 Whatever, therefore, our conclusion may be in re- 
 spect to the theatre as a school of morals and a place 
 of entertainment, we wish not to be understood as 
 including dramatic literature in our judgment, except 
 
THE THEATRE. 71 
 
 as actually put upon the stage, and so made part and 
 parcel of the same. It is possible to make up very- 
 many volumes of such literature, the creation of brill- 
 iant and lofty minds, which was never adapted to the 
 stage — never was, and never will be — and from which 
 neither we nor our children are to be excluded. 
 
 It should also be said that we have to do with the 
 actual, not the imaginary theatre — the theatre of yester- 
 day and of to-day. What it was yester- Also the ac _ 
 day, and is to-day, it is likely to be to-mor- imaginary the! 
 row. " What the stage might be under atre ' 
 another and an imaginary state of things, it is not very 
 easy for us to know, and therefore not very important 
 to inquire." 
 
 There have been theatres in the world for at least 
 twenty-six hundred years. Dramatic representations, 
 tragic, comic, satyric, were known to Greece Antiquity of 
 seven hundred years before Christ. Trage- the theatre ' 
 dy grew out of the songs with which the cities of 
 Greece celebrated the worship of Bacchus. Comedy 
 had its origin in the country, the boroughs The theatre 
 uniting in singing the Phallic songs. The m Greece - 
 performers were drawn in carts from borough to bor- 
 ough, their numbers increasing as they went. 
 
 The satyric drama and the farce were brief appen- 
 dages or concomitants of the former. Associated as 
 they were with the worship of Bacchus and with other 
 heathen festivities, " these performances were conducted 
 
72 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 with a high degree of licentiousness both in language 
 and in action." In the original comedy, "the most 
 unrestrained licentiousness was allowed." The per- 
 formers " strolled about the country, till their excesses 
 forced them to seek repose." The farce was charac- 
 terized by ludicrous and indelicate representations. 
 There is no lack of evidence that the dramatic repre- 
 sentations of the Greeks were, on the whole, marked 
 by excesses and gross irregularities. 
 
 It is true that ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, 
 for a brief day gave to tragedy a better repute, and 
 
 Great Trage- their productions "were regarded as mon- 
 dians. uments of national glory." Even so, their 
 
 time was brief though resplendent. We have allowed 
 these names to stand together, though hardly with 
 reason ; for Euripides was blamed by his own coun- 
 trymen for the illicit and fatal passion depicted in 
 several of his female characters. Grote says of Greek 
 comedy, its influence was unfavorable and degrading on 
 
 Grote and tne Athenian mind ; and Solon condemned 
 Greek Comedy. ^ d rama tic poetry of the sixth century 
 B. c. as " a vicious novelty, tending by its simulation of 
 false character and its effusion of sentiments not genuine 
 or sincere, to corrupt the integrity of human dealings." 
 Rome borrowed from Greece in every branch of 
 
 Rome borrows literature— borrowed without improving 
 from Greece. upon j t The fi rst dramatic verses of the 
 Romans were sung at the harvest festivals with rude 
 
THE THEATRE. 73 
 
 gestures and dances. " They were of a very licentious 
 character, which it became necessary to restrain by 
 laws." The drama never attained among the Romans 
 the popularity it enjoyed among the Greeks. Comedy 
 was preferred to tragedy, public shows and spectacles 
 were preferred by the masses to either. As gladiato- 
 rial shows increased, dramatic representations became 
 insipid. There was, however, among the Romans a 
 special fondness for a comic representation called 
 mimes ; " they were too generally mere exhibitions of 
 gross and licentious buffoonery;" " women sometimes 
 took part in them, submitting to great indecencies." 
 
 After the days of Augustus, Schaff says, " the Ro- 
 man theatre became more and more a nursery of vice, 
 and deserved to be abhorred by all men of 
 
 decent feeling and refined taste." The influ- the later Ro- 
 man theatre. 
 
 ence of dramatic representations, taken as 
 a whole, upon the Greek and Roman character, can- 
 not be a subject of controversy. A very large per- 
 centage was too impure to be other than an unmiti- 
 gated curse. But beyond this was a steeling of the 
 heart to humane and genuine feeling, so that at one 
 time, when an audience of Athenians, " in the midst of 
 a satyric play, received tidings of the defeat of the 
 army in Sicily, they rejected the suggestion that the 
 piece be broken off abruptly ; and having covered 
 their heads with their cloaks, and paid the tribute of a 
 few tears to their relatives who had fallen in battle, lis- 
 
 Amusemcfits'. JO 
 
74 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 tened with the same attention to the end." In Rome, 
 in time of scarcity, professors of the liberal arts were 
 banished, and actors and dancers allowed to remain. 
 Moreover, the enormous expense attending them fur- 
 ther indicates their hold upon the popular mind. 
 While originally a rude affair, the stage being the cart 
 the actors travelled in, with the growth of wealth and 
 dramatic art came also the most costly and extrava- 
 gant display. The ruins which are most conspicuous 
 to-day, with here and there an exception, are the thea- 
 tres, the circuses, the amphitheatres. Their vast ex- 
 tent and massive walls, seating variously from thirty to 
 eighty thousand people, are the astonishment of the 
 world. It is only needful to instance the amphitheatre 
 of Titus. Its vast proportions are familiar 
 
 The amphi- . 
 
 theatre of Ti- to many, its magnificence difficult to con- 
 
 tus. 
 
 ceive by most. " The outside of the edi- 
 fice was encrusted with marble and decorated with 
 statues." The spectators were screened from .the sun 
 and rain by an ample canopy. " The air was continu- 
 ally refreshed by the playing of fountains, and pro- 
 fusely impregnated by the grateful scent of aromat- 
 ics ; . . . . at one moment the stage seemed to rise out 
 of the earth, like the garden of the Hesperides, and 
 was afterwards broken into the rocks and caverns of 
 
 Thrace At one moment it was a level plain, 
 
 and the next a wide lake covered with armed vessels 
 and replenished with the monsters of the deep." 
 
 
THE THEATRE. 75 
 
 The vain and reckless prodigality of Carinus — a 
 man unfit to live in the most corrupt times — was en- 
 joyed with delight and transport by the Roman peo- 
 ple. Gibbon says we are obliged to confess that nei- 
 ther before nor since the time of the Romans have so 
 much art and expense been lavished for the amusement 
 of the people. At the beginning of the fifth century, 
 when the Goths were knocking at the gates of Rome, 
 the place of the tragic and the comic muse " was un- 
 worthily occupied by licentious farce, effeminate music, 
 and splendid pageantry The vast and magnifi- 
 cent theatres of Rome were filled by three thousand 
 female dancers and as many singers." 
 
 After Christian influence had suppressed the com- 
 bats of gladiators, the Roman people " still considered 
 the circus as their home, their temple, and 
 
 11* »t^i • Christian in- 
 
 the seat of the republic The impa- fluence, how 
 
 tient crowd rushed at dawn of day to secure 
 their places, and from morning to evening, careless of 
 the sun or of the rain, the spectators, who sometimes 
 amounted to the number of four hundred thousand, 
 remained in eager attention ; and the happiness of 
 Rome seemed to hang on the event of the race !" 
 
 To the general immoral tendency of dramatic rep- 
 resentations, almost or quite inevitable, considering 
 their association with Bacchanal revels and Immoral ten 
 the state of society, there appears here and dency ' 
 there an exception in the great writers of tragedy ; but 
 
76 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 it must be remembered that the chorus and the dance, 
 the farce and the mimes, had to be brought in to re- 
 lieve the serious impression of the great tragedians ! 
 What must have been the general influence of the 
 stage when the round choric dance, sung in honor of 
 Bacchus, was " a spontaneous effusion of drunken men 
 in the hour of revelry"? It is not surprising that when 
 " the faith of the Christian church was acknowledged 
 as the religion of the Roman empire, the doom of the 
 
 Prof Ward tnea tre was sealed Had she not vis- 
 
 m Encyc. Bnt. -^ ^fa jj er anathema a wilderness of de- 
 cay, she could not herself have become — what she little 
 dreamed of becoming — the nursing mother of the new 
 birth of an art which seemed incapable of regenera- 
 tion." 
 
 The " mystery play" of the Mediaeval age had " its 
 source in the liturgy of the church itself," and was most 
 
 The mystery likely instituted to blend amusement with 
 plays. instruction. This sphere was gradually 
 
 widened, and these "sacred plays" were acted without 
 as well as within the precincts of the church, and espe- 
 cially on festival days. Hannah More calls them "un- 
 couth pieces, in which the most sacred persons were 
 introduced as interlocutors, and events too solemn for 
 exhibition, and subjects too awful for detail, were 
 brought before the audience with a formal gravity 
 more offensive than levity itself." 
 
 Lecky says that after the thirteenth century " they 
 
THE THEATRE. ^ 
 
 assumed a popular form, their religious character 
 speedily declined, and they became at last Lecky n 
 one of the most powerful agents in bringing thls declme - 
 the church, and indeed all religion, into disrepute." 
 We are shocked to learn, from the same authority, that 
 " in gross indecency they well nigh equalled the worst 
 days of the Roman theatre. More than once," we are 
 told, " the government suppressed the sacred plays in 
 France on account of their evil effects upon morals," 
 and " in England matters seem to have been, if possi- 
 ble, worse." The only existing vestige of these sacred 
 plays, and that thus far entirely respectable, is proba- 
 bly the Passion Play of the villagers of Oberammergau 
 in Bavaria. 
 
 Prof. Henry B. Smith says, " The modern drama 
 grew out of these sacred plays in the fif- Their reia- 
 teenth century, in Italy, Spain, and Eng- modem°drama! 
 land." 
 
 As an amusement, the churchly theatre can hardly 
 be said to have been a success ; nor, as a method of 
 preaching, was it ever an improvement on the apostolic 
 models. Neither in itself nor in its offspring does it 
 encourage further ecclesiastical attempts in this direc- 
 tion. 
 
 Coming down to the early English drama, we shall 
 find here very little to win our admiration. Ear] E 
 With such men as Greene and Marlowe for hsh drama - 
 moving spirits, how can there be ? Greene, the historian, 
 
78 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 calls the first of these brilliant men " a drunkard and a 
 roysterer, with whom hell and the after-world were 
 butts of ceaseless mockery." Marlowe's skepticism 
 was more daring, his character no better ; and he died 
 in a shameful brawl. The genius of these men is not 
 disputed, but their influence was detestable — the stage 
 under their control degrading. 
 
 The first theatre, as in Greece, so in England, was 
 of the rudest sort. There were then no female actors. 
 The stage was intensely real. All the people were 
 there, and they brought to its boards both their noble- 
 ness and their vileness. The first theatre was built in 
 London in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, and 
 there were eighteen in this one city before she died. 
 The growth was rapid, and though many of the plays 
 were excellent, the general influence of the stage was 
 mischievous to the last degree. The grossness of the 
 later comedy is incredible — almost as strange the taste 
 of the later tragedians for horrors of incest and blood. 
 
 Of course the Puritans hated the stage as they 
 
 found it. Mr. Greene fairly says, " It was, in the main, 
 
 the honest hatred of God-fearing- men 
 
 The Puri- . & 
 
 tans and the against the foulest depravity in a poetic 
 and attractive form. The influence of the 
 Italian comedy left its stamp on some of the worst 
 characteristics of the English stage. The features of 
 our drama that startled the moral temper of the time, 
 and were the deadly hatred of the Puritans — its gross- 
 
THE THEATRE. 79 
 
 ness and profanity, its tendency to scenes of horror and 
 crime, its profuse employment of cruelty and lust as 
 grounds of dramatic action, its daring use of the hor- 
 rible and the unnatural whenever they enabled it to dis- 
 play the more terrible and revolting side of human pas- 
 sion — were derived from the Italian stage." 
 
 These severe strictures are fully borne out by Taine 
 in his chapters on the nasty theatre of the sixteenth 
 century, upon which Sir Philip Sidney vis- 
 ited his " disdainful censure ;" and the English thea- 
 tre, 
 scarcely more cleanly one of the Restora- 
 tion. Of the latter he says, " By representing nothing 
 but vice, it authorized their manners ; i. e. y debauched 
 men and women. Authors laid it down as a rule that 
 all women were impudent hussies, and that all men 
 were brutes. Debauchery in their hands became a 
 matter of course, nay more, a matter of good taste ; 
 they profess it. Rochester and Charles II. could quit 
 the theatre highly edified, more -convinced than they 
 were before that virtue was only a pretence — the pre- 
 tence of clever rascals who wanted to sell themselves 
 dear." 
 
 Macaulay says, " The profligacy of the English 
 plays, satires, songs, and novels of that age, is a deep 
 blot on our national fame From the 
 
 Macaulay on 
 
 day on which the theatres were reopened, the theatre of 
 
 . . . . Charles II. 
 
 they became the seminaries of vice. Their 
 profligacy soon drove away sober people ; the frivo- 
 
80 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 lous and the dissolute who remained required every 
 year stronger and stronger stimulants. Nothing charm- 
 ed the depraved audience so much as to hear lines 
 grossly indecent repeated by a beautiful girl supposed 
 not yet to have lost her innocence." 
 
 It may almost be said that nothing but the genius 
 of William Shakespeare saves the English stage from 
 
 Wm shake- tne contempt of good and pure men. Not 
 speare. ^ut that clever and pure-minded men and 
 
 women wrote plays, and like-minded people sometimes 
 went upon the stage; but they were not numerous 
 enough nor strong enough, in the face of the popular 
 taste and demand, to work any great, much less per- 
 
 Benjonson. manent reformation. Ben Jonson's entry 
 upon the stage " was marked by the proud resolve to 
 reform it." But reforming the theatre failed with him, 
 as it always has done with other men. Hannah More 
 
 Hannah More enjoyed the friendship of Garrick, who was 
 andGarrick. ca \\ e( \ « the House of Lords to dramatic 
 poets;" and while he lived she wrote several plays, as 
 she says, in the delusive and groundless hope that the 
 stage, under certain regulations, might be converted 
 into a school of virtue." Later in life — her " convic- 
 tions arising solely from observation and experience" — 
 she changed her mind with reference to this species of 
 amusement, considering comedy wholly indefensible, 
 and objecting to tragedy that "it produced impressions 
 irreconcilable with Christian temper." 
 
THE THEATRE. 81 
 
 Upon the modern stage the criticism of the secular 
 press, the confession of degeneracy uncon- The stage of 
 tradicted, with much in the best of our time our own day - 
 which no pure moralist — to say nothing of the devout 
 Christian — can approve, fix a stigma which cannot be 
 erased. At the outset, nine-tenths of the theatres are 
 utterly unwashed, and fit only to be suppressed. They 
 do not come into this discussion except, Most thea _ 
 possibly, as an illustration how popular \ r y es Xnorail" 
 amusements tend to degeneracy, and how zing " 
 depraved taste in the people depraves the stage, and 
 vice versa. The discussion is narrowed, at most, to a 
 few metropolitan theatres, and occasional representa- 
 tions in smaller cities by favorite and capable actors. 
 The average theatre, even of the better sort, is some- 
 times a variety show, a stage for low comedy and negro 
 minstrelsy, and only now and then visited by actors of 
 reputation. 
 
 Mr. Buckley, in a very candid book, gives the pub- 
 lic the result of his examination of over Rev j M 
 sixty plays, acted in the "best" theatres of Pf^fS 
 New York, during three years, as follows : cisms ' 
 
 " Nearly every play of popular reputation is open 
 to the following charges : 
 
 a. " Christian principles are not accepted as the 
 rule of morals. 
 
 b. " True religion is never praised, but usually rid- 
 iculed. 
 
 Amusements. I I 
 
82 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 c. " Wickedness is made to give amusement. Crimes 
 that would call down the wrath of God on their perpe- 
 trators are systematically made to provoke laughter. 
 
 d. " Oaths and profane expressions abound. 
 
 e. "Where there is a moral, it is, as a rule, hastily 
 disposed of in the fifth act." 
 
 Six or eight of these plays are spoken of in detail, 
 and these the most popular. 
 
 "'She Stoops to Conquer' contains profaneness, 
 vulgarity, and several sneers at temperance and reli- 
 gion. 
 
 "' Money' is a succession of hypocrisy, covetous- 
 ness, drinking, gambling, jealousy, and infidelity. 
 
 " ' East Lynne ' consists of infidelity, adultery, mur- 
 der, remarriage, and subsequent reappearance of first 
 wife to die in the house. 
 
 " The ' Belle's Stratagem' is full of attempted adul- 
 tery, licentious allusions, and is thoroughly demoral- 
 izing. 
 
 " ' Masks and Faces' is but little better. 
 
 " 'The Critic' abounds in profaneness and obscene 
 allusions to women. 
 
 "And the ' School for Scandal' is a play, the whole 
 of which no woman could read to any man, not her 
 husband, without giving him cause to suspect her pu- 
 rity." 
 
 Such is the finding against the "most popular" 
 plays in the " most respectable" theatres of New York 
 
THE THEATRE. 83 
 
 for three consecutive years. Plays gain nothing good 
 in the acting. If this finding be true, as probably will 
 not be questioned, it is submitted whether the New 
 York theatre of those years ought not to have been 
 beneath the contempt, much more beneath the sup- 
 port of respectable and pure-minded people. 
 
 Even in the judgment of the secular press, the 
 stage performances of the winter of 1876-7 
 were pronounced discreditable both to the the secular 
 
 press. 
 
 head and heart of theatrical managers. 
 
 The "Northern Monthly" thus comments upon the 
 introduction of the " Black Crook " at Niblo's : " The 
 initial evening saw the theatre packed — but with men, 
 very few having the temerity to take women to an ex- 
 hibition so very questionable. The second evening 
 the small feminine element was increased, and before 
 the second month began, city dames of position and 
 carefully -reared damsels ventured to gaze at the wanton 
 dances and lewd tableaux, in spite of the blushes that 
 covered them even to the finger-tips. Even the ' de- 
 mon dance,' which no man, however blase,, could see 
 for the first time without some sense of shame, was 
 accepted as a thing of course." The first night of its 
 representation, even New York was astonished and 
 mortified, and after a few seconds would have hissed 
 the lascivious exhibition, but for the claquers carefully 
 posted through the house. " As a result," says the 
 same authority, "our women have grown harder and 
 
84 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 ruder, less sensitive and modest. They remind one of 
 the Paris women, without their tact and grace." 
 
 The "Round Table" gave it as its recipe for a 
 
 The "Round modern play, among other elements, "three 
 Table." hundred oaths and sixty-four pages of 
 
 blasphemy." In Paris, ten years ago, the police inter- 
 fered to secure " a noticeable addition to the quantity 
 
 The "Na- an d length of the draperies of the ballet- 
 dancers." This was in Paris, of whose thea- 
 tre it is said it " makes a parade of sensuality " — an evil 
 which an American writer of the same period says "is 
 "Evening rapidly spreading through all our cities." 
 Post." ^ London critic having made a tour of this 
 
 country ten years ago, observes that, "while many 
 here will not cross the threshold of a theatre, those who 
 
 " N y ob- nave once taken the step will welcome and 
 server," 1867. en j y a degree of licentiousness that would 
 not be tolerated by the audience of an English theatre." 
 The "Round Table" comments on this degeneracy, 
 and adds that, " now we tolerate on the stage those 
 infamous spectacles, the ' Black Crook,' the ' Golden 
 Branch,' and the 'White Fawn,' in which scores of 
 young women shamelessly expose their persons in las- 
 civious dances to gratify tastes unknown to the breasts 
 of the purely delicate." 
 
 "Camille" has drawn vast audiences to the princi- 
 pal theatres of the land. Rev. F. H. Hall says of it, 
 "Camille is, in plain language, an elegant, fascinating 
 
THE THEATRE. 85 
 
 prostitute, making the audience sympathize with her 
 through all her sin — yes, pity, love, and adore her. 
 She is made to plunge to the very depths of infamy by 
 reason of the purity and sincerity of her devotion to 
 one who is worthy of her affection — trailing her soul 
 through the foulest corruption a woman can know ; 
 and when all is over, the happy spirit exhales to 
 heaven." 
 
 To bring this sketch down to the current time, in 
 this year of our Lord 1879, let us turn for a moment 
 to the great metropolis of this land, on the waiiack's in 
 night of October 4, 1879. It is the opening 0ctober ' l879 ' 
 night at " Waiiack's." The New York " Tribune " says 
 of this theatre, that " by reason of character and long 
 priority of position, it is understood to lead the van of 
 the contemporary drama; and when its doors are 
 thrown open for the regular season a brilliant assem- 
 blage of character, mind, wit, beauty, and fashion 
 throngs its benches, to enjoy and honor the bright oc- 
 casion." Well, what does Wallack offer to this brill- 
 iant assemblage of " character " and so on, this open- 
 ing Saturday night? A correspondent of one of the 
 Philadelphia papers thus comments on the play: "Its 
 style is crisp and direct, but could be improved by the 
 excision of profanity and by the curtailment of solilo- 
 quies. The theme is the alleged profligacy of married 
 men and some married women. The tone is a know- 
 ing leer and a significant grimace. The piece is remi- 
 
86 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 niscent of ' Americans in Paris,' ' Forbidden Fruit,' ' The 
 Pink Dominoes.' and ' Baby.' The masquerade scene 
 is suggestive of the ' Belle's Stratagem.' The mirth is 
 made to spring out of the adventures of a gay and 
 eccentric lawyer, who, having been committed to prison 
 for contempt of court, proceeds to a sort of Cremorne 
 Garden ball, frequented by profligates of both sexes, 
 there to spend the night before going to jail, and un- 
 expectedly to encounter his own wife and the wives of 
 various friends, and to find himself crushed with very 
 serious domestic embarrassments." 
 
 It is a partly deodorized French farce, indelicate 
 in its subject, coarse in some of its lines, tainted in its 
 
 Character of suggestions, devoid of all nobleness and 
 the play. sweetness, noisy, ill-bred, shallow, and only 
 
 recommended to approval by its abundance of ludi- 
 crous incidents, and by the adroitness and vivacity 
 with which these were handled by the actors who 
 affected them. " The result was one upon which it is 
 almost sad to pause. At first this mass of comic pru- 
 
 How receiv- r i enc y seemed to strike its listeners with 
 ed ' surprise ; but in a little while the better 
 
 sense of art and mind gave place to the careless sense 
 of frolic, and from that moment the exhibition was 
 hailed with peals of laughter." And finally, "it turned 
 the stage into a scene for the monkey-shines of a party 
 of tipsy profligates at a dance-hall." 
 
 So stands the case in "the theatre which leads the 
 
THE THEATRE. 87 
 
 van of the contemporary drama," for the season of 
 1879 and '80, at its opening evening. This is the way 
 it entertains its brilliant assemblage ! 
 
 If it stands thus with the theatre that leads the van, 
 what must the average nineteenth century theatre be ? 
 
 Looking back over the ground we have traversed, 
 we find that in every age the stage has drawn to itself 
 some men of genius and lofty purpose. 
 
 Review of 
 
 There have been, *and are, actors and ac- the ground tra- 
 versed. 
 tresses of unexceptional purity of character. 
 
 Here and there, in exceptional cases, the theatre has 
 doubtless exerted a powerful influence for good. But 
 take the centuries together, how few, comparatively, are 
 the names and the works associated with dramatic art 
 which the sober verdict of history will consent to hold 
 in honor. Of by far the greater part, judged in the 
 light of their own time, there is little to save them from 
 utter reprobation. Of the best known and most popu- 
 lar works of this class extant, how many are unfit to be 
 read at the family fireside without being first expur- 
 gated ? History is against the theatre as it was and as 
 it is. Taken in the main drift of its influence and in its 
 uniform tendency, it is impossible to get the verdict of 
 sober, thoughtful, and impartial people in favor of the 
 theatre as it has been, or as it now is. Not without 
 reason did Sparta forbid the admission of the drama 
 within her territory. With emphasis does Grote say of 
 the comic poets of Greece, " They were never regarded 
 
88 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 at Athens in the light in which they are presented to 
 us by modern criticism, as men of exalted morality, 
 stern patriotism, and animated by high and steady 
 views of improving their fellow-men, many German 
 writers to the contrary notwithstanding. There can- 
 not be a greater misconception of the old comedy." 
 With no show of reason can it be said that the latest 
 efforts in this direction have been improvements upon 
 the past. 
 
 The above citations clearly prove that the nineteenth 
 century stage is of a piece with that of the Restoration, 
 One uniform an ^ near °f kin with that of the time of 
 character. Aristophanes, of whose plays Rollin says, 
 "The gross obscenities with which they abound only 
 show to what a pitch of degradation the morals of peo- 
 ple and play-writer had come." Dr. Bellows admits 
 that " the vices of the theatre have uniformly been 
 those of the time. Profanity and coarseness from the 
 pit and boxes have required profanity and coarseness 
 from the stage, while vulgarity and ignorance have 
 demanded rant and fustian." 
 
 If that which is put upon the stage is amenable to 
 
 such charges, then the occupation of an actor is one 
 
 perilous in the extreme to purity of heart 
 
 The occupa- . 
 
 tion of an ac- and delicacy of feeling. Familiarity with 
 
 tor. 
 
 such sentiments can only be deleterious to 
 morals and refined taste. The attempt to personate 
 such vile characters and utter such base sentiments is 
 
THE THEATRE. 89 
 
 but a farther descent in the same slimy path of pollu- 
 tion. It is not to be wondered at, that to Miss Kemble 
 the calling was " distasteful." " Every day Fanny Kem _ 
 increases my distaste for it," she says in ble * 
 one of her letters. " The theatrical profession was 
 utterly distasteful to me, . . . though dramatic persona- 
 tion was not, . . . nor did custom ever render this aver- 
 sion less." Miss Kemble's aim in life was high, and on 
 the whole successful. Knowing her inner life, we are 
 not surprised to hear her say, " Though I have never, 
 I trust, been ungrateful for the power of thus helping 
 myself and others, or forgetful of the obligation I was 
 under to do my appointed work conscientiously in 
 every respect, . . . yet neither have I ever presented 
 myself before an audience without a shrinking feeling 
 of reluctance, or withdrawn from their presence with- 
 out thinking the excitement I had undergone unheal- 
 thy, and the personal exhibition odious." Miss Kem- 
 ble's position in regard to the stage was exceptional in 
 many favorable respects, not the least of which was the 
 presence of her father in the same profession, and a 
 certain sort of religious training which had a pro- 
 nounced influence upon her character. What, then, 
 must the life of an actor or an actress be, who with 
 abandon goes into it, and consents to the familiarities 
 and indecencies which Olive Logan exposed in her let- 
 ter to the "New York Times"? It is not to be won- 
 dered at that " the actual, prevailing character of actors, 
 
90 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 male and female, has been not only disreputable, but 
 
 immoral and licentious." The exceptions "only show 
 
 how universal and how deep is the oppro- 
 
 Mr. Haweis . * . . . ' . 
 
 and the life of bnum. Mr. Haweis, a distinguished and 
 
 a public singer. . . 
 
 capable critic ol the art ol music, says, 
 " The life of a successful singer or an illustrious instru- 
 mentalist is full of peril — peril to virtue, peril to art, 
 peril to society ; and this is not owing at all to the exi- 
 gencies of the executive gift in itself, but entirely owing 
 to the conditions imposed upon the artist from with- 
 out." If this is true of the musical profession, with 
 emphasis must it hold good of the theatrical profes- 
 sion. In this peril frequenters of the theatre become 
 partners. 
 
 Moreover, they who countenance the theatre are 
 there met by odious associations. It cannot be denied 
 
 that the vilest characters in the community, 
 
 The associa- . 
 
 tionsofthethe- m large numbers, frequent the theatres. 
 
 atre. 
 
 They oscillate between the bar-room and 
 the gallery, when they do not mix with the audience in 
 the pit. There may have been improvement in this 
 respect since the day in which complaint was made in 
 "The Public Ledger" of Philadelphia against the ad- 
 in Phiiadei- m i ss i° n of loose women into the pit as an 
 phia. unbearable grievance. It was then charged 
 
 upon the managers that " they bring virtue and vice in 
 close proximity, and parade vice under the eyes of our 
 wives, sisters, and daughters ; or if they disclaim such 
 
THE THEATRE. 91 
 
 intentions, then they persevere in a course which does, 
 past all doubts, produce the above results." Once 
 upon a time the upper tier of boxes in the Walnut 
 Street Theatre were much disturbed by the riotous 
 and outrageous conduct of an abandoned woman. 
 "She swore most profusely and fought most furi- 
 ously." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott wrote in his time of this class of 
 people, " The best part of the house is openly and 
 avowedly set off for their reception, and no 
 
 1 1 f • r r 1 • England in 
 
 part open to the public is tree from their the time of 
 
 f . , r , «• • ScotL 
 
 intrusion, or at least from the disgusting 
 improprieties to which their neighborhood gives rise. 
 Unless in case of strong attractions upon the stage, 
 prostitutes and their admirers usually form a principal 
 part of the audience. The most refined theatres in the 
 world are destined to company so scandalous, that per- 
 sons not very nice in their taste of society must yet ex- 
 claim against the abuse." 
 
 It is said that " a committee, appointed to inquire 
 into this matter with reference to one of the royal the- 
 atres of London, reported that if these peo- in London. 
 pie were excluded the theatre could not be supported." 
 A similar committee reported of the Tremont Theatre, 
 that " a part of the house was frequented in Boston. 
 by men of notoriously bad character, and that there 
 had been no time within memory when it was not so 
 in every theatre in Boston." This committee says, 
 
92 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 "There is no cause of complaint against the Tre- 
 mont Theatre which has not always existed in all the- 
 atres." 
 
 A justice of the Police Court of Boston testified that 
 " males and abandoned females have been in the habit of 
 Effect of upon tipP nn g at tne bar until the excitement of 
 the liquor resulted in quarrels, broils, and 
 fighting. Indecent and profane language, and man- 
 ners offensive to good breeding, have characterized 
 the assembly." He also says that "between the acts 
 and during the after-piece there has usually been an 
 accession to the third row (filled with abandoned fe- 
 males) of from fifty to a hundred, who go from the 
 boxes and can return at pleasure ; some of them men, 
 but most of them boys or youngsters, such as mer- 
 chants' and traders' clerks, gentlemen's sons who have 
 no stated employment, students, etc." The committee 
 aforesaid, though friendly to the theatre, admit that "it 
 is true that the third row has been and is frequented 
 
 by women of notoriously bad character It is 
 
 true, as the records of our police courts show, that 
 scenes of riot and disorder have occurred from this 
 congregation of vice." Also that very young men and 
 minors, whose respectable connections and domestic 
 education ought to have made them ashamed of the 
 vulgarity, have, in former years, been in the habit of 
 frequenting that part of the theatre. 
 
 It is also well known that the manager of the Park 
 
THE THEATRE. 93 
 
 Theatre, New York, a few years ago, attempted a re- 
 form in this matter, but was obliged to in- Park Thea _ 
 form the public that the attempt was a fail- York— ex^ 
 ure. It has been truly said that to the the- 
 atre instinctively flock, as children to their home, as 
 sheep to their pasture-ground, all that is vile and dis- 
 reputable in society. 
 
 Separate the audience in any way possible, guard 
 the pure in any and every way, and still it is true that 
 voluntarily, for amusement, under no constraints of 
 duty or benevolence, these extremes of society meet 
 before the same "boards," hear the same words, see 
 the same sights, when of necessity the play and the 
 acting must be such as to interest and draw the baser 
 sort, and when the influence of the vile upon the good 
 must far outweigh any possible influence of the good 
 upon the vile. 
 
 The amazing thing is that, with such an indictment 
 as history brings against the theatre of the past and 
 the present, it should be necessary to dis- The church 
 cuss the propriety of giving it Christian ment^aSdnst 
 countenance. That the lewd and the im- thetheatre - 
 moral should uphold the theatre as it is and uniformly 
 has been, is to be expected. That the morally clean 
 should do so is astounding. That the church of Christ 
 should actually uphold and patronize it, or be expected 
 to find any satisfaction in, or have any toleration for, 
 the unclean thing, is a position which would seem to 
 
94 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 be too audacious to be even seriously named, much less 
 defended. The moralist is obliged to write its con- 
 demnation — the Christian much more. In 
 ist's conciu- the interest of what kindom is the theatre 
 
 sion. . 
 
 run ? Who is its master ? What is its ten- 
 dency ? Is it for or against Jesus Christ? Who claims 
 it — the Prince of Peace, or the Prince of Darkness ? In 
 the main, and almost without exception, the theatre, all 
 in all, is and always has been anti-Christian. That 
 ought to be enough for the Christian church to know 
 to secure its solid and persistent antagonism. 
 
 Moreover, it is rightly classed, not with recreations, 
 but with dissipations. Such and such only can it be to 
 Not a recre- tnose wno frequent it; and not only a dissi- 
 ation. pation, but one of the baser sort, minister- 
 
 ing to licentiousness, intemperance, and crime, and, by 
 its bad fascination, corrupting the morals of its patrons 
 and indisposing to serious thought — much more, to de- 
 vout and godly living. How then can it come within 
 the scope of the Christian's rule of life, "Whether 
 therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all 
 to the glory of God," when such is the character of the 
 plays, such the surroundings and associations, such the 
 general character of the actors, such the history of this 
 institution, as we trace it down the centuries of the 
 Christian era? 
 
 A New York preacher, as reported no long time 
 since, said in a sermon, " The drama cannot perma- 
 
THE THEATRE. 95 
 
 nently decline, because it is founded in a principle of 
 our nature." In the same breath he says it An apo i og ; st 
 has declined. And we have found it almost for the theatre> 
 always in that condition for twenty-seven centuries. 
 The fact is, human nature is in a permanent declen- 
 sion, except as the resurrection power of Christ touches 
 it, and then it certainly moves in the opposite direction 
 from the theatre. He also says, " The legitimate drama 
 is an educator as valuable as the church itself." Then 
 the world has never seen the legitimate drama, and we 
 must wait for it before we assent to this opinion. The 
 theatre as it has been to this moment can be judged by 
 its fruits, and so can the church of Christ. The world 
 will judge for itself as to which has been the more val- 
 uable educator ; which to-day is doing most to lift this 
 lost world up to God and bring a race of prodigals 
 back to their Father's house. By their fruits ye shall 
 know them. 
 
 It has been well said, "There almost inevitably runs 
 through the whole web of the tragic drama a promi- 
 nent thread of false principles Honor False princii 
 
 is the religion of tragedy. Worldly honor ples- 
 is the very spirit and soul and life-giving principle of 
 the drama Love, hatred, ambition, pride, re- 
 venge, are too often elevated into the rank of splendid 
 virtues, and form a dazzling system of worldly moral- 
 ity, in direct contradiction to the spirit of that religion 
 whose characteristics are ' charity, meekness, ' peacea- 
 
95 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 blenesSj long-suffering, gentleness, forgiveness.' ' The 
 fruits of the Spirit,' and the fruits of the stage, if the 
 parallel were followed up, as it might easily be, would 
 perhaps exhibit as pointed a contrast as human imagi- 
 nation can conceive." It will be seen that, with good 
 reason, the wisest and best men of the world — the 
 church of Christ, uniformly, by its representative men, 
 and in its corporate capacity — infidels as well as be- 
 lievers, and even actors themselves, have given their 
 testimony against the theatre. And if it is true, as this 
 preacher is reported to have said, that " the professing 
 Christian church practically sustains the theatre of to- 
 day," that " the audiences in any of our first-class the- 
 atres are the same as the congregations found in our 
 churches on Sunday," then the worse for the church of 
 Christ. Then the church of to-day antagonizes the 
 best sentiment of secular and Christian history for nine- 
 teen centuries. What is that sentiment ? 
 
 Dr. SchafT says, " The prevailing sentiment of the 
 
 early church went further than gladiatorial shows, and 
 
 rejected all kinds of public spectacles, tra- 
 
 The attitude . .. 
 
 of the early gedies, comedies, dances, mimic plays, and 
 
 church. 
 
 races — they were so closely connected with 
 the immoralities of the heathen." Constantine issued 
 the first prohibition of the bloody spectacles, and they 
 were finally abolished by Honorius ; but other specta- 
 cles, and even fights with wild animals, continued 
 against the protest of the best of the church. 
 
THE THEATRE. 97 
 
 Tertullian flatly rejects the grounds on which loose 
 Christians would plead for the theatre and the circus — • 
 their appeals to the silence of Scripture, or Tertullian. 
 even the dancing of David before the ark, and to Paul's 
 comparison of the Christian life with the Grecian 
 games. " Such exhibitions," he says, " excite all sorts 
 of wild and impure passions, anger, fury, and lust; 
 while the spirit of Christianity is a spirit of meekness, 
 peace, and purity." 
 
 Plato says, " Plays raise the passions and pervert 
 the use of them, and of consequence are Plato. 
 dangerous to morality." 
 
 Tacitus says, " The German women were guarded 
 against danger, and preserved their purity Tacitus. 
 by having no playhouses among them." 
 
 Rousseau opposed the introduction of the theatre 
 into Geneva. " Where," he asks, " is the prudent 
 mother who would dare to carry her daugh- Rousseau. 
 ter to this dangerous school ? And what respectable 
 woman would not think herself dishonored by going 
 there?" Such mothers can be found nowadays this 
 side of Geneva — and Christian mothers at that. 
 
 Dr. Witherspoon, President of the College of New 
 Jersey, says, " It is amazing to think that women who 
 pretend to decency and reputation, whose Dr Wither . 
 brightest ornament ought to be modesty, spoon • 
 should continue to abet, by their presence, so much 
 unchastity as is to be found in a theatre. How few 
 
 Amusements. J •? 
 
98 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 plays are acted which a modest woman can see with 
 decency. No woman of reputation, much less of piety, 
 who has been ten times in a playhouse, durst repeat in 
 company all she has heard there." 
 
 President Dwight of Yale College says of plays put 
 upon the stage in his day, "What art, labor, and 
 
 Dr. Dwight. genius are engaged in them, to garnish 
 gross and dreadful vice. How great a part are mere 
 means of pollution ; all the course of exhibition, except 
 a little part thrust in as a sacrifice to decency and 
 reputation, is formed of polluted sentiments and pollu- 
 ted characters. From the stage men are directly pre- 
 pared to go to the brothel. The corruption of the one 
 fits the mind to direct its course to the other." With 
 what truth might this be said of the theatre of to-day. 
 
 M. Dumas, Ji/s, a writer of licentious plays, said to 
 a friend, " You do not take your daughter to see my 
 
 m Dumas pl av - You are right. Let me say, once for 
 fih ' all, that you must not take your daughter 
 
 to the theatre. It is not merely the work that is im- 
 moral, it is the place. Whenever we paint men, there 
 must be a grossness that cannot be placed before all eyes ; 
 and wherever the theatre is elevated and loyal, it can 
 live only by using the colors of truth. The theatre 
 being the picture or the satire of the passions and 
 social manners, it must ever be immoral — the passions 
 and social manners being themselves immoral." What- 
 ever may be thought of this last sentiment, the opinion 
 
THE THEATRE. 99 
 
 entertained of the theatre by this writer of plays is 
 entitled to weight. 
 
 Dr. Prime, in the New York Observer of Jan. 23, 
 1879, says, "There is not in the city of New York one 
 theatre of which I have knowledge from the Dr. Prime, 
 testimony of them who support them, where it is desi- 
 rable that people should go. They are all degrading 
 and corrupting. Not one of them confines itself to 
 what is by courtesy styled the legitimate drama, and 
 there is much that is loose enough for that." 
 
 Dr. Martin R. Vincent says, " The theatre as it 
 now is, is no place for a Christian;" and Drs vincent 
 Dr. Howard Crosby, " As they are, I pro- and ci " osb ^ 
 nounce them satanic and soul-destroying." 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the theatre, being 
 as described by Dr. Witherspoon, was made the subject 
 of legislation by the American Congress at an early day. 
 The following resolution was passed soon after the 
 Declaration of Independence: "Whereas The Ameri . 
 true religion and good morals are the only can Con s ress - 
 solid foundation of public liberty and happiness, Re- 
 solved that it be, and hereby is, earnestly recommended 
 to the several states, to take the most effectual meas- 
 ures for the encouragement thereof, and for the sup- 
 pression of theatrical entertainments, horseracing, ga- 
 ming, and such other diversions as are productive of 
 idleness, dissipation and a general depravity of princi- 
 ples and manners." 
 
I oo A MUSE ME NTS. 
 
 This, certainly, is not a complimentary resolution ; 
 and when we find the New York Legislature of 1878 
 
 The n y an d '79 taking measures to guard against 
 Legislature. t k e a b uses anc [ excesses of theatrical repre- 
 sentations, we are led to infer that their character and 
 tendencies are much the same at the beginning of the 
 second as at the beginning of the first century of our 
 national independence. 
 
 Ecclesiastical legislation has, of course, been volu- 
 minous and repetitious, from the earliest times till now. 
 
 Ecclesiastical ^ * s sa *d ^ at an English writer in the time 
 Councils. Q f ch ar j es tt « mac i e a catalogue of authori- 
 
 ties against the stage, which contains every name of 
 eminence in the heathen and Christian world ; it com- 
 prehends the united testimony of the Jewish and Chris- 
 tian churches ; the deliberate acts of fifty-four ancient 
 and modern, general, national, and provincial councils 
 and synods, both of the Western and Eastern churches ; 
 the condemnatory sentence of seventy-one ancient 
 fathers, and one hundred and fifty modern Catholic and 
 Protestant authors." That remarkable catalogue might 
 be indefinitely prolonged to include the purest and saint- 
 liest names, and the most influential assemblages of 
 godly men since that day, all speaking essentially the 
 same thing, pronouncing the same verdict upon the 
 theatrical representations of their respective times. 
 
 Dr. Brainard. Surely such a verdict ought to be entitled 
 to respect. No wonder the sainted Dr. Brainard of 
 
THE THEATRE. 101 
 
 Philadelphia, was moved to say, " With this clear, de- 
 cided, universal, and almost unbroken testimony of the 
 whole church of God; with the repeated warnings of 
 the Holy Scriptures against conformity to the world ; 
 with a perception of the ruin to which theatres in this 
 city have hurried so many of our youth of both sexes ; 
 with a knowledge of the baneful influence exerted by 
 professors of religion when they sanction iniquity by 
 their presence and thus hold out false lights to beckon 
 souls to shipwreck and to death — with all this in view, 
 it seemed slanderous to suppose that members of our 
 churches could so far forget their high obligations as 
 to abet in any manner the abominations of the stage." 
 Would that it were slanderous to suppose such a thing. 
 Would that this holy sensitiveness pervaded the entire 
 membership of the church of God. Her relation to 
 the theatre would be speedily determined and forcibly 
 expressed. 
 
 Of course it is clearly understood that we 
 
 r 1 • • i 1 • The aCtUal ' 
 
 speak of the theatre as it is, and as his- not the ideal 
 
 theatre. 
 
 tory shows it generally to have been, not 
 of the ideal theatre of the imagination of pure and brill- 
 iant men. 
 
 To those who wish to conserve whatever 
 
 . Two methods: 
 
 ol good the stage is capable of, while repu- i. Discrimina- 
 diating the bad, two methods have sug- 
 gested themselves, and found able advocacy. 
 
 One is that of discrimination. Edwin Booth, " the 
 
102 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 most distinguished modern representative of the dra- 
 matic profession," in his letter to the " Christian Union" 
 says, " My knowledge of the modern drama 
 
 Edwin Booth . 
 
 on the theatre is so very meagre that I never permit my 
 wife or daughter to witness a play without 
 previously ascertaining its character. This is the 
 method I pursue; I can suggest no other, unless it 
 might be by means of a ' dramatic censor/ whose 
 taste or judgment might however be frequently at 
 fault. If the management of theatres could be denied 
 to speculators and placed in the hands of actors who 
 value their reputation and respect their calling, the 
 stage would at least afford healthy recreation, if not 
 indeed a wholesome stimulus to the exercise of noble 
 sentiments. But while the theatre is permitted to be 
 a mere shop for gain — open to every huckster of im- 
 moral gimcracks — there is no other way to discrimi- 
 nate between the pure and base than through the 
 experience of others." 
 
 This letter is remarkable as the judgment of a great 
 actor on the modern stage. It is needless to look for 
 a more sweeping condemnation. Commenting upon 
 it the "Christian Union" says, "There is no popular 
 amusement which has fallen to a lower level; none 
 which has been more besmirched and degraded ; none 
 which has done more to debase the imagination, 
 degrade the moral sentiments, weaken the already 
 irresolute will, deaden the sensibilities, and vitiate the 
 
THE THEATRE. 103 
 
 whole nature." And yet we are urged to discriminate 
 and by so doing countenance an institution, which, 
 taken all in all, the centuries through, has sustained 
 the same reputation and moved in the same direction, 
 and is less clean now than in many a day gone by. 
 
 The "Christian Statesman," with reference to the 
 same deliverance, cogently urges that " we have to do 
 with the theatre as a social institution. Our The t . Chris _ 
 patronage, on the night when the stage is ^ d£S££a- 
 swept of its impurities, goes to sustain it tlon ' 
 in its whole character and with all its mingled influen- 
 ces. Our entrance fees are swept into the same 
 pockets which hold the receipts from the most indecent 
 spectacular displays. It makes no difference to the 
 manager whether Christians fill his house to witness i a 
 Shaksperian revival,' or gaze through their blushes on 
 the transformations of the 'Black Crook.' In either 
 case they help to swell his coffers and to vindicate the 
 respectability of his house, which is all that he desires." 
 The question is pertinent and forcible, " Shall we trust 
 our sons and daughters to the educating influence of 
 an institution, of which the best that can be said is, 
 that sometimes it is not indecent?" 
 
 Discrimination is confessedly a difficult matter in 
 such a case as this. Mr. Booth's suggestion that " the 
 experience of others," be they "dramatic Difficulties of 
 censors" or persons of less pretension, in- dlscnmmatlon - 
 volves a principle which Christian ethics cannot sane- 
 
104 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 tion. What is to become of the people who thus 
 imperil themselves for no adequate reason, that certain 
 families may be decently amused ? This is no case of 
 life or death, nor even of conspicuous benevolence. 
 The world is not shut up to the theatres for entertain- 
 ment, much less that part of the world which cares to 
 discriminate wisely in these things. We cannot con- 
 sent that for our benefit others shall go through an ex- 
 perience of following the modern theatre through its 
 slimy path, to see if there be not here and there a 
 decent spot for our feet. We prefer to keep out of it 
 altogether. 
 
 Moreover, it is conceded and urged in this connec- 
 tion, that " in discriminating we are to keep, as indeed 
 The safe side we must > on the safe side of certainty." If 
 of certainty. y OU ^ not k now whether to go or to stay 
 
 at home, stay at home. It is better sometimes to go 
 hungry than once to eat poisoned food. The evil of 
 a vicious suggestion does not depart when the bell 
 rings down the curtain. No man can touch pitch and 
 not be defiled. It is better to lose all of Shakespeare, 
 than to suffer the contagion for a single night of some of 
 the modern dramas. Then, is not that discrimination 
 wisest and safest which quits the theatre altogether ? 
 "Let them who 'go but seldom, and never but to 
 Hannah More a good play,' consider that while they go 
 
 on discrimina- ... 
 
 tion. at all, the principle is the same; for they 
 
 sanction, by going sometimes, a diversion which 
 
THE THEATRE. 105 
 
 is not to be defended on strict Christian princi- 
 ples." 
 
 But what if the theatre were reformed? Method 2. 
 It is stoutly urged that we should "with- Reformation - 
 stand and conquer the degenerating tendency, and even 
 redeem it from its own innate depravity." 
 
 Mr. Sol Smith, in the Boston papers, took Dr. 
 Beecher sharply to task for assailing the theatre of 
 that classic city. " If you and they" — the 
 
 r f * J Mr.Sol Smith 
 
 rest Of the Clergy he Said, WOUld CO- and Dr. Lyman 
 
 °- J Beecher. 
 
 operate with us, and endeavor to purge the 
 stage of its impurities, instead of endeavoring to exter- 
 minate it, much good might be done, and the drama 
 might flourish as the adjunct of Christianity." Far- 
 ther on in his reminiscences of his life as an actor and 
 manager, Mr. Smith speaks of his career in New Or- 
 leans (1827), and says, "When I went to New Orleans 
 as an actor, Sunday night performances certainly did 
 at first appear strange to me, and perhaps slightly out 
 of order; but upon a careful view of the matter in all 
 its bearings, my mind became convinced that keeping 
 the theatres open every night — with this especial obser- 
 vance, that they are under the management of consci- 
 entious, well-meaning directors — must be beneficial to 
 any community." Accordingly it was done, and proved 
 a paying venture. Indeed, Mr. Smith says that, " but 
 for Sunday night performances, some years of unlucky 
 management could not have been pushed through." 
 
 Annulments. 1 4 
 
106 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 And he instances, as a sample of the good done, the 
 characteristic endorsement of an Irishman : " The church 
 in the morning, the drayma at night, is my maxim, Mis- 
 ter Sol ; and I '11 stick to it." This Irishman seems to 
 have been a godsend to Mr. Smith second only to Sun- 
 day night revenues. What a pity it is that Dr. Beech - 
 er and the church generally did not cooperate with this 
 " conscientious " manager and secure the stage as an 
 adjunct to Christianity. To do so, it was only neces- 
 sary for them to sacrifice their common sense and their 
 most cherished convictions and principles. 
 
 If we are to move in the direction of reform, let us 
 not approach so great a task as if it were some new 
 thing under the sun. It may not be strictly true that 
 the church has tried her hand at reforming the theatre, 
 but she certainly has been mixed up with theatrical 
 representations with no great credit to herself or im- 
 provement to them. 
 
 The early fathers of the church wrote plays and 
 The church acte d them, if not to reform, to offset the 
 ™f ng Pj-tmg demoralizing spectacles of the heathen 
 around them. For the " mystery plays " 
 the church alone is responsible — a " holy mummery, at 
 which piety, taste, and common sense would be equal- 
 ly revolted." The English clergy wrote scores of 
 plays, but with no perceptible uplift of the stage into 
 the region of moral purity. All this aside, the experi- 
 ment has been tried nearer home and in later times. 
 
THE THEATRE. 107 
 
 Writing for our own land, it is of no practical ac- 
 count to refer to the arbitrary methods by which Fred- 
 erick William II. of Prussia "strictly supervised the 
 r theatres, and obliged actors to conform to the rules of 
 decorum and morality." Nor does it avail here that 
 in Germany " all the clean theatres are kept a-going 
 by government subsidies." It may be worth while to 
 know that, as matter of fact, there are so called " clean 
 theatres " over there. But to return. 
 
 The late Dr. Wm. H. Goodrich is my authority for 
 saying that " there never was a fairer attempt made to 
 purge the theatre and make it a fit resort Experiments 
 for the virtuous than was made sixty years at reformation - 
 ago in a New England city." " A group of high- 
 minded men, whose names were a pledge of honorable 
 purpose, united to establish a pure theatre. They be- 
 lieved that under fit direction there could exist a well- 
 regulated drama — one which should cultivate public 
 taste and not impair public morals. Not a play was to 
 be performed till they accepted it. Not a sentiment 
 should be admitted which should trench on good man- 
 ners or caricature religion. They spared neither time, 
 pains, nor expense. They prepared their theatre, se- 
 lected their performers, and under the best auspices 
 the trial was made. It failed signally, and they con- 
 fessed it with a magnanimity that did them honor. 
 They failed for three reasons : First, because they could 
 not control the choice of actors. They could not find 
 
ioS AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 enough persons of talent in that profession who had 
 a decent reputation off the stage. In the second place, 
 they could not control the character of the perform - 
 
 Results. ance. The purer plays of Shakespeare 
 could not be represented with success. They were 
 wholly distasteful to the masses. Finally, they could 
 not control the audience. They found that, instead 
 of a pure theatre, they had provided a resort for the 
 vicious ; and instead of elevating public sentiment, they 
 had given a fresh impulse to public corruption." 
 
 Similarly failed, he says, an effort in the same 
 direction by Dr. Channing and others, in Boston. 
 The manager of the Park Theatre in New York, at- 
 tempting " to purge his house of vice by refusing the 
 usual free admission to the known corrupters of virtue, 
 failed, and he publicly acknowledged that the theatre 
 could not be supported without the patronage of the 
 lewd." 
 
 Such attempts are not encouraging to fresh endeav- 
 or, in the face of '' this innate depravity " of the thea- 
 tre. If such a thing as reforming it were possible, it 
 should have been done long ago. The things we cry 
 out against now have always besmirched it. To keep 
 it within lawful bounds has never been found practi- 
 cable. To turn back its tread into sweet and virtuous 
 paths, and keep it there, no man has yet been able. 
 Not even William Shakespeare is entitled to anything 
 like unqualified endorsement; nor is he fit to be read 
 
THE THEATRE. 
 
 :o 9 
 
 or played, in this nineteenth century, without expur- 
 gation. 
 
 If it be asked, Why cannot the theatre be reformed ? 
 besides the reasons given above, it deserves to be no- 
 ted that the theatre is an expensive affair — why a failure. 
 all its belongings are costly. To make it a paying in- 
 stitution requires large and constant patronage. If it 
 be proposed to sustain one, clean in all its appoint- 
 ments, a fit place for family resort, where 
 
 The reform- 
 Only the pure shall congregate — no bar, ed theatre win 
 
 . not P a y* 
 
 "no third row" for the lewd, no impure 
 
 plays, no ballet-dancing, no disreputable actors — then 
 it offers no attraction for the greater part of the pres- 
 ent theatre-going world. It appeals to the church of 
 Christ, to the scholarly, the artistic, the brain and heart 
 of society as its best. They are a body of people who 
 have neither the time, means, nor disposition to go 
 often to the most ideal theatre that ever entered into 
 the thought of man to conceive. They have too much 
 to do, too many weightier concerns. This is pre- 
 eminently true of the church of Christ. The conse- 
 quence is that so expensive an institution cannot be 
 supported except as it appeals to the masses — to the 
 rich, the idle, the worldly, the people who live for 
 pleasure, and so on through all the lower grades ; and 
 the theatre, run for the masses, cannot, at the best, 
 strike higher than their average tone of morals. It has 
 generally carried them lower rather than higher. The 
 
no A MUSEMENTS. 
 
 church of Christ has a grander work to do even than 
 running and supporting moral theatres. We see not 
 but that the conclusion of Rev. J. Vaughn Lewis is 
 sound : " The day and the opportunity for reforming 
 the theatre are gone by for ever, and it is 
 people, then now for Christianity to reform the pleasure- 
 seekers, and, I may also add, the pleasure- 
 makers." " What remains for the church to do is to 
 reform the men who seek to be amused by elevating 
 the moral and religious tone of all classes ; and in this 
 way only pure and innocent amusements will be sought 
 for or furnished." 
 
 In striking agreement are the words of Mrs. More : 
 " Unfortunately this Utopian good cannot be produced 
 until not only the stage itself has undergone a complete 
 purification, but until the audience shall be purified also." 
 
 Meanwhile the rule of the late W. C. Macready may 
 well be ours : " None of my children shall ever, with 
 my consent, or on any pretence, enter a theatre, or 
 have any visiting connection with actors or actresses." 
 
 The great tragedians on both sides the sea seem to 
 have had some well-defined and publicly-expressed 
 aversion to the theatre as it is. As a school of morals, 
 they have left the brand of their severe condemnation 
 upon it. Where Macready and Booth pause, it were 
 well for Christian parents to pause and consider wheth- 
 er they are justified in lending their presence and influ- 
 ence to such an institution as the modern theatre is 
 
THE OPERA. in 
 
 known to be. If ever it is reformed and made meet 
 for the children of light, these words will not apply to 
 it, and we shall not need to discriminate at the risk of 
 moral contamination to ourselves or others. 
 But surely we may all go to 
 
 II. THE OPERA. 
 
 Yes, if it is sweet and wholesome. But is it ? The 
 opera is usually sung on the same boards, with the 
 same stage effects, the same opportunities for drinking 
 and lewdness. The play is sung and acted instead of 
 being spoken and acted. It may be that the character 
 of the singers is above that of the average actor. The 
 case is hardly a clear one so far ; for if the famous ope- 
 ras themselves are unclean in sentiment, how can pure- 
 minded men and women sing them and personate their 
 characters ? It may be, as Mr. Haweis says, that 
 opera is the most irrational and unintellectual form of 
 music ; but a more vital question concerns the quality 
 of the works sung — their moral sentiments. Men- 
 delssohn, who " in a lying generation was true, and in 
 an adulterous generation was pure," and 
 
 . . Mendelssohn 
 
 whom neither popularity nor gain could and" Robert ie 
 tempt to sully the page of his spotless in- 
 spiration, said of " Robert le Diable," " In this opera a 
 young girl divests herself of her garments, and sings a 
 song to the effect that next day, at this time, she will 
 be married. All this produces effect, but I have no 
 
112 AM USE ME NTS. 
 
 music for such things. I consider it. ignoble. So, if 
 the present epoch exalts this style, then I will write 
 oratorios." Noble utterance, to which the Christian 
 world may well say, Amen. 
 
 There are others, if rightly judged, that ought to 
 go with it. Mr. Bourcicault, a writer of plays is re- 
 Mr Bourd- P orte d as characterizing several of these as 
 terizat S ion hara of follows : " ' Norma ' is a vestal priestess who 
 Italian opera, k as been sec j ucec i. She discovers her para- 
 mour in an attempt to seduce her friend, another ves- 
 tal priestess, and in despair contemplates the murder 
 of her bastard children. 
 
 " 'Don Giovanni' is the proverbial hero, whose ca- 
 reer represents the romance of successful adultery and 
 debauchery. 
 
 " ' Rigoletto' exhibits the agony of a father obliged 
 to witness the prostitution of his own child. 
 
 " ' Traviata ' is the progress of a transcendental 
 harlot. 
 
 " ' Lucretia Borgia' is a history of adultery not un- 
 associated with incest. 
 
 " ' Faust' is the most specious apology for seduc- 
 tion, ending with the apotheosis of crime. Margaret, 
 who murders her mother and her illegitimate child, is 
 carried up to heaven." 
 
 These will be recognized, even by such as never 
 heard them sung, as the popular operas of many years 
 past, and they will blush for the people who have been 
 
THE OPERA. 113 
 
 regaled by such abominable immoralities, though sung 
 by the most superb talent of the age. Talent cannot 
 consecrate vice ; and to lend the divine art of music to 
 such themes is to debase the gift of song, and make 
 fascinating sin still more enticing. This being true of 
 the opera, let the same censure be pronounced upon it 
 as upon the theatre, only the more severely, by so much 
 as it claims to walk on a higher plane. 
 
 Besides all this, in the matter of decency of apparel, 
 actresses sin alike in which ever role they appear. In 
 this there is no difference, whether the dra- Immodes tap- 
 ma be set to music or not. For modesty to pare1 ' 
 reign upon the stage is exceptional, and in the circum- 
 stances to be held in double honor. Dr. Howard 
 Crosby recently said, " French art and the 
 
 Dr. Crosby 
 
 theatres are doing- all they can to promote on the nude in 
 
 * . . . , art and in life. 
 
 loose notions of the relations between the 
 sexes and to steep society in immorality. Easy-going 
 Christians are being caught in this snare. It is fashion- 
 able to admire indecencies, and Christians wish to be 
 fashionable. It is now hard to convict our low, ob- 
 scene theatres before the courts, because the plea is 
 that all the respectable theatres have the same obscen- 
 ities, and Christian mothers take their daughters to 
 see them." 
 
 The opera certainly comes in for its share of this 
 demoralization. Its influence is the more seductive 
 because music is supposed to elevate and whiten the 
 
 Amusements. I C 
 
114 A MUSEMENTS. 
 
 stage for the time being. But often, as with Lady 
 Waldemar in Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh, 
 
 " They split the amaranth boddice down 
 To the waist, or nearly, with the audacious press 
 Of full-breathed beauty. If the heart within 
 Were half as white ! But if it were, perhaps 
 The breast were closer covered, and the sight 
 Less aspectable by half, too." 
 
 Music cannot undo the mischief of immodest ap- 
 parel, without which the stage would lose half its 
 attraction for multitudes. 
 
 On the whole, we do not see but that the opera lies 
 open to the same condemnation as other theatrical rep- 
 resentations, being liable to the same abuse, and actu- 
 ally no better than the rest. 
 
 We next turn our attention to 
 
 III. THE DANCE. 
 
 We are only called upon to consider the dance of 
 modern civilized society. Any one curious to do so 
 can find in our encyclopaedias all that is needful to 
 its univer- know of its wide range, both in time and 
 saiity. space, among savages and in the courts of 
 
 kings. The monuments of extinct nations show that 
 they were familiar with it. It is questionable if there 
 be a savage race anywhere without its dance. Some- 
 times it is a religious rite ; again it is associated with 
 war ; at other times it is indulged as an amusement. 
 So far as the writer is aware, nowhere, except among 
 
THE DANCE. 115 
 
 civilized peoples, is it carried to the excess of frequen- 
 cy, expense, and late hours, so common among them. 
 Throughout the East dancing is largely done by pro- 
 fessionals. In the West the people prefer to do their 
 own. " The ancient Romans accounted it disgraceful 
 for a free citizen to dance, except as a religious rite," 
 and "the Mohammedan religion forbids it even within 
 the harem ;" but our modern civilization regards it al- 
 most as an indispensable accomplishment. Fashionable 
 society and the American aborigines are at one in this. 
 "Among the Kamschadales, and in some other 
 cases where men and women dance together, there is 
 a trace of deliberate obscenity;" that too has happened 
 nearer home. "All the different passions were ex- 
 pressed in dancing by the Greeks ;" and this, too, is 
 matched by " the fine art" of the modern dance. "The 
 dance of the Furies was so expressive of vengeance as 
 to inspire the beholders with terror ;" the modern 
 dance is supposed to be more politic. Cicero said, 
 " No one dances unless he is drunk or mad ;" but now, 
 people both sane and sober not only dance, but delib- 
 erately train their children to dance. In one respect 
 there has been a great change — whether for better or 
 worse there may be a difference of opinion. The time 
 was when, in the church, special provision was made 
 for dancing in the choir. " The fathers of the church 
 assembled at Trent gave a ball in which they took 
 part ;" and Scaliger is said to have astonished Charles 
 
1 1 6 A MUSE ME NTS. 
 
 V. by his exploits in dancing. This remarkable ac- 
 complishment seems to have fallen into desuetude with 
 the modern clergy and bishops of the church, but the 
 extraordinary efforts of a few may yet bring back "the 
 lost art," if such it be. Our charity (?) balls, however, 
 seem to bridge the chasm pretty well. If the bishops 
 are not found on the floor, they may perhaps be seen 
 in the gallery with the elders of the church. 
 
 Dancing as a fashionable amusement has, first and 
 
 last, been vehemently assailed. For some reason, good 
 
 or ill, it has happened that almost all eccle- 
 
 How regard- . . ... 
 
 ed by the siastical bodies nave pronounced against it ; 
 
 and probably nine out of ten of the clergy 
 have been grieved that members of their flock would 
 dance, and have been outspoken against the practice. 
 
 As against them, the antiquity and the universality 
 of the dance and the authority of the Bible, too, have 
 been pleaded, as well as its intrinsic value. But the 
 antiquity and the universality need winnowing before 
 they will support the dance in the view of an enlight- 
 ened conscience ; for they strike both ways. 
 
 As for the Bible, Dr. Lyman Beecher thus sums up 
 
 the argument — for substance what may be 
 
 Dr. Beech- ■ f ~r~ . _■. . 
 
 er's Bible tes- found in our Bible Dictionaries : 
 
 timony. m . , 
 
 "i. Dancing was a religious act, both 
 of the true and also of idol worship. 
 
 "2. It was practised exclusively on joyful occa- 
 sions, such as national festivals or great victories. 
 
THE DANCE. 117 
 
 " 3. It was performed by maidens only. 
 
 "4. It was performed usually in the daytime, in 
 the open air, in highways, fields, or groves. 
 
 " 5. Men who perverted dancing from a sacred use 
 to purposes of amusement were deemed infamous. 
 
 " 6. No instances of dancing are found upon record 
 in the Bible in which the two sexes united in the exer- 
 cise, either as an act of worship or an amusement. 
 
 " 7. There is no instance upon record of social dan- 
 cing for amusement, except that of the vain fellows de- 
 void of shame ; of the irreligious families described by 
 Job, which produced increased impiety and ended in 
 destruction ; and of Herodias, which terminated in the 
 rash vow of Herod and the murder of John the Baptist." 
 
 So much for the argument in favor of the dance of 
 modern society drawn from the practice of Bible times. 
 The position has scholarly endorsement, and may be 
 left to speak for itself. 
 
 Now, then, upon the merits of the case, which is 
 really the only concern we have, let us turn our delib- 
 erate attention. The question is not wheth- The real 
 er, in any conceiveable circumstances, dan- <i uestlon - 
 cing may be justified. Such a proposition calls for no 
 serious discussion. To take certain measured steps to 
 music, in itself considered, may be a harmless thing. 
 Evidently several persons might so join in such an 
 exercise as that the most prudish could find in it no 
 mischievous device. The good or evil of it must there- 
 
1 1 8 A MUSEMENTS. 
 
 fore be a thing of times, associations, methods, and de- 
 gree — which condition the dance, as we know it. Prob- 
 ably, if the dance were confined to private parlors, to 
 circles of mutual friends, to seasonable hours, and lim- 
 ited by such proprieties as rule these same people be- 
 fore and after the dance, there might be no occasion 
 for an annual protest against it from all our ecclesiasti- 
 cal bodies. Pastors would say, On such conditions 
 dance if you will ; and you need not quote Scripture 
 for it, either ; there is none that is pertinent. If mod- 
 ern Christians wish Scriptural endorsement for their 
 dancing, let them in the first instance go apart, sex 
 How to dance fr° m sex - Let them dance before the Lord, 
 Scnpturaiiy. as a p art f ^gjj. religion, and do it as of 
 
 sincerity and in the spirit of worship. Against this the 
 church, it is presumed, would make no protest. 
 
 But looking at the dance as it is practised, we find 
 
 it prone to leap all private enclosures, and seek halls 
 
 Actual ten- an d promiscuous assemblies as its environ- 
 
 dencies. ment. It declines to keep within the limits 
 
 of recreation, and runs into dissipation almost as surely 
 
 Runs to dis- as ^ e rivers now mto the sea - Proverbially 
 sipation. t ^ e dance see k s the cover of the night. 
 
 Dancing assemblies are seldom well under way till it is 
 time they were dispersed, and often do not end till the 
 small hours of the morning. The simple fact that dan- 
 cing assemblies seek, not recreation, with due regard 
 to freshness and vigor the next day, but satiety, igno- 
 
THE DANCE. 119 
 
 ring the laws of health and rest ordained for us by the 
 Creator — ranks dancing, as ordinarily pursued, among 
 the dissipations which both the moralist and the phys- 
 iologist are bound to proscribe. They have no choice 
 in the premises. They are bound to do so. 
 
 Along with these unseasonable hours go, as a rule, 
 a heated atmosphere, light apparel, violent exercise, an 
 undue excitement of the nervous system, Exposures 
 and times without number an exposure to and risks ' 
 a chill, night atmosphere which has resulted in prema- 
 ture death. Not one of these things can the physiol- 
 ogist or the moralist approve. As actually carried on, 
 dancing is not a healthy exercise. If the church held 
 her meetings at such times and for so long, however 
 orderly they might be, the world would say she had 
 gone stark mad, a council of doctors would instantly 
 be called to stop this madness, and the philosophers 
 would bury her under prodigious essays and lectures. 
 For church services to hold till ten o'clock, in seasons 
 of profound interest, is by many deemed an indiscre- 
 tion. 
 
 A still graver charge is found in the liberties taken 
 under cover of the dance. No such familiarity would 
 for a moment be tolerated anywhere else by i mpr0 pe r fa- 
 respectable society. Plainness of speech is milianties - 
 demanded just here, even at the cost of personal feel- 
 ing and delicacy. It is not possible to treat this grave 
 matter wisely and do otherwise. Take sex out of the 
 
i2o AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 dance, and it would lose its fascination for most of those 
 Sex and the now captivated by it. A dancing assem- 
 dance. bly of men, apart, is a novelty that this age 
 
 is not likely to look upon. " It alone, of all the favor- 
 ite diversions of gay society, requires the association 
 of the two sexes in it." A writer in the " Baptist Quar- 
 terly," October, 1867, "writing under duress of con- 
 science," says, and it is believed truly, that " passion is 
 the true basis of the popularity of the 
 
 Testimony of , , / 
 
 a writer in Bap- dance Always the dance inclines to 
 
 tist Quarterly. 
 
 multiply opportunities of physical prox- 
 imity and contact between the sexes — always to make 
 them prolonged and more daring." While endorsing 
 this position in general, we distinctly assert that we do 
 not believe the dance is consciously such to all. We 
 would defend the purity of many who are known to 
 participate even in the round dance of modern society, 
 as white as the driven snow, while we would go to any 
 reasonable length to drag them from a position so 
 equivocal — from an amusement which has been the 
 ruin of so many. How it can be that a social party, 
 resolving itself into a dancing assembly, absolves itself 
 from the proprieties which ruled between the sexes the 
 moment before, is a thing capable of answer only on 
 the principle that fashion is supreme, even over mod- 
 esty and decency. And is it thought that, constituted 
 as we are, this infringement of the proprieties of life 
 can be allowed with impunity ? 
 
THE DANCE. 121 
 
 Dr. Palmer of New Orleans says of this species of 
 dancing, " I do not hesitate publicly to de- Dr. Palmer. 
 nounce it as undisguisedly licentious." A pastoral 
 letter of the archbishops and bishops of the Roman- 
 catholic church, assembled in Baltimore, p astora i i et . 
 warns their people against "the fashionable cathoii5 oma of 
 dances, whieh, as now carried on, are re- Amenca - 
 volting to every feeling of delicacy and propriety, and 
 are fraught with the greatest danger to morals." And 
 since it is supposed by many that the Episcopal 
 church is an exception to the evangelical churches 
 generally, in matters of social strictness, let it be con- 
 sidered that no church covenant can well be more sol- 
 emnly binding to abjure all worldly " pomps and vani- 
 ties " than the confirmation vows of this particular 
 church; and no member of Christ's body sets aside a 
 more sweeping oath of allegiance to Christ and his 
 church, to get into the mazes of the " round dance," 
 than does he who enters it from the Episcopal fold. 
 It is with peculiar satisfaction, therefore, that we 
 quote Bishop Hopkins of Vermont saying, Bishop Hop _ 
 " No ingenuity can make dancing consist- kins " 
 ent with the covenant of baptism ;" and Bishop Meade 
 of Virginia, "We ought conscientiously to inquire 
 whether its great liability to abuse, and its b p . Meade. 
 many acknowledged abuses, should not make us frown 
 upon it in all its forms." " To my mind," he says, " it 
 is in itself wrong, improper, and of bad effect." Bish- 
 
 Amusements. 1 6 
 
122 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 op Mcllvaine puts the theatre and the dance togeth- 
 Bishop Mc- er > as "two subjects in which there is no 
 iivame. difficulty of discrimination. The only line 
 
 I would draw in regard to these is that of entire exclu- 
 sion. If the writer be asked whether, in his view, in 
 the pomps and vanities of this wicked world which are 
 renounced in baptism, are included theatrical amuse- 
 ments and dances, he answers without hesitation in the 
 affirmative." And Bishop Coxe, covering the same 
 Bishop Coxe, ground, warns such as " run with the world 
 to the same ' excess of riot ' in these things, that they 
 presume not to come to the holy table." 
 
 Such testimony might be indefinitely augmented 
 from other branches of the Christian church, multi- 
 tudes having felt themselves called upon, from the 
 gravity of the situation, the excesses of our times, and 
 by their pastoral and official responsibility, to warn 
 their people against the fascinations of a dance, which 
 the Viscount de Brieux in a popular pamphlet calls a 
 " hideous intertwining." 
 
 The sound words of Dr. Howard Crosby will con- 
 firm the preceding testimonies. " In regard to these — ■ 
 Dr. Crosby, waltzes, polkas, and such like — a Christian 
 ought not to hesitate an instant, any more than he 
 should about thieving or lying. It is a fearful thing 
 that fashion has so perverted the sense of Christian 
 parents as to allow this enormity to be practised in 
 their houses and by their own children, or else to 
 
THE DANCE. 123 
 
 make them guilty of the grievous inconsistency of for- 
 bidding it to their children while furnishing it to the 
 children of others. The foundation for the vast amount 
 of domestic misery and domestic crime which startles 
 us often in its public outcroppings, was laid when pa- 
 rents allowed the sacredness of their daughters' per- 
 sons and the purity, of their maiden instincts to be 
 rudely shocked in the waltz. . . . This vice, by the 
 force of fashion and ' good society,' has captivated the 
 young and deluded the old in the church of Christ, and 
 no minister of Christ must utter an uncertain sound 
 here." 
 
 This strong statement of Dr. Crosby is borne out 
 by the chief of police: "Three-fourths of the aban- 
 doned girls in New York were ruined by dancing !" 
 The instinct of a Philadelphia army officer, Natura i i n _ 
 which prompted him to say, on first be- stincts ' 
 holding a "round dance," " If I should see a man offer- 
 ing to dance with my wife in that way, I would horse- 
 whip him," is the natural instinct of unsophisticated 
 men and women everywhere. We can school our- 
 selves to tolerate this vicious thing, just as women even 
 schooled themselves to sit through the infamous " Black 
 Crook." Such is Fashion ! Alas, that she should 
 sway her sceptre over the church of Christ ! It has 
 come to this, that though carried to far greater excess 
 than when first brought over from the slums of Paris, 
 many now look on with indifference, if not with admi- 
 
124 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 ration; so that, if Christian mothers and daughters 
 who do love the things that are pure, lovely, and of 
 good report, will not, upon its obvious merits, arise and 
 banish this style of dancing from good society, it will 
 probably never be done. And will it never come about 
 that sensible women, whose word would be all-potent 
 in the "first circles," will endorse the wife of General 
 Sherman in her vigorous, open protest against it — if 
 not for the sake of their own sons and daughters, then 
 for the sake of others not so securely guarded ? , May 
 God hasten it on. 
 
 Much that has here been said has no application 
 to the " square dance" in private parlors, in select com- 
 pany, and within seasonable hours, except as this leads 
 on to the other, and to the excesses of the ballroom. 
 There is certainly much truth in Dr. Ad- 
 squaredance be dison's remark, on the floor of a late 
 
 kept square ? , - 
 
 "Church Congress : The square dance 
 cannot be kept square, but is sure to be rounded off 
 with the waltz." It is equally difficult to keep it out 
 of public places and promiscuous company, and within 
 seasonable hours. It would, therefore, seem to be one 
 of those things in which for most "abstinence is much 
 more easily practised than temperance." 
 
 But it is further claimed for "this accomplish- 
 Danring as ment " that it ministers, if it be not quite 
 
 an accomplish- . , . « r 
 
 ment. essential, to grace and elegance of man- 
 
 ners. It is to be hoped that all will agree that " piety 
 
THE DANCE. 125 
 
 maintains no natural war with elegance, and Chris- 
 tianity would be no gainer by making her disciples 
 unamiable." Is it then really so, that to find persons 
 of "grace and elegance of manners," we must turn 
 to those who have been under the fastidious touch of 
 the dancing-master? Is it indeed the dancing-mas- 
 ter himself who is to be our model — a man who ordi- 
 narily can get no entrance into the society for which 
 he is supposed to be polishing the children and youth 
 of Christian homes ? Good manners ! Is this some- 
 thing lodged in the mechanism of the body rather than 
 in the royal chambers of the soul — a thing of airs and 
 bows and affectation, and not first of all and chiefly a 
 thing of cultured head and heart ? It is difficult to do 
 less than summarily dismiss such a plea as a mere ex- 
 cuse for training a child for the walks of fashion and 
 worldliness. Distant be the day when the manners of 
 the dancing-master take the place of " the manly walk 
 of an ingenuous youth of conscious rectitude," or "the 
 natural grace of a pure girl, taught by a pure mother 
 and a native sense of delicacy " how to behave. The 
 youth of this generation, educated in our schools and 
 led to the feet of Christ as the Great Teacher of man- 
 ners through morals, will compare favorably with any 
 that have gone before in elegant accomplishments, 
 though they never come under a dancing-master for a 
 day, nor take a step in the " merry dance." There are 
 a great many who, like Daniel Webster, " never had 
 
126 A MUSEMENTS. 
 
 the ambition nor the talents to learn the art," and yet 
 as men and women of refinement and elegant manners 
 shine as the chief ornaments of society. If the dancing- 
 school sort of manners could be brought to indicate a 
 class of persons who have not a capacity for any other 
 accomplishment, we might be reconciled to leave it 
 there, and confess that it has this questionable utility 
 in the culture of civilized society. 
 
 It comes to this, then, that the dance, as it is car- 
 ried on, will not bear the test of a justifiable recreation, 
 Not a justifi- whether considered physiologically or mor- 
 
 able recreation, ^-[y. It is not held Subject tO the la\VS of 
 
 God, and it would seem neither can be. This judg- 
 ment is not that of a few, and they having no clear title 
 to respect, but it is that of a great multitude, the purest, 
 the brightest, most trusted in church and state, men 
 and women of science and letters, and who are leaders 
 in religious thought. It is for them who mean to reg- 
 ulate their lives upon Christian principles, and no less 
 to whom reason and natural law are supreme, to set 
 themselves against so obvious an abuse of natural and 
 moral laws ; and if the art of dancing cannot be brought 
 within lawful limits, to abandon it to them who know 
 no law but their own caprice, and recognize no author- 
 ity except from within themselves. 
 
CA RDS A ND BILL I A RDS. 1 2 7 
 
 IV. CARDS AND BILLIARDS. 
 
 As to cards and billiards, a few words will suffice. 
 It would be difficult to make an argument against 
 them, per se. It is true their associations are tainted — 
 if possible, those of cards more than billiards. Cards 
 are the tools of the gambler. They are recognized as 
 at home in the dens of vice and shame — in the hands 
 of lewd men and women. Ten to one, these are the 
 people who monopolize these games. Yet in itself con- 
 sidered, where is the propriety of endorsing those bits 
 of card, the " Game of Authors," or " Logomachy," 
 and denouncing other bits of card, with clubs and aces 
 on their face? or of smiling upon croquet and frown- 
 ing upon billiards ? If discriminated against, it must 
 be, as with the dance, on account of their peculiar fas- 
 cination and liability to abuse, either in gambling or 
 by a waste of time. 
 
 If it were possible to gather up the record of these 
 games for a century past, to go no farther back, there 
 can be little doubt but that it would be seen that they 
 have ministered far more to vice and dissipation than 
 to sweetness of temper, cleanness of hands, and purity 
 of life. Unquestionably there is far more sense in 
 billiards than in cards. More can be said for it as an 
 educational influence. Be this as it may, if we are to 
 admit these games, it can only be within Needful re- 
 the limits of recreation, wholesome associ- stnctlons - 
 ation, and in utter freedom from immoral taint. This 
 
1-3 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 would very largely revolutionize the card-playing of 
 our time. A whole evening, to a late hour, given up 
 fto cards, as to dancing, by sensible, not to say Chris- 
 tian people, is a questionable use of precious time and 
 immortal powers. It is almost certainly to carry rec- 
 reation over into dissipation, which is sinful. If gam- 
 bling, to the extent of "costs" or "drinks" or "sup- 
 pers," be brought into these games, a vicious principle 
 is allowed to mar and spoil them for all right-minded 
 people. "Reputable gambling" — if we allow such a 
 thing, because respectable people indulge it, in a small 
 way — ought to have no immunity that we are unwill- 
 ing to concede to the worst, and which the state visits 
 with the penalty of the law. 
 
 If kept within bounds that the moralist and the 
 physiologist will sanction, the question then becomes 
 Expediency, one of expediency which good people may 
 answer differently, without being amenable to censure. 
 Some of them being wealthy, will put billiard tables into 
 their houses, and, rich or poor, play cards with their 
 children. Some will play billiards, but for themselves 
 proscribe cards altogether, as do many in the church. 
 Whatever the discrimination, it must be made as hav- 
 ing due regard to the glory of God. Many will never 
 be able to see a pack of cards without associating it 
 with the devil. Many will never be able to see a 
 Christian playing cards without consciously distrusting 
 his piety, or mentally fixing upon him the epithet 
 
CARDS AND BILLIARDS. 129 
 
 " Worldly Christian." To many, familiarity with such 
 things at home is meant to prevent their children from 
 seeking them elsewhere, while as matter-of-fact learn- 
 ing at home has often paved the way straight into 
 immoral uses of these games in immoral places, to the 
 aching sorrow of parental hearts. 
 
 Allowing the purity of motive and the influence of 
 early education all due weight in these judgments, it 
 is still a question of wisdom in methods 
 of life, even when safely followed for one's duiging in them 
 
 questioned. 
 
 self. How far is this to sanctify one's influ- 
 ence for good, and enhance one's usefulness ? To the 
 Christian man, to the Christian minister especially, 
 this is a serious matter. Certain it is that, for us and 
 for our children, ignorance of these things is safety, it 
 may be bliss. Whether our children are safer i gnorance j s 
 going out from home without a knowl- safe * 
 edge of these things, may be a question with some ; 
 but for many scarcely so. They will say, mt Far sooner 
 let our children be taught to rationally content them- 
 selves without them ; and then, away from home, they 
 will not be tempted to seek them at the cost of their 
 morals, nor to become the dupes of evil and designing 
 men." 
 
 For that theory of education which favors training 
 children to the temperate use of all things as they find 
 them — wine, the theatre, the dance, the card-table, 
 billiards and so on — however heroic this treatment 
 
 Amusements. J J 
 
130 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 may be deemed, we find it impossible to have more 
 respect than for the practice which once prevailed, it is 
 said, among Scythian mothers of throwing infant chil- 
 dren into a running stream of cold water, that only the 
 sturdy — those able to survive the test — might remain 
 on their hands to be reared and educated. 
 
 In concluding this chapter, let it be said, the aim in 
 writing has been, not to be dogmatic, but to bring these 
 Conclusion, popular amusements, which have always 
 been in the world, and perhaps always will be, as they 
 are commonly coiiducted, not as some fancy they might 
 be, to such tests as reason and natural law, first of all, 
 prescribe for legitimate recreation. No man is at 
 liberty to set aside these tests who recognizes a moral 
 governor over this world. If he finds them unfairly 
 applied, he may see good reason to reject the conclu- 
 sions reached. The Christian will be held as a man, 
 to so much, and as a follower of Christ be amenable 
 also to the higher law of his new life in Him, self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Allowing the utmost that can be claimed, " If we 
 concede that our amusements are not expected to 
 make us better than we are, ought we not to condition 
 that they do not make us worse than they find us ?" 
 
 "Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatsoever 
 ye do, do all to the glory of God." 
 
THE GRANDER LIBERTY. i 3l 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE GRANDER LIBERTY. 
 
 Free to amusements, and too free to need them. 
 
 What miserable economy it is to be so little in the love 
 of God and the joys of a glorious devotion, that one can be 
 just empty enough to want his deficit made up of amuse- 
 ments. 
 
 There is no greater mistake than to suppose that Chris- 
 tians can impress the world by agreeing with it. 
 
 Horace Bushnell. 
 
 While conceding to play its place, and proposing 
 presently to give due attention to some of the avenues 
 of diversion which lie open to such as need or desire 
 them — always within limits of temperance — it may be 
 well to remind the true disciples of the Lord Jesus that 
 growth towards him, and joy in him, have The higher 
 a way of satisfying the human soul too pro- satlsfactlons - 
 foundly to allow any hearty relish for many things 
 which the world is crazed about. 
 
 Suppose these things — the theatre, the opera, the 
 dance, the card and billiard -table — were swept from 
 the world for ever — we write as for Christian eyes — 
 eyes opened to the vision of Christ and the privilege of 
 service for him — need such go through the world as if 
 a blow had been struck at the chief sources of their 
 satisfaction ? 
 
132 A MUSEMENTS. 
 
 It is not expected of people enthusiastic in art or 
 music or science, or of men and women engaged in 
 the weighty matters of this world, who have learned 
 the value of time and known the satisfaction of intel- 
 lectual culture, that they will be very much taken with 
 such light vanities as these. They might now and 
 then enjoy a great tragedian in Shakesperian drama, 
 but that is about all. They are readily excused from 
 the mazes of the dance. Indeed, there is an incongru- 
 ity between this fantastic performance and the digni- 
 fied demeanor which befits men and women of culture ; 
 also fathers and mothers in middle life. 
 
 It is to be hoped that no one will be found to say 
 that it is because these cultured people are demure and 
 sour, that they esteem less for themselves the sports 
 which are pardonable in childhood. Nor will any inti- 
 mate that they are frowning on the playside of life. 
 The truth is, they have no relish for these things, be- 
 cause of deeper aud truer satisfactions. Having the 
 mountain streams, why should they hanker after the 
 standing pools ? Having the roses of Sharon and the 
 lilies of the valley, why should they envy those whose 
 hands are full of artificial flowers ? Finding diversion 
 linked with cultured thought, with books and music 
 and poetry and science, with the microscope, the mag- 
 net, and the telescope, why should they be asked to 
 spend their time upon that which satisfieth not ? 
 
 We simply note a phenomenon in the secular walks 
 
THE GRANDER LIBERTY. 133 
 
 of life. These people unbend, but if they follow the 
 instincts of their cultured natures, they do not run after 
 the so-called popular amusements of their time. They 
 may now and then go into some of them for the sake 
 of a group of children, but not to please themselves. 
 We do not mean by this that everybody should follow 
 their example; but if it is true that they outgrow the 
 popular hunger and thirst which once afflict- The ana]o _ 
 ed them, and leave childish things for chil- j- 8 *^^ 
 dren, surely it may be so with those who llfe- 
 have been introduced into the kingdom of God. The 
 facts and the life of this kingdom touch human nature 
 far more universally than does art or science. They 
 are far more satisfying than either, taken by itself. 
 And besides, all this realm is open to the children of 
 the kingdom, being parts of his ways whom they adore 
 as the God of nature, of beauty, of melody, and all 
 wisdom, as well as holiness, love, and truth. Often the 
 deeply religious add to their resources of a satisfying 
 nature these which are drawn from the world of nature 
 and of mind around them. They also may be expect- 
 ed to become enthusiastic in their holy calling, and to 
 find in it a sphere for all their powers, and themselves 
 so completely absorbed in their work for the Master, 
 as not to care for those walks which once they thought 
 indispensable to their happiness. 
 
 That many are not so engaged, only proves that 
 they have not drunk deep at the river of God's pleas- 
 
134 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 ures. Many have not found wisdom's ways ways of 
 pleasantness, because they have not follow- 
 
 The pleasant- 
 ness of wis- ed them far enough to know through what 
 
 dom's ways. 
 
 gardens of delight they lead. They must 
 not be allowed to falsify the testimony of thousands 
 who, walking through the goodly country of Bible lore, 
 and becoming familiar with the reality and the romance 
 of missions, and the heroes and heroines of modern 
 church history, and engaged in the local work, the social 
 meetings, and the life of a particular body of believers, 
 have found in all these things a culture of head and 
 heart surpassing anything to be derived from the world 
 apart from them. 
 
 It does not follow that such may not, now and then, 
 turn aside to a concert, a social gathering, a romp, a 
 sail, or a diverting game, but that of necessity to once 
 strike these deep wells of content and spiritual joy is to 
 take away the relish for many things which once filled the 
 wide and high dome of life. And such cannot be brought 
 to grief though the theatre, the opera, and the dance 
 were for ever left out of the future history of the world. 
 
 That the church of Christ does not more frequently 
 present to the world this picture of divine content with 
 The church ^ e P r °vi s i° n of her Father's house, and a 
 False* imprest profound enthusiasm in the work of the 
 kingdom of ner kingdom, and the knowledge of its grand 
 and stirring facts, is a matter for deep re- 
 gret, and a great spiritual loss. (( Oh, if we had more 
 
THE GRANDER LIBERTY. 135 
 
 religion, if we had enough to live in it and by it, there 
 would be no so glad faces or winning graces of life, as 
 our liberty in the Spirit would show. The very atmo- 
 sphere of such is fresh and bright and free as the day- 
 dawn. They live above scruple, they do nothing by 
 constraint; they go beaming when they go." 
 
 But, in fact, too many seem to be making what has 
 well been called "a very critical experiment," i. <?., 
 " contriving by how little faith, or how little A h azardous 
 grace, and with how large interspersing of ex P enment - 
 gayety and worldly pleasure, they may make their sal- 
 vation good." They seem to think that " aiming low 
 enough to be a little of a Christian, they still may just 
 hit the target on the lower edge." Is this not a haz- 
 ardous experiment ? 
 
 Be that as it may, one thing is certain : the world, 
 if ever to be drawn to know what the kingdom of God 
 has for its willing subjects, led and con- 
 
 „ . 1 . . M1 t , . The failure 
 
 trolled by its spirit, will nave to seek it at to win the 
 
 world due to it. 
 
 other hands. These have not the true se- 
 cret. These are not at home in the pleasant paths of 
 heavenly wisdom. But others must needs be sought 
 unto, who, " naturally as fond of pleasure as themselves, 
 and every way as selfish, are now so thoroughly given 
 up to works of mercy and sacrifice, so fascinated by 
 God's pure charities, so deep in the abysses of his love, 
 that they have not a sigh nor a want for the dear gay- 
 eties of the world." 
 
136 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 If it be said that this is too transcendental for this 
 
 practical world, let it be considered that very many, of 
 
 The blessed no unusual endowments or opportunities, 
 
 possibilities. are finding all this blessedly possible for 
 
 them. The least that can be said is, that the children 
 of the kingdom ought to be moving in this direction. 
 The theatre, the opera, and the dance, as we know 
 them, will not lend them wings to mount into this 
 serene azure. Disdaining them long enough to learn 
 what Christ can do for them in the garden of sweet 
 spices, among the early dews of the mount of God, 
 they will find it easy to disdain them altogether. 
 
 "When such a man, familiar with the skies, 
 Has filled his urn where those pure waters rise, 
 And once more mingles with us meaner things, 
 'T is e'en as if an angel shook his wings ; 
 Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide, 
 And tells us whence his treasures are supplied." 
 
 Let it once for all be conceded that there are heights 
 not very far away from any of us, not difficult of as- 
 cent even for youthful aspirants, whence it is possible 
 to look down upon the popular amusements — about 
 which there is ever waging a wordy debate, that often 
 rises into angry controversy — and wonder how and 
 why it is possible for the children of the kingdom, 
 having so many better things, to contend that these 
 which have done so much to corrupt the world shall 
 also be theirs. For such as climb these heights is in 
 
THE GRANDER LIBERTY. 137 
 
 store the grander liberty of not caring for any of these 
 things — the easy satisfaction of letting them alone, and 
 finding it no cross at all, and the consciousness of hav- 
 ing learned the secret which Dr. Bushnell so forcibly 
 expresses: "No, it is not conformity that we want; it 
 is not being able to beat the world in its own way ; but 
 it is to stand apart and above it, and to produce the 
 impression of a holy and separate life. This only can 
 give us a true Christian power." 
 
 Amusements. T ^ 
 
138 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CHARITY. 
 
 We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of 
 the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us 
 please his neighbor for his good, to edification. St. Paul. 
 
 The want of simplicity and love is the great multiplier of 
 cases of conscience. Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 We still ask the attention of that body of people 
 known as the church of Christ while we go on to speak 
 of another phase of obligation which no thoughtful and 
 sensitive disciple will for a moment think to be a mat- 
 ter of little consequence. It is not enough that their 
 
 Our duty to amusements be chosen with reference sim- 
 others. p|y ^ Q p ers0 nal health and safety. No man 
 
 liveth to himself. It is with the church as with the 
 family : the bond of fellowship lays its constraint upon 
 individual freedom, and insists that no one shall do 
 what will be a grief and an occasion of stumbling to 
 the greater number. 
 
 No one in the family may say, " This is right for 
 me, in my view ; I shall therefore do or enjoy it, no 
 
 Parallel lim- ma tter what pain it may inflict upon the 
 nations. rest f you." This would be destructive of 
 
 household peace and love. No one doubts that to live 
 
CHARITY. \y) 
 
 in the family estate calls for mutual concessions and 
 forbearance. It is easy to grow restive under these 
 limitations, but is not the family constitution one of the 
 most blessed upon earth ? And as compared with an 
 imaginary order of things, in which each soul is an 
 isolated unit without natural ties or affection, can there 
 be any question which is preferable? These limita- 
 tions become an easy yoke to loving hearts. 
 
 The church of Christ is the family of God — his sons 
 and daughters — and therefore obligated to live together 
 in charity. There is upon earth no institu- 
 tion to match the church in its divine ideal the family of 
 
 God. 
 
 of perfectness. Every one in the house- 
 hold of faith is rightly exhorted to keep the unity of 
 the spirit in the bond of peace, that there may be no 
 schism in the body ; that the prayer of our Lord may 
 be realized upon earth, and the world say, " Behold 
 how these Christians love one another." This, too, is 
 an easy yoke to loving hearts. 
 
 The demand of the Christian household life is, then, 
 for concession to the serious convictions of others in 
 matters not vital to faith. No one indeed The conces . 
 may surrender a principle which is felt to sion demanded - 
 be of God. He may rightly insist that he needs recre- 
 ation and will have it, his conscience fully sustaining 
 his course, with but here and there one to deny the 
 proposition. But when he comes to ask how he shall 
 take his recreation, he is not only under physiological 
 
1 40 A MUSEMENTS. 
 
 and moral law, as is everybody elas, but also under the 
 law of fellowship, which says, " Have regard to the senti- 
 ments and feelings of the brotherhood. Do not choose 
 a method of recreation which will be a grief to your 
 brethren or cause your brother to stumble and fall." 
 
 This is not a hardship, as it may seem at the first 
 blush. The means of recreation are so infinitely varied 
 
 No hardship, and inexhaustible that, denied to us for any 
 reason in one direction, we may turn to any one of a 
 hundred more. Let us not make a cry as of orphaned 
 hearts, and go whining through the world like spoiled 
 children, because the theatre, the opera, the promiscu- 
 ous dance, or even cards and billiards, have been pro- 
 scribed by multitudes of the best and saintliest of earth, 
 year by year, for centuries, and we cannot support 
 them, if there were no other very grave reasons, be- 
 cause this would be to grieve those whose judgment and 
 feelings are entitled to respect. There are diversions 
 enough left, and no whit inferior. If love abound, this 
 is easy, and the self-denial will be sweeter than the in- 
 dulgence." Besides, "No sensible man will ever sup- 
 pose that strong convictions which extend through 
 large communities are altogether without foundation 
 in reason and experience." 
 
 It is perfectly legitimate for any one, feeling his lib- 
 
 Open discus- erty thus abridged, to show his brethren, if 
 
 sion to be invi- . . #1 
 
 ted. he can, that their judgment is ill-founded, 
 
 that the conditions on which the fathers based their 
 
CHARITY. 141 
 
 judgment are now materially changed, and that what 
 was once reprobated is now so clean and harmless as 
 to be entitled to immunity from censure. If he is right, 
 the next generation, if not his own, will see through 
 new eyes. But let him have patience. Widespread 
 and deep-seated sentiments change slowly, and it is no 
 unworthy thing to live for posterity. 
 
 Nor can it be allowed that this is to subject life to 
 the crotchets and whims of the foolish, the narrow, the 
 ignorant, and to bring about a tyranny of 
 the few, and they the least entitled to re- put under the 
 
 ill-balanced. 
 
 spect. With no show of reason can this be 
 said of them who arraign these popular amusements of 
 the people. They are not bigoted or sour or narrow. 
 Multitudes of them are among the most intelligent, 
 best beloved, most widely-read people of the land. 
 They influence, as is fitting, a great many more. 
 " There are limits to self-abnegation." We freely con- 
 cede, what an able writer has so well said, Limits of 
 that " weakness is a bad thing ; and if a consfSSS 
 constant homage to it tends to make me appie ' 
 and others weak, too, I may think it right for the sake 
 of my own moral vigor, and for the sake of the moral 
 vigor of those who are in danger of becoming morbidly 
 scrupulous, to live the bolder and freer life which my 
 own conscience approves." 
 
 This "bolder and freer life" is what many are liv- 
 ing, unheeding the fact that the sturdy, missionary 
 
142 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 force of the church, which gives it its vitality, is what 
 they are treating thus cavalierly, and not weakness of 
 mental and moral fibre. That is not a " morbid scru- 
 pulosity " which insists that our amusements shall serve 
 as recreation and stop short of dissipation ; that phys- 
 iological and moral law shall give limits and character 
 to them ; which looks, e. g., at the theatre, the dance, 
 and so on, as they are, and at their record over vast 
 spaces of time and of the earth's surface, and forms a 
 judgment based on their fruits over the great bulk of 
 this area, and not on an exceptionally bright and clean 
 spot. 
 
 If nine times out of ten the plays of the theatre are 
 unclean ; if only here and there is found a cleanly pe- 
 riod, and that very brief — only here and there a name 
 to save the race of actors from contempt ; if the theatre 
 continually resists reformation and purification, we must 
 judge it accordingly, and not say, because this or that 
 play is not indecent, the theatre is not reprehensible. 
 
 Here is furnished no occasion for adopting " the 
 freer and bolder life," with the charitable intent of sa- 
 ving the weak from growing weaker, and of bracing 
 one's own moral vigor, or of bringing back the morbid 
 to mental sanity. That this may sometimes be neces- 
 sary is conceded, but let us be sure that we have an 
 occasion worthy of the grand adventure, and which 
 has some show of being successful. 
 
 It is doubtful if it ever will be found in the sphere 
 
CHARITY. 143 
 
 of amusements, because when the objectionable are all 
 cut off, under the wise oversight of the physiologist 
 and the moralist, the range is still ample, in all reason, 
 for the largest requirements of recreation. 
 
 Over all this realm there is need of charity, not only 
 as towards those who use the largest liberty, and who 
 will always be found claiming that they are not to be 
 judged in the things which they allow, but on their 
 part,.no less, towards that strong and influential factor 
 in the household of faith, whom they in some sense an- 
 tagonize. To keep the unity of the spirit in the bond 
 of peace, to put ourselves on the track of a Pauline 
 charity towards the weak, we shall need on all hands a 
 fresh infusion of Christ-like love. Consideration for 
 each other's feelings in the conduct of life is not a 
 marked characteristic of the church of our time. 
 
144 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PLEASANT FIELDS AND BABBLING BROOKS. 
 
 On all the rational enjoyments of society, on all healthful 
 and temperate exercise, on the delights of friendship, art and 
 polished letters, on the exquisite pleasures resulting from 
 the enjoyment of rural scenery and the beauties of nature— 
 on the innocent enjoyment of these we may ask the divine 
 favor. For the sober enjoyment of them we may thank the 
 divine beneficence. Hannah More. 
 
 The use of a scythe being to mow, all whetting and no 
 mowing is as bad as all mowing and no whetting. As good 
 no scythe as no edge, and as good no edge as no work. 
 
 Bishop Hall. 
 
 The question is often raised — indeed it is sure to 
 
 come up — "If we do not go to the theatre, nor the 
 
 How to be °P era > and do not dance, what are we to 
 
 amused. do ? Rqw ^ WQ tQ be amused ? T h en 
 
 again it is assumed that if the church opposes the ex- 
 isting forms of amusement, she is bound to provide a 
 substitute. In this assumption there is a show of rea- 
 son, and yet it is hardly the mission of the church to 
 amuse the world. She is bound to protest against 
 those things by which the flock is wasted and humani- 
 ty carried farther away from God and spiritual life, but 
 she can hardly be expected to "go through the world 
 
PLEA SANT FIELDS. 1 45 
 
 and stake out the way " for each man. Still, it may- 
 be well to show such as look upon these questionable 
 amusements as filling all the field of oppor- The range not 
 tunity, that they quite mistake the bounty narrow ' 
 of the Infinite Creator, and altogether discredit the 
 limitless possibilities of human invention. 
 
 Is it not a little preposterous that people of ordi- 
 nary cleverness and intelligence should sit down and 
 fold their hands demurely as if, denying themselves a 
 half dozen sports or forms of entertainment, there were 
 no diversions left? 
 
 But let us humor the inquiry. The demure seeker 
 after something to do to break up the monotony of 
 life and "drive dull care away," now that these awful 
 people have raised such " a hue and cry " against the 
 theatre et al. y will hardly have patience to look through 
 volume after volume, given up totally to detailing the 
 method of games and sports, indoor, outdoor, summer 
 and winter, for children, youth, and adult Books on di _ 
 folk, gathered up from many climes and version - 
 peoples. It is, however, in order to remind such that 
 these books exist, voluminous and multitudinous ; that 
 these games have been played by somebody; that 
 therefore they need not account themselves poor per- 
 secuted souls from whom God or his church would 
 take away the charm of a varied existence. "Must I 
 give up the intoxicating cup? What then shall I 
 drink ?" asks the inebriate. Surely, what ! " Must I 
 
 Amusements. IO 
 
146 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 abandon my sumptuous suppers? What then shall I 
 eat?" asks the dyspeptic epicure. Surely, what! " If 
 I must not steal, what under the broad canopy of heaven 
 am I to do ?" asks the thief upon whose shoulder the 
 officer of justice has laid his hand. Poor man ! what can 
 he do ? Do these dear people need to be told that there 
 is enough to eat, drink and do in this great world, if 
 they abandon these hurtful and obnoxious things? 
 
 So of this other question, How shall we be amused 
 since the dry rot has struck through the world's canon- 
 ized amusements ? How some people are to be 
 amused, it is none of our business to say. They have 
 first to win the right to be amused, by beginning to 
 recognize, as binding upon them, the ordinance of 
 labor, and going to work. 
 
 As for the rest of men and women, we are certain 
 that of sweet, mirthful and healthful recreations there 
 is no lack either for young or old, cultured or unlet- 
 tered. For diversion, Napoleon, it is said, turned to 
 logarithms, Sultan Mohammed carved wooden spoons, 
 and Dr. Lyman Beecher shovelled sand in his cellar, 
 or like Luther played the violin. 
 
 As never before the field of literature widens to the 
 
 Literature, view of this and coming generations with 
 
 infinite variety and richness of matter, form, and tone ; 
 
 and the treasures of ancient and modern art are repro- 
 
 Art. duced for the enjoyment and refinement 
 
 of the people at large. 
 
PLEA SA NT FIELDS. 1 47 
 
 Our current magazines for young people are bring- 
 ing forward hints of many things to be made, games 
 to be played, and practical experiments in the alphabet 
 of science to be performed, which are full of profit as 
 well as diversion. Our larger towns and cities are not 
 strangers to clubs of intelligent young people, studying 
 authors, artists, musicians, Shakespeare, Music 
 practising archery, or devoted to gymnastics. We are 
 assured that they get entertainment as well as solid 
 advantages from the weekly or fortnightly Games. 
 meeting, and something to occupy a leisure hour be- 
 tween times. Fitly to be named with these are the 
 amateur musical societies, giving a most Tableaux. 
 enjoyable entertainment to multitudes of friends. There 
 are also tableaux and juvenile concerts, full of innocent 
 mirth and pure diversion. 
 
 All our larger cities and towns are visited by con- 
 cert companies of the first talent. Most of the opera 
 singers of any celebrity appear occasionally 
 
 . 1 , Concerts of 
 
 in concerts in unobjectionable places ; and no home and for- 
 
 1 1 1 ■ 1 1 rr»i elgI1 talent - 
 
 one who has heard the Thomas orchestra 
 or the Mendelssohn Quintette Club, or the great solo 
 violinists and pianists, can complain that there is any 
 lack in the direction of instrumental music unsupplied. 
 Besides, we have occasional readings and Readings. 
 character representations, Shakesperian and others, by 
 as talented men and women as often appear on the 
 stage — some of whom have abandoned it. 
 
143 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 Indeed, ol attending concerts, lectures, readings, 
 tableaux, city life is so full of opportunities, that one must 
 Lectures, needs choose from the bewildering multiplici- 
 ty, or make recreation the end of life. This is hardly the 
 place to detail the almost endless variety of household 
 games, which may innocently divert a company of people, 
 and keep their brains actively exercised. The writer 
 calls to mind a couple of evenings, in which, in the one 
 instance, he chanced to be found with a mixed com- 
 pany of agreeable people, such as may be often met 
 
 An evening at a seas ide resort, in which two young 
 by the sea. men ex temporized and carried out a pro- 
 gramme of college songs, recitations and games which 
 drew the entire company in for an hour, with no breach 
 of propriety, yet with abundant mirth, doing good like 
 a medicine ; and again with a room full of young men 
 
 An evening an< ^ two or three Sunday-school teachers 
 in the parish, giving up a part of the evening to games 
 which drew even the author of the foregoing pages — 
 shockingly bigoted as they will be thought by many — 
 in with the young life of the company to the improve- 
 ment of his digestion, and the rest of a tired brain. 
 
 Best of all, the outside world invites us forth. The 
 expanse of waters — rivers, lakes and the marvellous 
 
 The outdoor sea — °ff ers itself to every lover of nature, 
 world ' in some one of its many forms. We may 
 
 sail or row, swim or plunge in the briny surf, go 
 with the merry skaters, or quietly sit and enjoy the 
 
PLEA SA NT FIELDS. 149 
 
 beauty of the scene, and drink in the music of babbling 
 brook or breaking wave. We may drive - , if so fortu- 
 nate as to have a horse, without becoming a member 
 of the jockey club, and keep clear of the turf and all 
 its belongings. We may have an old-fashioned game 
 of ball, without encouraging a professional body of 
 idlers, whose trade will be found ere long, as objection- 
 able as that of the gamblers of the turf, and get as 
 much fun out of it as they, with less danger of broken 
 head. We may walk without entering the ring for a 
 prize, or violating the laws of health and reason. If 
 we please, we may mount a bicycle, and be sure that 
 when we get tired of it the invention of man will have 
 some other novelty ready. Surely it does not seem 
 that we need die of ennui y if the theatre, the opera, and 
 the dance were banished from the earth, to return no 
 more. 
 
 Much of all this appeals, it is true,' to cultured peo- 
 ple; but quite one-half is open to anybody who wills it 
 without money or price. Surely we are not to pander 
 to depraved tastes because vulgar people demand vul- 
 gar things. The author of " Friends in Council " says, 
 "It is a dangerous thing, the better classes class diver- 
 leaving a great source of amusement and slons- 
 instruction wholly or greatly to the less-refined classes." 
 This may be true, but if the less-refined demand a 
 vulgar thing — demand the average theatre or the vari- 
 eties show and the ballet dance — what are the really 
 
150 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 refined to do about it ? They can only leave these 
 things, and these people too, if their tastes and morals 
 cannot be improved, and they certainly will not be im- 
 proved by upholding them. They can withdraw utter- 
 ly from this sort of diversion and do what they may to 
 show the children and youth of their time that there is 
 a better way and lead them into it. 
 
 The " Atlantic " for 1876 has what, in the main, is a 
 very sensible and suggestive series of articles entitled 
 "The Chimney Corner." In one of these is a delight- 
 Hints from frd sketch of French and Italian family 
 abroad. receptions, and English breakfasts, which 
 
 might well give us a hint how to get out of the way of 
 our stupid crush parties, unsocial of necessity, uncom- 
 fortably and extravagantly dressy, afflicted with late 
 suppers, and gotten up just to discharge a " debt to 
 society" at large, and have the disagreeable thing out 
 of the way. 
 
 Open-air recreations, croquet parties, lawn teas 
 are among the enjoyable things suggested, with pic- 
 tures from real, social life in other lands, which cannot 
 but make us wish we had something of the same sim- 
 plicity, informality, and inexpensiveness, pervading our 
 methods of spending leisure hours and discharging our 
 social obligations. Possibly we have the beginnings 
 of better customs, even now, and the welcome tokens 
 of a reaction which by prudent encouragement may 
 grow into something beautiful and grandly enjoyable. 
 
PLEASANT FIELDS. 1 5 1 
 
 With such hints as these as the outlines of a land 
 that is very broad, and with reference to the stout 
 volumes of many a library, and the brighter wits of 
 many a company of young people, we dismiss the 
 question with which we started out in this chapter. We 
 anticipate no era of universal dulness to follow upon a 
 righteous and sensible reformation of the current ways 
 of being amused to our damage. 
 
152 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls 
 playing in the streets thereof. Zech. 8:5. 
 
 Draw the line, as we think we could, in accordance with 
 the demands of right reason, right faith, right taste, and right 
 morals. Harper's Magazine. 
 
 The one thing needful is the development of positive 
 loyalty to God and goodness. Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 With this chapter we dismiss the discussion of a 
 theme, which, traversing a wide field, has a practical 
 interest for every man. In respect to it every one is 
 likely to assume some attitude. It cannot be a matter 
 of indifference what this is. It ought to be a right 
 attitude. It ought to be one which can be justified 
 The true test, as in harmony with "right reason, right 
 faith, right taste, and right morals." No one caring 
 to be right will dispute this assertion. These are the 
 supreme tests, however men may ignore or defy them. 
 We write not for such as have no care what their 
 attitude is, or who are determined to pursue a certain 
 course at any cost, but especially for the church of 
 Christ, a body of people who may not set aside these 
 
CONCLUSION. 153 
 
 tests and still claim to be loyal to him by whose name 
 they are called. 
 
 It is agreed that men may honestly differ as to the 
 application of them ; and when it is evident that a pos- 
 itive loyalty to God and goodness is the The Hca _ 
 controlling motive in the life, such differ- *^ se ™ n s ° p ^ 
 ences of opinion are to be generously re- ^ uestlon - 
 spected on either side. 
 
 It is hoped that the aim of these pages has been 
 clearly put — first, to insist that the line be drawn be- 
 tween recreation and dissipation; and to The aim o£ 
 call a halt on the hither side of that line— these P a s es - 
 to cross which is to sin against physiological and 
 moral law. Every man, Christian or not, is bound to 
 heed that call, for it is from the God of nature as well 
 as the Bible. It makes a vast difference when, and 
 how, and to what extent men are amused. Prin cipies in- 
 We have been careful to insist that the sistedu P° n - 
 impartial interpreter of physiological and moral law be 
 called in to fix that line. We want it fixed scientifi- 
 cally, and not according to the whims of any set of peo- 
 ple, however well meaning. 
 
 And secondly, to call the attention of each disciple 
 of the Master to another aspect of his obligation, the 
 obligation which is also a privilege of rising into the 
 higher sphere of grander liberty in self-denial for 
 Christ's sake; and of preoccupation, so sweet and 
 blessed and winsome, as to make it easy, of preference, 
 
 Amusements. 20 
 
154 A MUSEMENTS. 
 
 to put away childish things, and, as a matter of taste 
 as well as duty, to choose the recreations which lie in 
 the plane of simplicity, inexpensiveness, sobriety, and 
 virtue. 
 
 We have tried honestly to apply these principles 
 
 especially to those popular amusements, which the 
 
 world pronounces indispensable to its life, 
 
 specific forms of and will probably never try to abolish — 
 
 amusements. 
 
 the theatre, the opera, the promiscuous 
 dance, et cetera — as they are, and have always been 
 in fact or tendency ; presuming that if the way of right- 
 eousness is made clear in respect to them, it will be 
 clear as to less-complicated and less -fascinating pleas- 
 ures. 
 
 If we have not said as much in their favor as might 
 have been said — if we have, in the estimation of any, 
 failed to make enough of that sprinkling of pure plays 
 which diversify the life of the stage — let it be said that, 
 with these historic characteristics, these damaging facts 
 against the theatre and the dance, no array of apolo- 
 gies or counter testimony can possibly atone for such 
 serious faults, and justify an opposite conclusion. To 
 this comes the further suggestion of an able writer, 
 that, "never has any true friend of religion 
 
 Harper's, May, 111# , 
 
 1852. Editorial or morality been found upholding the 
 
 on the theatre. 
 
 theatre as it actually is or was at any par- 
 ticular period. It never is, it never was, what it ought 
 to be or might be." And there is no hope of anything 
 
CONCLUSION. 155 
 
 essentially better. Dr. Holland agrees with Hannah 
 More that, " there is only one way of elevating the 
 theatre — by elevating the community in which it exists." 
 Attempts at reformation have always failed. The article 
 above referred to maintains that " the stage cannot be 
 reformed — because it is just what its name imports — act- 
 ing a part; an unreal part. . . . The theatre is the 
 great seminary and storehouse of false feeling and all 
 false feeling, religious as well, is so much spiritual 
 poison. Men and women who act every character will 
 have no character of their own ;" a sentiment over and 
 over again insisted upon in " McLeod of Dare" with the 
 heroine of that powerful novel. These distinguished 
 editors are agreed when they say, the one that " those 
 who live as actors live, can never afford to be either 
 too bad or too good for those upon whose plaudits 
 and purse they rely for bread." And the other, that 
 " the tastes of the audience make law for the writer, the 
 actor, the manager," for substance, what Garrick said 
 and deplored more than a hundred years ago. 
 
 Now, because these things are so — because " the 
 virtues of the stage are not Christian virtues, the Chris- 
 tian moralities can come upon the stage conclusion as 
 only in the shape of caricatures, or as the tothe theatre; 
 hypocritical disguise through which some Joseph Sur- 
 face is placed in most disparaging contrast with the 
 false virtues or splendid vices the theatre-going public 
 most admires," it would seem to be self-evident that 
 
156 A M USEMENTS. 
 
 the church of Christ, and each member in particular, 
 ought to withdraw his influence from such an institu- 
 tion. 
 
 We have found no reason why the opera, as it is, 
 should not be regarded in the same light. That from 
 As to the o P - which Jenny Lind kept herself aloof, and 
 gave her reasons for it, and which many 
 distinguished singers avoid as the theatre for the dis- 
 play of their gifts, is not clean enough for Christian 
 endorsement. 
 
 So of the dance of modern society. If members of 
 
 the church will uphold it as it is, and is likely to be — 
 
 As to the it m particular, Christian mothers, courting 
 
 dance. ^ attent i on an J fa e fcfaf w J t J 1 j-frg wor \^ 
 
 which this accomplishment brings with it, will have 
 their daughters trained for it, then they must know 
 that neither physiological nor moral law will uphold 
 them ; that, in the judgment of the wisest and best of 
 the churches of every name, they do not draw the line 
 in accordance with right reason, right faith, right taste, 
 and right morals. The writer asks for his opinion, as 
 such, no favor. But for the principles here announced, 
 which these popular amusements bravely scout and 
 dare to trample with unhallowed feet, he does presume 
 to say that they cannot be outraged with impunity; 
 and for these saintly ones of the past and the present 
 he dares affirm that they who needlessly offend against 
 the holiest convictions of great multitudes of Christ's 
 
CONCLUSION. 157 
 
 most devoted ones, will find at last that they have sin- 
 ned against the Lord. 
 
 Beyond this personal relation to popular amuse- 
 ments comes the further duty, not to stop with remon- 
 strance nor to indulge in indiscriminate 
 anathemas, but to recognize the playside tion to the 
 of life, and to countenance a better thing 
 in the place of the amusements from which we are con- 
 strained to withdraw ourselves. 
 
 When so good a man as Prof. Henry Reed com- 
 plains that "what is festive is abandoned to the world's 
 keeping, instead of being retained under the better and 
 safer influences " — the same being insisted upon by 
 many another teacher and guide of youth — the church 
 does well to listen and heed. 
 
 There are limits which will be reached, and differ- 
 ences of opinion to be encountered, in carrying out 
 the suggestion ; but herein is a significant hint for the 
 church, in her social and public relations. Why should 
 she not set her own fashions as to recrea- The church 
 tion, and the healthful and proper thing to Sg bl h e er of ™ri 
 be done in "gathering of blythe compa- fashlons - 
 ny" ? Six million Christians, among whom is no lack 
 of brains and culture, might, if they would, have some- 
 thing to say as to what shall be accounted fit and prop- 
 er, by way of amusements, for children, youth, and 
 adult life — whether they will assemble in parties when 
 it is time to be in bed, or feast when they ought to be 
 
1 5S A XIUSEMBNTS, 
 
 asleep, and do the fashionable thing in the eye of Paris 
 and Berlin, and the godless of Europe and America, or 
 do the thing which is in accordance with right reason, 
 right faith, right taste, and right morals. Six million 
 people, with God on their side, because careful to obey 
 his high behests in natural and moral law, have a right 
 to speak and act for themselves in these matters — nay, 
 more, a duty to put on foot the Christian thing, and 
 institute a reform just here, never questioning for a 
 moment but that it will commend itself, as did the 
 course of Daniel and his associates in the Babylon 
 where they were called to live in the fear of God. As 
 matter of fact, six million Christian people do almost 
 nothing in this direction, but take the fashions as they 
 are made for them, and conform to the world, which 
 in all this wide and important domain is essentially 
 master of the situation. If it were conceded and lived 
 up to, that, as a rule, marriage with the world, Chris- 
 tian with unchristian people, is wrong, being unscrip- 
 tural, a most damaging blow would be given to this 
 wild chase after the world's amusements. 
 
 Our Christian associations may well lay themselves 
 
 out, not only to make their apartments attractive with 
 
 books and music, with pictures and other 
 
 A field for . 111 
 
 Christian asso- decorations, but to add the gymnasium, 
 and games which have about them no in- 
 grained taint of evil association. They cannot certain- 
 ly touch the life of young men and women in cities and 
 
CONCLUSION. ISO 
 
 towns without this, and make head against the fascina- 
 tions of the theatre and the saloon. 
 
 It is altogether a mistake to go on the princible ol 
 influencing the already religious, to the neglect of thai 
 great multitude of youth without, who are 
 
 ... . Provision to 
 
 so soon to exert a positive influence against be systemati- 
 se church, if not brought to see that their 
 best friends are within her pale. That men of wealth 
 seem to be so largely indifferent to the needs of clerks, 
 seamstresses, operatives, on the playside of their na- 
 ture and in their leisure hours, may be due in part to 
 a sentiment widely prevailing, that this is not just the 
 thing for the church to be doing. The thing to be 
 doing with energy, faith, and tact, is to throw up, in 
 all legitimate ways, a breastwork against the desolating 
 tide of immorality, in literature, amusements, and social 
 festivity, and to occupy healthfully and inexpensively 
 the active minds and the leisure time of the youth of 
 our day. 
 
 We have provided amply for their education. We 
 shall have added much to all this "when the amuse- 
 ments of the young shall become the care of the expe- 
 rienced and the wise, and the floods of wealth that are 
 now rolling over and over in silent investments shall 
 be put into the form of innocent and refined pleasures 
 for the children and youth of the state." It is said that: 
 in all the Prussian schools amusements are as much a 
 part of the regular school system as grammar or geog- 
 
1 60 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 raphy. Our neglect in this direction leaves amuse- 
 ment to the chance influence of the hour, and the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil are busy in taking advantage 
 of our inaction. "To find diversion, primarily, our 
 youth frequent the saloon and the theatre, and come 
 into contact with social drinking, and worse, the lost 
 to virtue, and a literature that is the ally of every form 
 of vice." No time should be lost in providing the most 
 excellent and winsome thing possible to offset a drift 
 so full of hurt and waste. 
 
 We are ready to concede that the taste for the dra- 
 matic in life and literature is natural, and in itself a 
 good thing. We would like also to agree 
 
 Concessions 
 
 to the play- with one who says, "If we would feed the 
 
 side of life. 
 
 desire for dramatic amusement in some 
 other way, and so destroy the fascination of the thea- 
 tre for the young, let good people frown no longer 
 upon the home and neighborhood representations of 
 the drama, but countenance and cultivate them." 
 
 But there are serious drawbacks to a full endorse- 
 ment of this proposition. If this course is embarked 
 Valid objec- u P on > it will be found to absorb a great deal 
 tions. Q £ t j me anc j ex p ense f or those who engage 
 
 in the performance ; it will be likely to lead such to the 
 theatre to see how it is done, and it may come to be 
 thought just the thing for church festivals and socials, 
 making our church edifices now a place of worship and 
 anon a playhouse. Plausible as this is in theory, there 
 
CONCLUSION. 161 
 
 are grave objections to its practical adoption, not the 
 least of which is the likelihood that so far from "de- 
 stroying the fascination of the theatre for the young," 
 it would more likely lead straight into it ; and further, 
 dissipate devotional moods and a relish for the serious 
 work of the church of Christ. 
 
 We do not mean by this to taboo all dialogues and 
 character representations as presented at our schools 
 on closing day and in quiet family circles, but we must 
 needs discourage those more ambitious efforts which, 
 assuming a public character, are designed to draw a 
 house, as neither in fact nor in tendency likely to abide 
 the tests of legitimate recreation. 
 
 After all, the great need in the church is a quicken- 
 ing of that spiritual life which tends to make for itself 
 an atmosphere of pure thought and feeling, 
 
 . The supreme 
 
 to occupy happily the rational powers, and need in the 
 to bring into the foreground the grand and 
 inspiring objects of Christian faith and endeavor. So 
 surely as this is secured, the word and the Spirit of 
 Christ are sweetly authoritative over the will and the 
 affections, and it becomes an easy thing to say to the 
 spirit which rules in the world, " We can own but one 
 Master, and Christ is our Lord and King. We have 
 heard him say, ' Come ye out from among them, and 
 be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing, and I 
 will receive you, and be a Father unto you, and ye 
 shall be my sons and daughters.' We not only dare 
 
 Amusements. 21 
 
1 6z AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 not do otherwise, but heeding his word, we have found 
 wisdom's ways to be ways of pleasantness, and her 
 paths to us are peace. We have bread to eat that once 
 we knew not of — a satisfying portion." 
 
 How to get the eye and ear of such as are taken 
 with the sights and sounds of Vanity Fair, and to lure 
 them into the wilderness to meet their Beloved, and 
 become acquainted with Him who is fairer than the 
 sons of men, is a question of infinite concern for 
 The great multitudes. The danger is that worldly 
 danger. preocupation will utterly and for ever ex- 
 
 clude the true knowledge of Christ and the real bless- 
 edness of living on the plan which the God of nature 
 and of the Bible has outlined for us ; that into many a 
 heart there will be no entrance of that word which giv- 
 eth light. 
 
 Let not such judge the church of God, but judge 
 this rather — whether they do not repeat the folly of 
 Esau, at length to find no place of repentance, though 
 they seek it carefully with tears. 
 
if si