Chapter 2

And the practical results of this policy are before us. It may be said that the tendency now is altogether in the direction of excess; that some Christians are becoming much too liberal, and are fast obliterating all old landmarks. All I have to say to this is, that the more true it is, the better for my position. For, granting, for argument’s sake, all that is asserted, this fact shows that there is a reaction from an old and false sentiment, which even if excessive, is a healthy indication. And the one error goes to prove the other; for excessive reactions are pretty sure to grow out of excessive stringency in another direction. At any rate, the great error of the church on this subject is clearly exposed, namely: her failure to regulate amusements. She ought to have been the gospel’s instrument in purifying them from abuse; but she has not been. She has been afraid of them; has stood aloof from them; has been almost totally absorbed in detecting their evil tendencies; and, on account of these, forbidding Christians all contact with them. And to-day she stands comparatively powerless in this matter. Church assemblies meet and pass strong and elaborate resolutions on this or that amusement, condemning it, and those who engage in it; and a few persons are deterred by these. But every year the class is increasing that utterly disregards these mandates. It has been said, I know, that in proportion as the church or individuals are engaged in religious efforts, the desire for amusement declines, the implication being that a desire for amusement characterizes only a low state of religion. This deduction is entirely unwarranted, and the process by which it is reached is fallacious.

It is true that in a season of deep religious interest in a church, there will be less disposition to amusements. But the same is true of other than religious interests. Under _any_ absorbing, popular excitement, men do not turn to amusement. A special religious interest will draw men’s minds from _business_ as well as from pleasure; and the inference to the condemnation of business is just as legitimate as to that of amusement.

Again, the statement is not borne out in the ordinary religious life of individuals. Many, very many of the best, most efficient, and most steadily growing Christians in the church exhibit habitually a keen relish for amusements, and for some which are most sternly condemned, and participate in them most heartily.

And once more: while at revival seasons in individual churches, a temporary decrease of amusements may be seen, the more important fact is that the aggregate of Christian society has been for many years past developing a steadily increasing interest in the subject, and a corresponding liberality of sentiment respecting it. Scores of Christian men have billiard tables in their houses. Colleges, from which in years past, students would have been summarily expelled for rolling ten pins, have now bowling alleys of their own. Even in the corridors of staid old Williams the sound of the balls may be heard; and the revival record of the college does not indicate that even this stupendous innovation has wrought to the banishment of the Spirit of God. The assertors of this inverse ratio between piety and amusement must, in short, dispose as best they can, of the fact that along with the growth of Christian intelligence, Christian benevolence, and Christian activity, there has been developed in the church itself a growing sympathy with many of the very forms of amusement most condemned by the religious sentiment of an earlier age.

And this too, not on the part of the careless, and pleasure loving, and half-hearted members of churches, but of men and women high in position in the church; persons of liberal culture and unquestionable piety. These persons, as well qualified to understand the teachings of God’s word on this subject as any of the clergy, are asserting their right to act out their own conscientious convictions in their amusements: claiming that they owe to the resolutions of synods, and conventions and conferences, no more than candid and respectful consideration, maintaining the privilege of adopting or rejecting them at pleasure; and accordingly they are throwing open their homes to certain banned amusements, very much to the enhancement of home attractions; very much to the detriment of the saloons; very much to the increase of their children’s attachment to home. Church legislation on this subject has been a humiliating failure. It has not compassed its intent. Nay, more, it has over-reached itself. It has kept noble and intelligent youth out of the church by insisting on their relinquishment of certain amusements, in the proper and moderate use of which they were unable to see evil. It has tended by this insistence to foster that too common sentiment which paints religion with sombre hues, and couples it with the most forbidding associations. It has tended to drive some to seek in the more liberal atmosphere of Unitarianism the liberty of conscience denied them by orthodoxy; and all this it might have avoided by a clearer recognition of the gospel teaching on this subject: by being less afraid for the purity of the truth, and by throwing 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.

I say, “less afraid for the purity of the truth.” For Christians shrink from an experiment so bold, especially after so large a proportion of amusements has been usurped by the Devil through their neglect to interfere. The church is shy of a faith in the power of good which comes eating and drinking; which sits at the table of publicans and sinners. The conviction grows on me that Christians have too little faith in the gospel. They do not trust it enough in popular reforms. They realize that evil is a tremendous power, alike to be feared, whether it wear the armor of Goliath, or sing its sweet seductions in the form of a siren; and their instinct of preservation extends beyond themselves to the truth itself. They regard truth as a tender stripling, to be rolled up in mufflers, and suffered to walk out only in charge of certain staid nurses of theory; and not as a man of war in panoply, and with strength enough to take care not only of itself, but of them and their trusted theories too. They are afraid the evil will overwhelm or corrupt the truth; that the leaven, instead of imparting virtue, will be spoiled by the deadness of the lump. We need have no such fear for it. All the developments of the age show that the world needs it in closer contact with its evil than it has ever been yet. It is sometimes urged that in pursuing this course, Christians will bring upon themselves from the world the charge of inconsistency, and moreover will grieve weak Christian brethren. But surely this principle may be pushed too far. With the very fullest recognition of the obligation upon Christians not to let their good be evil spoken of, and not to wrong the weak conscience—concessions made for the sake of Christian charity are surely not required to extend to all the vagaries of individual prejudice, nor to the abandonment of principle. And there is a principle involved in this question of amusements, a principle of far greater importance than many are willing to admit; and to which, if the Christian thought of this age do not take more pains to define it and act upon it, the eyes of the church will be most painfully opened by and by. There is a question here involving not only the enjoyments, but to a great extent the moral welfare of our youth. The young will have amusements, and the question is whether the devil or the church shall furnish them. Whether home, or the ball room, and drinking saloon, and gambling house shall be the more attractive. Whether Christians will resolutely take up good and noble amusements, and give them to youth purged of their evil,—or whether they shall let them remain girt with all their allurements, yet more widely separated from good, and gathering yearly to themselves new elements and associations of evil. Very probably the world, and much of the church will assail the Christian who, in this view of the subject oversteps the line of received opinion, with a cry of inconsistency. But remember that the world judges the church out of its own mouth, independently of the real merits of the case; and requires that it be consistent, not with _their_ views, but with its own as publicly expressed. Yet sometimes it is better to be _right_ than even to be _consistent_; and if the church has with all sincerity, yet with mistaken zeal, fostered a false sentiment on any subject, do not Christians who discern the error owe to society the benefit of their clearer light? Have they a right to withhold it for fear society should turn on them and call them inconsistent? One would think from a sentiment like this that the gospel process was to be reversed. That not the Christian is to leaven the world, but the world the Christian. Christian sentiment is not to wait for popular sentiment. It claims to be in advance of it. It is to Christians and not to the world that the promise is given, “_Ye shall know the truth_;” and Christian thought, so far from waiting for the movement of these ever shifting popular tides, is the luminary which God has set high in the darkness of this world’s sin to draw the tides in his appointed channels. The practical value of truth like that of money, consists in its circulation. It is worth nothing hoarded up or used secretly. If it is ever to be worth anything in correcting false impressions which society may have formed of Christian teaching, it will be by letting it out into society to speak for itself. Nor am I begging the question at issue here. Even an error is better outspoken than cherished in secret. It comes into the field of discussion, and is turned over and examined and exposed, and so truth is the gainer after all. But I think it will be difficult to prove an error in this case. The gospel truth is “_put the leaven into the lump_;” and why the gospel should not be put into our amusements, even into those which are confessedly abused, I cannot see. The more liable to abuse they are, the more they need regulating; and the practical workings of this principle when men have the courage to face prejudice and carry it out, triumphantly vindicate it. The man who furnishes his son a billiard table in his own house, where he can practice that beautiful game with his friends without the adjuncts of liquor and rowdyism, does a good deed. He keeps the youth at home, he keeps his associations under his own eye; he gives him a good, healthy, intellectual amusement purged of its abuses. The college board that erects a bowling alley for the students; that says to young men, “rolling ten pins is not evil, but rolling ten pins in bar rooms, surrounded by drunkards and swearers and indecent pictures _is_ evil, and we therefore give you the amusement without these associations, and bid you enjoy it, and draw health and strength from it,”—that college board I say, has promoted something more than _muscular_ Christianity. It has given the young men a better opinion of religion; has withdrawn them from the influence of temptations to which they expose themselves only because they cannot find the amusements freed from these vile associations. It has drawn just so much patronage from the grog shop. The parents in whose family circle dancing in proper modes and with approved associates and within reasonable hours is encouraged, are doing just so much to keep their daughters from the unhealthy hours, the immodest displays, and the indiscriminate associations of the ball room. They deserve the thanks, not the reprobation of the church. They are the friends, not the enemies of religion. Let us not be scared by names. Let us not deal, as the pulpit has dealt too much, in vague generalities on this subject. Let us see what those terrible words “billiards” and “dancing,” and others of a similar cast mean. Let us see if they are evil and evil only. Let us not assume that our youth are attracted to them only by their native depravity; but see if there be not some goodness, some beauty, some intellectual stimulus which renders them so fascinating. If they need regulating, surely Christian wisdom can regulate them if anything. If any can use them safely, it is Christians who are taught by Divine grace to use this world as not abusing it, and not those who are swayed by impulse and love of pleasure only. But the church does not regulate them, and she never will or can regulate them on the old theory of separation. Never, so long as she persists in wholesale denunciations which she can sustain neither by scripture nor by logic, and against which the common sense of the educated and thoughtful rebels. A more liberal policy in the past, a juster appreciation of the gospel teachings on this subject, would not only have done much towards separating amusements from their abuses, but would have saved her from her present humiliating attitude as the declared enemy of many forms of amusement, from participation in which she has no power to restrain her members.

This principle has been assailed on the ground that the world will abuse it. That they will read in words like these the church’s endorsement and license for unlimited indulgence. But if the world draws unwarranted inferences to suit its own depraved wishes, surely that is no reason for suppressing the truth, but rather calls for the full and most careful statement of it. If the world read the gospel wrongly, and wrest it to its own destruction, those who set forth gospel principles are not responsible, unless, as has too often been the case with reference to this subject, the trumpet give an uncertain sound. And the world is too ready to pervert this truth, and does pervert it. Christians, if properly instructed, are so far from being disqualified to use amusements safely, the best qualified of all others to develop their highest uses, and to enjoy without abusing them. The world regards only the permission to enjoy, and ignores the corresponding rule of restraint. In this respect it is like the prince in the Arabian tale, who mounted the enchanted horse, and set him in motion without having informed himself as to the means of guiding or stopping him.

For, let me be clearly understood, I do not lay down this general principle without recognizing the existence of practical limitations to its action, though I assert that the fixing of these limitations belongs chiefly if not entirely to the individual Christian conscience. I have said that the tendency of religious teaching with reference to this and kindred subjects has been to make the idea of _safety_ more prominent than that of _development_. Yet I do not overlook, as was implied in the remarks of one who objected to my views, the defensive aspect of the gospel. I admit both the fact and its urgent necessity I could not do otherwise, knowing that the heart is deceitful, and remembering the prayer which Christ puts into every man’s mouth, “Lead us not into temptation.” I am pleading for the restraints as well as for the privileges of the gospel in the matter of men’s amusements; for more and not less care and watchfulness to be brought to bear upon their future regulation.

But withal, I am not bound to abandon the general gospel principle of purging amusements by a closer contact of religion with them, because in certain cases this regulation becomes a matter of extreme difficulty and delicacy; because I cannot precisely say _how_ the gospel leaven is to be conveyed into certain forms of amusement. Just as consistently might I have refused to denounce slavery as a crime against God and humanity because I could not prescribe an effectual scheme for abolishing it. And that such difficulties do arise in the applications of this principle, I freely admit.

There, for example, is the theatre. I believe this principle applies to that as well as to any other amusement. For myself I wish that I could occasionally see Shakespeare interpreted by the best histrionic talent, with all adjuncts of scenery and costume. To me it would be a rich pleasure and a source of intellectual improvement. But as the theatre is now conducted and sustained, I am clearly of the opinion that no Christian ought to frequent it. He cannot do so without, I think, in the great majority of instances, committing himself to very much that is indecent and coarse. And just how this difficulty is to be surmounted, how scholarly, Christian men who love such entertainments and are qualified to profit by them, are to be furnished with them freed from their abuses, I am not now prepared to say. I think it might be done; but the theatre, as it now is, is no place for a Christian.

This, however does not, as before observed, in the least invalidate the general principle. It is merely a question of means. Nor, as was very roundly asserted, does the principle lead to this conclusion that every Christian man must have his box at theatre or opera. It by no means follows that such a course would produce the desired effect. It would be just about as pertinent to argue that because a sewer in a certain street needed cleansing, and because a proper array of men and buckets and brooms would cleanse it, therefore every man and woman on the streets, grave doctors of divinity, stately Mr. Dombey, Flora McFlimsey and Edmund Sparkler, should each shoulder broomstick or bucket, and plunge pell mell into the reeking filth. This argument proceeds upon the assumption that Christians can purge amusements only by using them in the forms and with the appliances attendant upon the world’s abuse of them. This is assuming altogether too much. We must get religion into these things, but there are various ways of doing it. You cannot sow broadcast in all soils.

I do not know whether I ought notice one other line of reply to these remarks; but as it seems to be a favorite one, and moreover was adopted by some who I was surprised to see descending to it, I will add a few words on this.

It may be described as an attempt to invalidate a principle by showing that its application to persons of widely different times and circumstances involves an absurdity and then from the absurdity inferring a sin. I do not pretend to give the exact words used, but they were in this style: “Think of Paul dancing; or Peter playing billiards! Do you think we shall have checker-boards in heaven?” And much more of the same kind.

Now this is not argument. It is sheer nonsense; and most unworthy trifling over a serious subject. The reasoning, if it be worthy the name, is simply this; Certain things appear incongruous with our ideas of the character and work of certain men: therefore these things are sinful. It is the easiest thing in the world to invent situations of this kind. Such men as Paul and Peter are associated in our minds with but one set of ideas;—with one great, glorious, solemn work; and their association with any inferior matter affects us unpleasantly at first. Even when we think of Paul making tents, there is at first view something that clashes in our mind with the speech on Mars Hill, and the healing of the cripple at Lystra. But who thinks of disputing from this the propriety of Paul’s own hands ministering to his necessities? After all, if there is no sin in rolling ten pins, I know not why Peter should not have participated in that very excellent and healthful recreation with as much propriety as any of the numerous ministers of the present day who “roll” with so much zest and assiduity at our fashionable watering places. Think of Paul dancing! Well, think of him! Think of Paul wearing a blue swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons! How he would have looked under the shadow of the Acropolis, the winds of the Ægean gently swaying his cerulean skirts, and the eager faces of Stoic and Epicurean reflected in the bright buttons! Think of Peter skating; cutting figures of eight, and performing “outer edge backwards!” Think of John in a white cravat; or of Bartholomew putting up seidlitz powders; or of Timothy running with a fire-engine! How _would_ they have looked? Therefore hasten ye trim gentlemen, to doff your guilty blue and brass, and don the toga. Lay aside your skates, boys. Peter would have looked very strangely skating, therefore it is sinful to skate. Tear off your white chokers, ye Reverends, and throw away your pestles ye apothecaries, and be like the apostles. Shall we have checker-boards in heaven? No, brother, I presume not. Neither shall we marry, nor be given in marriage; but pray don’t condemn us to celibacy on that ground while we remain upon earth. “Would you play chess on your death-bed?” Probably not, my friend. Neither would I put on my boots, or do a great many other very innocent things. Death stands out in startling contrast to _all_ our employments: to business and study, as well as to recreation; and you would find it vastly inconvenient to act upon the principle that nothing must be done which you would not do on your death-bed.

But enough of this. I come now to the one practical application of these principles out of which this whole discussion has grown.

When our Troy Christian Association adopted the practice of introducing games into their rooms, I gave it my hearty approval. My opinion on this subject has been confirmed by what I have seen and heard of the results of the experiment. It was based on the principles I have been advocating in this paper, and on the farther consideration, growing out of these, that we must take some of the devil’s weapons and sanctify them before we could successfully fight him on his own ground. As remarked already, prayer-meetings will not draw irreligious young men into the sphere where we want them. Give them first well lighted and warmed apartments, handsomely furnished, where they can find music and books and newspapers and games, and you stand some chance then of drawing them into the prayer-meetings. And indeed the direct religious influence of these associations, while highly important, is nevertheless subordinate to their work in bringing young men into contact with the various churches of the community, where the religious appliances are of course more perfect. The great point is to get them into some position where the churches can reach them. They will not come to church, many of them, when they first enter the community. The church has but limited facilities for finding them out in their stores and boarding-houses and schools; and it may find therefore a powerful auxiliary in these associations, which bring the stranger youth where it can bring its influences to bear on them. But for this purpose the place of rendezvous must be made attractive. We must have head-quarters as pleasant as the devil’s. I hope all of you have read the article in _Guthrie’s Sunday Magazine_ for January, 1866, entitled “_The house that beats the public house;_” that splendid iron structure in Colne, Lancashire, built expressly for the irreligious working class. There are fountains, and pictures, and games, cabinets and books and newspapers. There are quiet reading rooms, there are refreshment rooms, even smoking rooms. There is a school room, there are musical entertainments on stated nights, there are religious services on Sabbath evenings. “On Christmas eve, 1863,” says the writer, “the musicians at one of the public houses piped for some time, but no dancers presented themselves, till at length the players themselves adjourned to the meeting at the Iron School. An attempt to open the theatre that winter failed through the same influence. The actors, after struggling for a week in the face of empty benches, left the place in despair.”