Chapter 7

The results of this policy so long and so thoroughly tried, are before us. With all this preaching, the prevalence and variety of amusements steadily increases. Year after year such utterances of the pulpit fall with less weight. Year after year the character and standing of those who openly set them at defiance renders it more and more difficult to back them by discipline. The clergy are not gaining ground with the youth. Hundreds of the latter, repelled by this teaching, are tearing themselves away from the churches of their fathers, to unite with folds where a more liberal gospel is preached. A prominent merchant of the Methodist church, a man whose name is known in both hemispheres, wrote me, not more than a month ago, “the teachings of my own church on this subject have had the effect to drive nearly my whole family into the Protestant Episcopal church.”

It is sometimes said: “Let them go. We are better without such. We do not want members who will not relinquish these suspected amusements. We do not want half way Christians, conformed to the world, trying to hold fast to pleasure and secure heaven at the same time.” But such statements do not fairly represent the case. Again, the whole question is begged. Many of those who refuse to conform to the churches dicta on these subjects care nothing whatever for the amusements in question. The matter is entirely one of principle. They leave our churches, not because conscience is relaxed, but because it is acutely sensitive, and because they would keep it unsullied. The above method of putting the case assumes that all the conscience is on one side; that, while it operates strongly to condemn, it cannot possibly operate to approve. Many of these persons resort to other communions, because they are too honest to compromise with conscience; because they cannot see these questions in the light in which their own churches present them; and rather than go to God’s altars with even an implied falsehood upon their consciences, or embrace the alternative of remaining outside of Christ’s fold, they will sever life-long ties, entwined with some of their dearest and tenderest recollections, and go alone with their conscience and their God to altars where no such tests are imposed. And in these new associations they bear themselves with all Christian fidelity. They bring forth rich fruits of grace. They walk humbly and consistently with God. They are exemplary fathers and mothers. They are liberal in their gifts to the cause of Christ, and active in promoting schemes to advance it. Our churches have been driving away such men and women as these who would have been their ornaments and bulwarks, because they have sought unduly to constrain Christian conscience on these subjects.

Worse than this. This course is keeping youth away from _all_ church communions; away from Christ. Few pastors have not received this answer, when urging young persons to come to the Savior. “If I become a Christian, I must be very solemn. I must repress my lightness of heart. I must relinquish all my cherished enjoyments.” Admit that these views are greatly exaggerated, as doubtless they are, the question forces itself upon us, _why do we meet such views so often_? Why are they so generally prevalent among our youth? Why does the immense amount of preaching, forcible, eloquent preaching, on the comforts and joys of a Christian life produce, seemingly, so little impression upon them? Why is it that they persist in regarding _Christian_ joy as a sickly, stunted thing, and religion as the enemy of all light and hilarity and taste and freedom?

Is all this result of native depravity? I cannot believe it. I cannot dissociate a large measure of this most lamentable result from the old teaching and practice of the church on the subject of recreation. It is of no use to preach to ardent, active youth, that Christianity is a religion of joy, unless they see some joy brought out of it besides mere smiles and a class of recreations which to them as a class are insipid. To them _Christian_ cheerfulness appeals as being less cheerful than any other kind; as a sort of mild, repressed gayety, from which their quick sensibilities and stirring blood revolts. They feel that in the church they must be cheerful only in the way the church directs. Those ministers, they reason, can be very cheerful, and even laugh uproariously over a discussion on decrees; but what do I care for decrees? Those elderly Christians can be cheerful in a quiet conversation on politics or on the church. But if I want to be cheerful in a merry dance in proper society and at proper hours, if I want to go to my friend’s billiard table and play a quiet game, if I want to make merry over a few hits of backgammon, or give my energy full vent in rolling ten-pins for an hour, I am a heathen and a publican and unfit for the society of Christians.

As already observed, these views are doubtless greatly exaggerated by the young. Yet does not the state of the case warrant us in asking carefully and prayerfully if there is no connection between the stringent dogmas of the church on the subject of recreation, and the general suspicion of religion which characterizes the mass of unconverted youth?

Be this as it may, the case is narrowed down to this. Of all the subjects naturally under the church’s supervision, there is not one in which her influence is less than in this. She neither represses nor regulates. One of two courses she must pursue if she would escape the stigma of impotency. Either she must reassert her old dogmas, and back them by the severest discipline, or she must modify them, and openly commit herself to a larger liberty. Is she prepared for the first of these courses? Is she prepared, first of all, to defend it from God’s Word. Every other defense is worthless here. Is she ready to cut off remorselessly the man or the woman, the youth or the maid who dances, however properly and modestly? Is she ready to expel or suspend every minister who shall roll a ten-pin ball, or while away an hour with chess or backgammon? Is she ready to lay violent hands upon every member who fingers a card or handles a cue, or strikes a croquet ball? If so, I tremble for the results of the experiment. She will pause before she undertakes this course. Or will she openly confess to undue stringency in the past, and write a new motto upon her banners—“More abundant life?” Here what seems a formidable objection is often preferred with great confidence. Grant that these more liberal views are correct, still public sentiment is not yet such as to make it safe to promulgate them. The argument, both in its character and result, very strongly resembles that which used to be such a favorite with the advocates of slavery. The negro is not fit for freedom. It recoiled on those who advanced it. Who made the negro unfit for freedom but those who held him in bondage until his imbruted nature ceased to prize or to desire liberty? Similarly I say, if there is such a state of public sentiment, _why is it so?_ How came this thing there? Who is responsible for a state of sentiment in the church which makes it inexpedient to declare the plain teachings of Christ on _any_ subject? There can be but one answer. The responsibility lies between the church and the world, and the world surely has not done it. The church herself has made this sentiment, has created the factitious conscience, has awakened the morbid sensibility, by preaching on this subject a theory which shrivels at the touch of Christ, and which she has clearly shown her inability to carry into practice. And the fact that such a sentiment exists, so far from calling for silence, is the strongest of all reasons why the church should speak out with a voice of thunder, and set herself right with the vast mass of conscience which she so powerfully influences.

Would you then, says one, free this matter entirely from the restraints of the church? By no means. On the contrary, I am calling upon the church to regain influence which she has forfeited. I am pleading for a _regulation_ of these things by the church which does not now exist. Indulgence is going too far in the church itself. But from her present stand-point on this question, the church is, from the very nature of the case, almost powerless to regulate. Assuming that the recreations in question are evil and only evil, she _must not_ regulate. That would be compromising. She must _crush_. Hence the matter resolves itself into a war of extermination on both sides. Either these forms of amusement must be exterminated from the church, or they must get the upper hand of the church’s statutes, in which case the church has no law for them. She has only provided for destroying them; and failing in this, must stand and see them run riot in her very courts.

I would not have the church compromise one hair’s-breadth with sin. Better that she should err in excessive stringency. But I would have her gain a new vantage ground _by being simply true_, and not proclaiming unmixed evil, where evil and good are blended in liberal proportions. By not undertaking the task of _extermination_, where her duty is that of _discrimination_. The moment she begins upon the principle of _analyzing_ these mixed elements, casting only the bad away, and using, developing and enjoying the good, that moment she mounts to a point from which she can regulate _any_ matter which falls under her jurisdiction. And to be thus true, she must go direct to Christ. His word and example are conclusive, and we may safely preach what we find there. Do we find any such principle of repression as the church has preached for years past? No; we find abuse condemned, and use allowed and approved. The Savior is at the hilarious merry-making of the marriage, contributing to the festivity. His own parable is on record, bidding men put the gospel into all the forms and developments of life, to refine and fit them for human enjoyment. The long list of exceptions with which men are forbidden to bring the gospel leaven into contact has been added by men, not by Christ. He was condemned for the very same reason for which hundreds condemn a so called liberal Christian to-day; because he used the world which other men used, and thought it not necessary to abstain from use because others abused. These teachings are there if anything is there. They are for all time. The conditions of no age can justify Christians in refusing to preach and to apply them just as they stand. Nine-tenths of the really sinful indulgence over which the church is mourning to-day, is simply because of the failure to do this faithfully. Because good men have been startled by the magnitude and power of evil, and have been too timid to meet it with methods which seemed so slow, and which even gave room for the charge of compromise. In being wiser than her Lord, the church has drawn the reins too tightly, and the results speak for themselves. Much is said about expediency; and Paul’s words about meat offending his brother, have been saddled with more burdens than any ten other passages of scripture; but after all, the result proves simply this, that it is always most expedient to follow Christ implicitly.

I would, moreover, that the church in dealing with this question, would consent to meddle less with its details, and leave them more where they properly belong, with the individual conscience. No one man can decide these things for another. No man has a right to insist that his standard of expediency shall be his brother’s. Where God’s law is explicit, both are bound alike. When it throws a decision upon conscience, neither has a right to complain if the paths diverge. Both paths may not be right, but to his own Master shall each traveler stand or fall.

The church, indeed, can do better than to busy herself with such details, or, to speak more correctly, she can deal with them much more successfully by shifting her point of power from the circumference to the centre. Her duty in this case will be very much simplified and lightened, if she will give more attention to the _springs_ of Christian life, to the conformity of the _heart_ to the mind and will of Christ, to fostering an enthusiastic devotion to him. Then these details and distinctions will mostly take care of themselves. The church has lacked faith in the regulative power of this principle, and has sought to supply its assumed defects by innumerable special provisions; and the consequent tendency of this course has been to fetter Christian individuality, and to insist that love to Christ should express itself only in such modes as the church might prescribe. Hence the sentiment often expressed, a true Christian will have no taste for these things. But here again the whole question is begged. You do not know, you cannot know what affinities a Christian life may develop. All that you can with any confidence assert is the general fact that he will love all that is good, acceptable, perfect, and hate all that is essentially evil. As to other matters, things whose moral value arises entirely from circumstances, a love to Christ as sincere and as ardent as yours, may lead him in a direction the very opposite of yours. Therefore it will be more in the interest of a true Christian individuality, of a higher and more generous Christian manhood, for the church to throw the soul more on its love to Christ as the great regulative principle. Let her probe the hearts committed to her, deeply for this. Let her strengthen this sentiment by every possible safeguard. Let her urge her members earnestly to higher attainments in this, and her difficulties in the regulation of the amusement question, and of every similar question will, in a great degree, disappear. Her courts will be full of the richest developments of grace, the most varied activities, the most glorious examples of that wondrous unity in diversity which Christianity alone displays.

Might not the church, moreover, profitably ask herself if there be not a positive duty toward these much abused things, as well as a privilege of letting them alone? If a thing has good in it, does Christ teach that our duty to it is discharged in letting it alone for the sake of the evil mixed with it? That is the easier way, I know. It is a good deal easier to throw overboard good and evil together, than to separate them carefully and to develop the good into a power. But if easier, is it better? I cannot avoid quoting just here the exquisite words of Trench on the Marriage at Cana, as bringing out clearly our Savior’s example on this point: “We need not wonder to find the Lord of life at that festival; for he came to sanctify all life, its times of joy, as its times of sorrow; _and all experience tells us that it is times of gladness, such as this was now, which especially need __ such a sanctifying power, such a presence of the Lord_. In times of sorrow the sense of God’s presence comes most naturally out; in these it is in danger to be forgotten. He was there, and by his presence struck the key-note to the whole future tenor of his ministry. He should not be as another Baptist, to withdraw himself from the common paths of men, a preacher in the wilderness; but his should be at once a harder and a higher task, to mingle with and purify the common life of men, to witness for and bring out the glory which was hidden in its every relation.” To the same purpose are the pertinent words of Alford: “To endeavor to evade the work which he has appointed for each man, by refusing the bounty to save the trouble of seeking the grace, is an attempt which must ever end in degradation of the individual motives and in social demoralization, whatever present apparent effects may follow its first promulgation.”

“A terrible responsibility you are taking on yourself,” say some to the writer. “Youth are going to perdition on your authority, pleading your word and example as a Christian minister.” I have only to say I fear not to meet such before the highest of all tribunals. If any man shall, after carefully reading these four discourses, say that they give his worldly heart full license to indulge its will, I tell him to his face, he is either a fool or a hypocrite. Not proudly, I trust, but in humble reliance upon him for whose sake every line has been penned, I bow my shoulders to every morsel of responsibility which the utterance of these truths involves. No youth will go to perdition on their authority. If he shall infer the right to abuse from a plea for moderate Christian use, his perdition be on his own head. The truth I have uttered shall condemn him. If I err, God will bring this thing to nought: and I, who have erred in good faith, and with an honest conscience, shall be dealt with by a tender Savior as lovingly and leniently as I believe he will deal with those who, with equal sincerity and zeal, may possibly have erred in so presenting to youth a gospel of light and joy and freedom, as to make some of them prefer the risk of perdition to embracing it.