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THE THEATRE: 
 
 AN ESSAY UPON THE NON-ACCORDANCY OF STAGE-PLAYS WITH 
 THE CHRISTIAN PROFESSION. 
 
 JOSIAH W. LEEDS. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 No. 528 WALNUT STREET. 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR. 
 
 1884. 
 
I 
 
 \ \ HAR 
 
 THE THEATRES ARE FOUNTAINS AND MEANS OF VICE. I CAN 
 HARDLY THINK THERE IS A CHRISTIAN UPON EARTH WHO WOULD 
 DARE TO BE SEEN THERE IF THE NATURE AND EFFECTS OF THE 
 THEATRE WERE PROPERLY SET BEFORE HIM." yO#W NEWTON. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 ALTHOUGH most of the following essay recently appeared 
 in a weekly periodical of the Society of Friends, the writer 
 had likewise in view, in preparing it, its probable re-issue as 
 a tract, and circulation over a much wider field. He has 
 since been encouraged by many to carry out that purpose. 
 
 It will be admitted that some treatises upon the theatre 
 exhibit the abounding wickedness of the stage with so much 
 fidelity that, although very useful in certain hands, they are 
 not exactly fitted for reading aloud in families or for perusal 
 by the young generally. Indeed, they may even stimulate a 
 morbid interest in place of inciting, as desired, sentiments 
 of repugnance against and abhorrence for the detailed evil. 
 The writer has been solicitous in the following pages to avoid 
 this objection. But, though less full in the direction pointed 
 out than some others, it is hoped that this essay will prove 
 of definite value in that it deals with sundry aspects of the 
 subject which are usually either not at all or not much con- 
 sidered in treating of the play-house and its perils. 
 
 Philadelphia, Seventh Month, 1884. 
 
The Theatre of the Past. 
 
 In his treatise De Spectaculis, that 
 
 early Christian writer, Tertullian, says: "I heard lately a novel defense of 
 himself by a certain play-lover. 'The sun,' said he 'nay, God Himself 
 looks down from heaven on the show, and no pollution is contracted.' 
 Yes, and the sun, too, pours down his rays into the common sewer with- 
 out being defiled. But lie [God] looks on robbers, too; He looks on 
 falsehoods, and adulteries, and frauds, and idolatries, and these same 
 shows; and precisely on that account we will not look on them lest the 
 All- Seeing see us." 
 
 The Theatre of the Present. 
 
 Says Bishop Coxe, of Western New 
 
 York : "All that theory can adduce in defense of a possible drama 
 vanishes before the gross sensuality of the actual stage. The voice of 
 Christian antiquity denounces as anti-Christian the whole system of the 
 play-house, and the very heathen lash as obscene and shameful, scenes 
 which are exhibited to ' young men and maidens ' in New York and all 
 over the land. 'I go to the theatre myself,' said a young man to me 
 lately, 'but I thought the devil himself must have laughed when he saw a 
 communicant of the Church there.' " 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The scope of this essay, 8 
 
 Rome arid Athens condemn the thea- 
 tre 9 
 
 Not tolerated by primitive Chris- 
 tians, 11 
 
 Testified against by many Councils, . . 13 
 Prynne upon reforming the stage, . . 13 
 
 Testimony of Hannah More, 14 
 
 The stage not a school of morals, ... 16 
 Adverse testimony of play-actors, . . . 18 
 
 Gibber and Dumas, 18 
 
 Booth, Macready, and Knowles, ... 19 
 
 Kemble and Siddons, 20 
 
 Dispassionate testimony of Montague 
 
 Stanley, 21 
 
 A changed American actor, 22 
 
 The sorrow and reparation of Judson, . 23 
 Timely counsel to a would-be actress, . 24 
 Moral loss to play-actors themselves, . 25 
 
 Remorse of a dying tragedian 26 
 
 Evil transferred to its impersonator, . 27 
 Figaro's opinion of the actresses' call- 
 ing, 28 
 
 The " Passion Play " of Salmi Morse, . 28 
 Experience and views of J. M. Buck- 
 ley, 29 
 
 A formal plea for the theatre, . . . . o2 
 
 The plua of respectability, 32 
 
 Ministerial "staginess" and Sunday- 
 school fiction 33 
 
 The legitimate stage examined, ... 34 
 The stage us existing under a law of 
 
 degeneracy, 35 
 
 Estimate by Wesley, Tillotson, Hale, . 35 
 Estimate by Wilberforce, Rousseau, 
 
 Rush, 35 
 
 Clarkson on Quakers and the the- 
 atre, 36 
 
 Play acting specially condemned be- 
 cause of its violating the truth, ... 37 
 Bernard and Rousseau against false 
 
 frenzies, 38 
 
 Profanity of simulated prayer, .... 39 
 Elizabeth Fry renounces the theatre, . 39 
 
 Experience of Mary Capper, 41 
 
 Experience of Christine Majolier, . . 42 
 Attending the opera gives countenance 
 
 to the ballet, . . 43 
 
 Woman's appearance on the stage did 
 
 not reform it, 44 
 
 The pious Xonna no theatre-goer, . . 45 
 The theatre an inciter to crime, ... 45 
 V 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 The agency of pernicious literature, . 46 
 Connection between juvenile pranks 
 
 and overt crime, ' . . . . 48 
 
 Juvenile masqueraders, 49 
 
 Faithful testifying against pernicious 
 
 literature needed, 51 
 
 Absence of parental restraint, .... 52 
 
 Wise and unwise correctives, 54 
 
 Receiving the proceeds of theatrical 
 
 entertainments, 55 
 
 U. S. Congress of 1778 against the the- 
 atre, 56 
 
 Suppression of the theatre in England, 57 
 Stage-playing forbidden during the 
 
 plague, 58 
 
 The theatre not wanted in early Penn- 
 sylvania, 59 
 
 The theatre curse in Philadelphia, . . 61 
 The theatre's attraction in Berlin, . . 62 
 " Sunday " theatre-going iu Chicago, . 66 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Cincinnati and the lesson of its calami- 
 ties, 67 
 
 Seriousness of the present situation, . . 70 
 Hospitality versus theatre visiting, . . 71 
 Responsibility of the professing 
 
 Church 72 
 
 Stage "mysteries" of the Middle Ages, 72 
 Havergal on church ornamentation, . 74 
 Holy-days occasions for excess, .... 75 
 
 Church theatricals, 76 
 
 The church sociable a forerunner of un- 
 seemly entertainments, 79 
 
 The Church walking with the world, . 80 
 Deadening effects of these entertain- 
 ments, 82 
 
 The problem briefly stated, 83 
 
 Three witnesses to holy fidelity. ... 83 
 Two examples to follow in dealing with 
 
 the theatre, 84 
 
 A safe conclusion recommenaea, ... 85 
 
THE THEATRE. 
 
 It was told me by a Friend that a certain person with 
 whom he was well acquainted in his younger years, hav- 
 ing made an appointment to meet one of his associates 
 at a theatre entrance, was so struck by the usher's itera- 
 tion of "This way to the pit! This way to the pit!" 
 that, appalled at the peril to which he was exposing his 
 soul, he hastily left the place, and was never afterward 
 seen at such a resort. I have jhought that no argu- \ 
 ment more convincing can be offeredin opposition y 
 To theatre-gomg^ none_jriore likely to impress us 
 with its debasing tendency yjjggp^yfcjj^eh^ma^^ be 
 found in simply scanning the countenances and observ- 
 ing the demeanor of the crowd as they leave one of our 
 play-houses of the popular sort. We are morally certain 
 that these people have not " been with Jesus," that they 
 have not been employed " to the glory of God," but 
 rather that, walking in the way of sinners and in the 
 counsel of the ungodly, they have cast in their lot with 
 those who " go down into the pit." 
 
 Now, we in the city are surrounded by multitudes of 
 the frequenters of such places ; we are sure that the souls 
 of these people are, in the Almighty's estimation, of 
 equal value with our own, and, although as a religious 
 society we have a clear testimony against the play- 
 house, and our membership as a whole is nearly free 
 
 7 ' 
 
8 THE THEATRE. 
 
 from countenancing such resorts, yet we will not have 
 done our duty in this particular unless, showing our- 
 selves alive to the magnitude of the evil, and following 
 the counsel of the apostle Jude concerning those who 
 " walk after their own ungodly lusts," we do our part in 
 faithfully " pulling them out of the fire." Said the late 
 William Evans in his journal (1849) : " The kingdom of 
 Satan is gaining ground in this land, and if those who 
 consider themselves lovers of religion slacken their 
 watchfulness and their resistance to wrong things, the 
 tide of compliance must gain a powerful ascendency over 
 the morals of the people at large." 
 
 It will be the scope of this essay to show the adverse 
 estimation in which stage-plays have been held by the 
 best of men of ancient and modern times, and how local 
 communities and States have, in very self- 
 defense, forbidden them; that many actors 
 themselves, conceding the demoralizing character of their 
 occupation, have united in condemning the plays, whilst 
 others of them apologists for the stage have been 
 unable successfully to defend, as they have likewise re- 
 peatedly failed in the effort to reform, it, seeing that it 
 " exists only under a law of degeneracy ;" that an invari- 
 able accompaniment of stage-plays, and that which estab- 
 lishes the constant trend to degeneracy, is the dissimula- 
 tion and violation of truth involved in the acting ; that 
 the personal experience (to be briefly detailed) of some 
 righteous people of our own time is very confirming in 
 that it clearly shows the wanton and unsatisfying char- 
 
 The scope of this 
 essay. 
 
THE THEATRE. 9 
 
 acter of such and similar pleasures ; that an inevitable 
 result of theatre-going is the corruption of youth, and, as 
 consequents, law-breaking and overt crime ; but that to 
 pernicious reading and to general negligence of parental 
 restraint and training are to be largely referred the 
 'growth of these depraving tendencies ; that many of our 
 American cities, following the custom of the capitals of 
 Europe in tolerating stage-plays and amusements gener- 
 ally on the first day of the week, are adding iniquity to 
 iniquity and inviting the righteous judgments of the 
 Almighty on account thereof; and finally, that the pro- 
 fessing Church of our day, through countenancing (under 
 cloak of religion) a great variety of worldly entertain- 
 ments as sociables, feasts, bazars, tableaux, dancing 
 has not only weakened the ancient testimony of con- 
 demnation against the theatre, but by becoming in effect 
 the world's ally, has made easy the way of multitudes to 
 resort to it. 
 
 An English writer of last century, Arthur Bedford* 
 cites the following concerning the theatre in ancient 
 Athens and Rome. Quoting from Plu- Rome and A{hens 
 tarch, he says that the consequences of concemn the theatre, 
 the corrupt plays in Athens were severely felt in getting 
 the people's money as well as in demoralizing them ; 
 that inspectors were appointed for its better regulation, 
 but this plan not succeeding, a law was enacted that 
 
 * A Serious Remonstrance in behalf of the Christian Religion against the Horrid Blas- 
 phemies and Impieties which are s*ill used in the English Play-Houses, to the great 
 dishonoring of Almighty God, and in contempt of the Statutes of this Realm. By Arthur 
 Bedford. London, 1719. 
 
10 THE THEATRE. 
 
 common actors should be reputed infamous. At last 
 the evil became so serious that the theatre was totally 
 suppressed.* Bedford adds: " How, then, will they rise 
 up in judgment against us and condemn us if we are 
 remiss in this matter." Following Tertullian, he says : 
 " When the plays were corrupted in heathen Rome, a 
 very early law was made against them, in which they 
 were declared infamous ; and it was enacted that no 
 actor should be admitted to the Court, the Bar, or the 
 Senate, and should also be incapable of any military or 
 other honor or esteem : And, therefore, when God enters 
 into judgment for these things, will it not be more tol- 
 erable for them than it will be for us ?" 
 
 " The Lacedaemonians," says Collier,f also on the 
 authority of Plutarch, " were remarkable for the wisdom 
 of their laws, the sobriety of their manners, and their 
 breeding of brave men this government would not 
 endure the stage in any form nor under any regulation." 
 
 The citizens of ancient Marseilles, we are told, would 
 admit no stage-plays into their city, lest their filthiness 
 should corrupt their youth. 
 
 Xenophon, Seneca, Tacitus, Plato, Ovid, were among 
 the noted Greeks and Romans who raised their voices 
 
 * ' When tragedy and comedy were first enacted at Athens, they were soon abolished 
 by public authority as bein^ enervating ; and among the Romans, so cautious were they 
 of permitting them to be frequent, that a theatre, when occasionally erected, was not 
 allowed to continue above a prescribed number of days " Witherspoon. 
 
 It may be added that, upon the score of public morality, the first stone theatre among 
 the Romans was pulled down when nearly finished, B. C. 155. 
 
 f A Short Vi;:w of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage : together 
 with the Sense of Aatiqu'.ty upon this Argument. By Jeremy Collier. London, 1698. 
 
THE THEATRE. II 
 
 against the theatre as a school of vice, a corrupter of 
 youth, and the disgrace of those nations. And when 
 theatrical shows were introduced by Herod into Jeru- 
 salem, Josephus spoke of them in strong terms of repro- 
 bation, as " tending to corrupt the morals of the Jewish 
 nation, to bring the people into love with Pagan idolatry, 
 and to throw contempt on the law of Moses." 
 
 Respecting the belief and general practice of the Primi- 
 tive Christians hereupon, Milner, the Church historian, 
 testifies : " A Christian renouncing the pomps and vani- 
 ties of this wicked world, and yet fre- 
 quenting the play-house, was, with the 
 
 Stage plays not tol- 
 erated by the Primi- 
 
 tive Christians. 
 
 Christians of the first three centuries, a 
 
 solecism. The effusion of the Holy Spirit, during those 
 
 centuries, never admitted those amusements at all." 
 
 A well-known but somewhat rare work against stage- 
 plays is Edward Prynne's Histrio Mastix, a book of more 
 than one thousand pages, which was published in Lon- 
 don in the time of Charles the Second (1663). It is a 
 treatise of invaluable authority on the subject. The fol- 
 lowing are some of this writer's citations from the early 
 Christian fathers in opposition to the theatre : 
 
 TERTULLIAN : " Stage plays are the pomps of the devil, 
 against which we have renounced in our baptism." He 
 also styles the play-house " the devil's church." 
 
 CLEMENT, of Rome, calls stage-plays " the pomps of 
 idols and spectacles of the devil," and hence strenuously 
 cautions all Christians to shun and avoid them. 
 
 CYRIL, of Jerusalem : " The devil's pomp which we 
 
12 THE THEATRE. 
 
 renounce in baptism are those spectacles or plays in 
 theatres, and all other vanities of this kind from which 
 the holy man of God, desiring to be freed, saith, ' Turn 
 away mine eyes from beholding vanity.' " 
 
 AUGUSTINE gives them the same titles as the foregoing, 
 and decries the faithlessness of professing Christians in 
 " gi n & one while into the church to pray, and after 
 awhile running to the play-house to cry out impudently 
 with stage-players." 
 
 CHRYSOSTOM, the eloquent preacher, is very outspoken, 
 calling stage-plays "the impure food of the devil," and 
 play-houses his conventicles, and so zealous was he 
 against them that he avers (perhaps too confidently) : " I 
 will never give over preaching until I have dissipated 
 and rent asunder [this theatre-going] ; that so the as- 
 sembly of the Church may be made pure and clean, freed 
 from its present filthiness, and enjoy eternal life here- 
 after, by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ their Lord." 
 
 SALVIAN, Bishop of Marseilles, says of theatre-goers 
 who have embraced the new faith " Thou hast once 
 renounced the devil and his spectacles, and by this thou 
 must needs know that thou dost return to the devil, when 
 thou dost wittingly and knowingly return to stage-plays." 
 
 " The true soldiers of Christ," says BERNARD, " reject 
 and abominate players and stage-plays, as vanities and 
 false frenzies." 
 
 Prynne quotes still others, the foremost writers among 
 the early Christians and those of the centuries immedi- 
 ately succeeding, as Cyprian, Lactantius, Ambrose, Basil, 
 
THE THEATRE. 13 
 
 etc., as well as the deliberate acts of fifty-four General, 
 National, and Provincial Councils, ancient and modern, 
 all bearing unequivocal testimony against plays and play- 
 houses as being Satan's own. Hence, summing up the 
 testimony gathered from the primitive period of the 
 Christian Church, our author says : " We have the 
 express testimony of sundry Fathers and Councils, that 
 all the godly Christians in the Primitive Church did 
 wholly withdraw themselves from stage-plays ; that all 
 those Pagans who either acted or frequented plays, did 
 immediately upon their conversion to the Christian faith, 
 and their very first admittance into the Church of Christ, 
 ever publicly renounce all future acting or resort to plays ; 
 and that none but Pagans, unchaste, profane, and grace- 
 less persons, who were cast out of the Church by public 
 censures, did use to flock unto them." 
 
 Having thus pursued the subject, more exhaustively 
 perhaps than any other writer, Prynne gives his views 
 upon reforming the stage, in the following plainly 
 expressed and eloquent conclusion : 
 
 " Many are the laws which have been enacted ; much 
 the care that hath been taken by sundry states and cen- 
 sors in all ages to lop off the enormities, allay the poison, 
 purge out the filth and gross corruptions of these stage- 
 plays, and so to reduce them to a laud- 
 able and inoffensive use: but yet these 
 Ethiopians still retain their black infernal hue; these 
 vipers keep their soul-devouring poison still ; these 
 Augean stables are as polluted (yea, more defiled) now, 
 
 Prynne upon re- 
 forming the stage. 
 
14 THE THEATRE. 
 
 as ever Heretofore : no art, no age, no nation could ever 
 yet abridge, much less reform, their exorbitant corrup- 
 tions and enormities ; their hurt doth far transcend their 
 good ; their abuses far overpoise iKir use ; they are so 
 crooked and distorted in themselves, that no art can make 
 them straight; there is no other means left to reform 
 them, but utterly to abolish them." 
 
 Leaving Prynne, who (as said before) wrote in the time 
 of the profligate Charles the Second and his dissolute 
 court, let us consult the views upon theatre-going of one 
 who, upward of a century later, made careful examination 
 of the subject: I allude to the excellent Hannah More. 
 The possessor, as was thought, of some dramatic talent, 
 she was introduced to the celebrated actor Garrick, with 
 a view to her going upon the stage ; but becoming con- 
 vinced of the demoralizing character of the pursuit, she 
 happily relinquished her purpose. This discerning woman, 
 in adducing the testimony of the Holy Scriptures and of 
 the unflattering witness within, remarks : 
 
 " I would take leave of those amiable and not ill-dis- 
 posed young persons who complain of the rigor of human 
 prohibitions, and declare ' they me^t with no such strict- 
 ness in the gospel,' by asking them with the most affec- 
 tionate earnestness, if they can conscientiously reconcile 
 
 Testimony of Han- 
 
 their nightly attendance at every public 1 
 place which they frequent, with such 
 precepts as the following : ' Redeeming the time ' 
 * Watch and pray ' ' Watch, for ye know not at what 
 time your Lord cometh ' ' Abstain from all appearance 
 
THE THEATRE. 15 
 
 of evil ' ' Set your affections on things above * t Be ye 
 spiritually minded * ' Crucify the flesh with its affections 
 and lusts.' And I would venture to offer one criterion 
 by which the persons in question may be enabled to 
 decide on the positive innocence and safety of such 
 diversions ; I mean, provided they are sincere in their 
 scrutiny and honest in their avowal. If, on their return 
 at night from these places they find they can retire and 
 ' commune with their own hearts ;' if they can ' bring 
 every thought into subjection/ and concentrate every 
 wandering imagination, if they can soberly examine into 
 their own state of mind : I do not say, if they can do all 
 this perfectly and without distraction (for who can do 
 this at any time ?) but, if they can do it with the same 
 degree of seriousness, pray with the same degree of fervor, 
 and renounce the world in as great a measure as at other 
 times; and if they can lie down with a peaceful conscious- 
 ness of having avoided in the evening that ' temptation ' 
 which they had prayed not to be * led into ' in the morn- 
 ing, they may then more reasonably hope that all is well, 
 and that they are not speaking false peace in their hearts. 
 "Again, if we cannot beg the blessing of our Maker 
 on whatever we are going to do or to enjoy, is it not an 
 unequivocal proof that the thing ought not to be done 
 or enjoyed ? On all the rational enjoyments of society, on 
 all healthful and temperate exercise, on the delights of 
 friendship, arts, and polished letters, on the exquisite 
 pleasures resulting from the enjoyment of rural scenery 
 and the beauties of nature ; on the innocent participation 
 
1 6 THE THEATRE. 
 
 of these we may ask the divine favor for the sober 
 enjoyment of these we may thank the divine benefi- 
 cence ; but do we feel equally disposed to invoke bless- 
 ings or return praises for gratifications found (to say no 
 worse) in levity, in vanity, and waste of time ? If these 
 tests were fairly used ; if these experiments were honestly 
 tried ; if these examinations were conscientiously made, 
 may we not without offense presume to ask Could our 
 numerous places of public resort, could our ever-multi- 
 plying scenes of more select but not less dangerous 
 diversion, nightly overflow with an excess hitherto unpar- 
 alleled in the annals of pleasure ?" 
 
 Next, in regard to the stage being a school of morals, 
 as some have vainly claimed, John Witherspoon, President 
 of Princeton College, wrote as follows in his Serious 
 Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Stage. 
 
 " If the stage be a proper method of promoting the 
 interests of religion, then is Satan's kingdom divided 
 against itself, which he is more cunning than to suffer it 
 to be. For whatever debate there be, whether good men 
 may attend the theatre, there can be no question at all 
 that no openly vicious man is an enemy 
 to it, and that the far greater part 
 of them do passionately love it. Nothing is more certain 
 than that, taking the world according to its appear- 
 ance, it is the worse part of it that shows most passion 
 for this entertainment, and the best that avoids and fears 
 it, than which there can hardly be a worse sign of it as a 
 means of doing good." 
 
 The stage not 
 school of morals. 
 
THE THEATRE. 17 
 
 This assumption of moral teaching on behalf of the 
 stage is controverted in an essay against plays issued by 
 the Jansenists of Port Royal about the beginning of last 
 century. They say : 
 
 " It is so true that plays are almost always a represen- 
 tation of vicious passions, that the most part of Christian 
 virtues are incapable of appearing upon the stage. Silence, 
 patience, moderation, poverty, repentance, are no virtues 
 the representation of which can divert the spectators ; 
 and above all, we never hear humility spoken of, and the 
 bearing of injuries. It would be strange to see a modest 
 and silent religious person represented. There must be 
 something great and renowned according to men, or at 
 least something lively and animated, which is not met 
 withal in Christian gravity and wisdom ; and therefore, 
 those who have been desirous to introduce holy men and 
 women upon the stage have been forced to make them 
 appear proud, and to make them utter discourses more 
 proper for the ancient Roman heroes than for saints and 
 martyrs." 
 
 To recur again to Prynne he also says, respecting 
 stage-plays teaching virtues : " But I never yet could 
 hear or read of any ancient or modern actor, composer, 
 or spectator of any theatrical interludes whom plays 
 recalled from the love, the practice of any vices, that 
 were ever acted on the stage, whereas they have drawn 
 millions to imitate them." 
 
 It may now be instructive to give ear to the " sober 
 second thought" of some of the play-actors themselves. 
 
1 8 THE THEATRE. 
 
 Colley Gibber, for forty years an actor, has this to re- 
 mark concerning his occupation. Writing in the time 
 of Queen Anne, he says : " While vice and farcical folly 
 are the most profitable commodities, why should we 
 
 Testimony of play- 
 actors-Coiley Gibber 
 
 wonder that, time out of mind, the poor 
 comedian when real vice could bear no 
 
 price should deal in what would bring him most ready 
 money ? But this, you will say, is making the stage a 
 nursery of vice and folly, or at least keeping an open 
 shop for it. / grant it" In an epilogue composed by 
 Dr. Johnson, and spoken by Gibber's successor, Garrick, 
 at the re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre upon a pro- 
 fessedly reformed basis, there occurs this sentiment : 
 
 '* Ah 1 let not censure term our fate our choice, 
 The stage but echoes back the public voice ; 
 The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, 
 For we that live to please must please to live." 
 
 Dumas, who wrote CamUlc 9 said : " You do not take 
 your daughter to see my play. You are right. Let me 
 
 say once for all, you must not take your 
 Dumas. 
 
 daughter to the theatre. It is not merely 
 
 the work that is immoral, it is the place. Whenever we 
 paint men, there must be a grossness that cannot be 
 placed before all eyes ; and whenever the theatre is 
 elevated and loyal, it can live only by using the color of 
 truth. The theatre being the picture or satire of the 
 passions and social manners, it must be immoral the 
 passions and social manners themselves being immoral." 
 Edwin Booth, in a letter to the Christian Union, says : " I 
 
E win Booth. 
 
 Macready and 
 
 Knowles. 
 
 THE THEATRE. 19 
 
 never permit my wife or daughter to witness a play with- 
 out previously ascertaining its character. * * While 
 the theatre is permitted to be a mere 
 shop for gain, open to every huckster of 
 immoral gimcracks, there is no other way to discriminate 
 between the pure and base than through the experience 
 of others/' (This E. Booth, in his vain attempt to reform 
 the stage, lost a fortune.) W. C. Macready, another 
 noted actor, said : " 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." Sheridan Knowles, once a 
 successful playwright and actor, having become a Chris- 
 tian, renounced the stage as utterly evil, and devoted the 
 remainder of his life to preaching the Gospel. 
 
 Says Theodore L. Cuyler, writing on the Perils of the 
 Play-House : " One of the most celebrated actresses of 
 this time informed a friend of mine that she 'only enters 
 a theatre to enact her part, and has very little conversa- 
 tion with her own profession.' A converted actor once 
 said to me while passing a play-house in which he had 
 often performed, ' Behind those curtains lies Sodom.' 
 Although sorely pressed to return to his old pursuits, he 
 said he would sooner starve than go on the stage again. 
 These men certainly knew whereof they affirmed." 
 
 Of play-acting, the actress Siddons says that it is a 
 business " unworthy of a woman." Frances Kemble, in 
 her Reminiscences of the Stage a recent installment 
 of which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly gives the 
 
20 THE THEATRE. 
 
 subjoined striking testimony. Describing her first ap- 
 pearance on the stage, she says : 
 
 " So my life was determined, and I devoted myself to 
 an avocation which I never liked or honored, and about 
 the very nature of which I have never been able to come to 
 a decided opinion. It is in vain that the undoubted speci- 
 fic gifts of great actors and actresses suggest that all gifts 
 are given for rightful exercise; in vain that Shakespeare's 
 plays urge the imperative claim to the 
 
 Kemble and Siddons. * 
 
 most perfect illustration they can receive 
 
 from histrionic interpretation : a business which is inces- 
 sant excitement and factitious emotion seems to me un- 
 worthy of man ; a business which is public exhibition is 
 unworthy of a woman." * * " Never," she further 
 says, " have I presented myself before an audience with- 
 out a shrinking feeling of reluctance, or withdrawn from 
 their presence without thinking the excitement I had 
 undergone unhealthy and the personal exhibition 
 odious." 
 
 In endeavoring to account (after her public appearance 
 at Drury Lane) for the origin of the deep impression 
 that she had entertained as to the moral dangers of the 
 life upon which she was then entering for, she says, 
 this fearfulness certainly came not from her parents, who 
 seemed not to have been troubled with any moral repug- 
 nance to their calling she proceeds : " I had never 
 heard the nature of it discussed, and was absolutely 
 without experience of it ; but the vapid vacuity of the 
 last years of my aunt Siddons' life had made a profound 
 
THE THEATRE. 2 1 
 
 impression upon me her apparent deadness and indiffer- 
 ence to every thing .which I attributed (unjustly perhaps) 
 less to her advanced age than to what I supposed the 
 withering and drying influence of the over-stimulating 
 atmosphere of emotion, excitement, and admiration in 
 which she had passed her life ; certain it is that such was 
 my dread of the effect of my profession upon me that I 
 added an earnest petition to my daily prayers that I 
 might be defended from the evil influences I feared might 
 be exercised upon me." 
 
 Montague Stanley, an English actor of note, became so 
 convinced of the sinfulness of the stage that, for con- 
 science' sake, he relinquished it, and that at a time when 
 he was considered to be one of the most 
 rising men in his profession. In the 
 midst of the popular applause his mind 
 had been ill at ease, so that, finally, God's grace leading 
 him to a true discernment of the way he had been tread- 
 ing and the privilege of giving up all for Christ, he was 
 enabled to make this entry in his journal : " April 28. 
 Last night of my dramatic career ; and now, thanks be 
 to the Lord, who hath called me from darkness to light, 
 I am emancipated from a most ungodly profession. 
 May the Lord bless and prosper me in my new one." 
 Later he said, as to the peril and guilt of the theatre fre- 
 quenters : " They are leading others by their example to 
 do as they are doing, and they are verily guilty of their 
 brother's blood when he falls into the snare of ungodli- 
 ness and is taken. They are upholding a system of 
 
 Dispassionate testi- 
 mony of Montague 
 
22 THE THEATRE. 
 
 enormous wickedness. It is useless for any person to 
 say that the theatre would go on whether he paid his 
 money or not. It would not go on if it were deserted by 
 the audience. Every individual, then, who contributes a 
 fraction at the door of a theatre for admission is a par- 
 taker with all those sitting around him in the common 
 sin of supporting a vast machinery of corruption." 
 
 Not less convincing than the above is the (late) 
 changed experience and the testimony of one of our own 
 countrymen, who for more than twenty years followed 
 the stage in the various characters of clown, minstrel, 
 and regular play-actor. Having seen the folly of, and 
 abandoned his former occupation, he has been much 
 occupied during the past three years in calling others 
 from the evil of their way, with the result that quite 
 a number of stage-players have aban- 
 doned the pursuit and turned to more 
 morally-profitable engagements. At a lecture given 
 some months ago in the city of New York he gave a 
 sketch of his life, in which he pointed out from his own 
 experience that " the way of the transgressor is hard." 
 Blessed with a good Christian home the remembrance 
 of which never left him in all the years of his wandering 
 he confessed, nevertheless, that often, after his mother 
 had given him her " good-night kiss " and supposed he 
 was asleep, he would dress himself and steal out of the 
 house to go to the theatre so strong had become his 
 infatuation for the play. 
 
 Referring to the way in which professing Christians 
 
 A changed American 
 actor. 
 
THE THEATRE. 23 
 
 turn their backs upon the Master in this matter fre- 
 quenting the play-house and siding with the enemies of 
 truth and righteousness he said : " I have stood by the 
 footlights many a night and recognized in the audience 
 Christian men by whose side I had sat in church. You 
 all know the influence of such conduct upon the young. 
 And not only young men, but old gray-haired men ap- 
 pear in those places nightly ; and, though not a Christian, , 
 I have blushed again and again to see Christian (?) men 
 laughing at and applauding scenes of vice and vulgarity." 
 Concluding, he said he could not understand how any 
 man who has given his heart to Christ can enter those 
 gateways to hell, and he knew actors who are longing to 
 get away from the influences that surround them and 
 the bonds that hold them to the stage. 
 
 When Dr. Judson was attending college he imbibed 
 the poison of unbelief, so that the truths and the comforts 
 of the Christian religion became (apparently) of no value 
 to him. Leaving college, he came to New York upon 
 the special errand of acquainting himself thoroughly with 
 theatrical life in case he should conclude 
 
 . . . 11- i Judson a stroMing- 
 
 to adopt dramatic authorship as his pro- p'ayer-His sorrow 
 
 - . _ - . , . , and reparation. 
 
 fession. tor this purpose he attached 
 himself to a company of strolling players, leading, for 
 awhile, a reckless, vagabond life, and, as opportunity 
 offered, running up a score and departing without pay- 
 ing. His subsequent sorrow for this disgraceful episode 
 of his life was so poignant, that before sailing for Burmah 
 he could only find rest by an attempt at reparation. 
 
Timely counsel to a 
 would-be actress. 
 
 24 THE THEATRE. 
 
 He says : " Before leaving America, when the enormity 
 of this vicious course rested with a depressing weight on 
 my mind, I made a second tour over the same ground, 
 carefully making amends to all whom I had injured." 
 
 The following instructive circumstance, illustrating 
 the good accompanying a ''word in season," has been fur- 
 nished the writer: As a Friend, a minister, was walking the 
 street in a low state of mind, he became conscious that 
 a young woman was walking by his side. She addressed 
 him by saying that her father, a general residing in a 
 Southern State, had so high an esteem for the Quakers 
 that she felt impelled to speak to him as one of them. 
 Entering into conversation, the Friend 
 found that, at the persuasion of some 
 of her friends who thought she would succeed as an 
 actress, she had come to Philadelphia to prepare 
 to appear upon the stage, and was then taking 
 lessons in elocution for that purpose. The Friend, ex- 
 pressing his sorrow, said he had read that " they that 
 turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for 
 ever and ever," but there was no such promise recorded 
 for those who were instrumental in leading others to the 
 brink of the pit of destruction, as would probably be her 
 experience if she carried out her plans. Some days or 
 weeks after, she came to the place of business of her 
 faithful counselor and told him that the words he had 
 uttered had remained constantly with her, and that she 
 had now determined to give up her project and return 
 to her father, who had never approved of her scheme. 
 
Moral loss to the 
 play-actors them- 
 
 THE THEATRE. 25 
 
 A gay young lady was once expatiating upon the 
 varied pleasures attendant upon theatre-going the 
 pleasures of anticipation, with that of seeing and hearing, 
 and also of recollecting the scene when a godly man 
 observed, " Madam, there is one pleasure you have for- 
 gotten.'' "What is that?" queried the lady. "The 
 pleasure of remembering it on your dying bed." 
 
 In speaking of the perils of the play-house, it is there- 
 fore not alone the imminent danger to the attenders 
 which has to be considered, but also, as just intimated, 
 the moral loss frequently the overwhelming moral loss 
 which is sure to accrue to the players 
 themselves. I will introduce this aspect 
 of the subject by quoting the following 
 brief paragraph concerning a widely known American 
 actor who died not many years ago, premising the quo- 
 tation with the remark that the words were written by a 
 friendly hand and that the glimpse they give of the inner 
 life of this actor of note is doubtless not unlike that of 
 very many who live by the stage : 
 
 " His habitual mood was one of levity. He loved and 
 trusted but very few persons. It suited his humor to jest 
 and to seek excitement and distraction ; first, because 
 his temperament naturally bloomed in a frolic atmos- 
 phere, and then because he wished to suppress melan- 
 choly feelings and a gloomy proneness to self-reproach 
 and saddening introspection. In his domestic life he 
 was unfortunate ; and he lived to learn as all do who 
 depart from innocence that the wrong that is done to 
 the affections can never be righted on earth." 
 
Remorse of a dying 
 tragedian. 
 
 26 THE THEATRE. 
 
 An actor of eminence was performing before a large 
 audience the leading part in a startling tragedy which 
 was represented as ending in the hero's death. Though 
 in a decline, he did his part so well that thunders of ap- 
 plause followed the curtain's fall. The effort, however, 
 had been too much for the actor's strength, so that he 
 lingered in life a few days only. When told that there 
 was no hope for him, a terrible despair settled upon his 
 countenance. Grasping the physician's 
 wrist, he cried out : " O, S ! the thea- 
 tre may do for us to live by, but, oh ! it will not do to 
 die by. We have all sinned against the Lord our God 
 but be sure our sins will find us out." With these words 
 upon his lips the wretched man expired, but the physi- 
 cian never forgot the thrilling words which confessed the 
 mockery of the play-house, nor the convulsive grasp 
 which seemed as though it would tear aside the mask of 
 its hollowness and gay delusion. 
 
 A writer upon the theatre has tersely said : " The good 
 self of the actor's personality must for the time being be 
 lost in the evil self of the character acted. And what 
 an effect is this ! The greater the actor, the completer 
 the transference of self and the profounder the evil !" 
 To illustrate this, he cites the following description by a 
 noted authoress, a novelist, of the manner in which the 
 " hellish transformation" appeared to possess an equally 
 celebrated actress when performing her part in a certain 
 tragedy. 
 
 " For a while a long while I thought it was only a 
 
THE THEATRE. 27 
 
 woman, though a unique woman, who moved in might 
 and grace before this multitude. By and by I recognized 
 my mistake. Behold! I found upon Evil transferred to 
 her something neither of woman nor of jts im P ersonat r - 
 man : in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces 
 bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength 
 for she was but a frail creature ; and as the action rose 
 and the story deepened, how wildly they shook her with 
 the passions of the pit ! They wrote Hell on her straight, 
 haughty brow. They turned her voice to the note of 
 torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac 
 mask. Hate and murder and madness incarnate, she 
 stood." I think it will be admitted that such power or 
 genius for Satanic transformation is all too dearly 
 acquired. 
 
 A recent English writer computes that one of the most 
 widely known of English actors one who is a champion 
 for the reformation of the stage has committed at least 
 fifteen thousand murders upon the theatre's boards; that 
 another has been divorced nearly three thousand times 
 on the stage ; and others (named) in the personation of 
 sundry stage characters have been some thousands of 
 times " foully betrayed, deserted, or abducted." Hence, 
 we may with pertinency ask, whether it can be possible 
 for the moral nature of the portrayers of these terrible 
 offenses to pass, even measurably, uncontaminated 
 through all this evil simulation. 
 
 A London serial (Echoes from Paris] published in the 
 interest of Christian work in the French capital, refers to 
 
28 THE THEATRE. 
 
 the opening of a Home for " respectable English ballet- 
 girls in Paris," and prints from the well-known journal, 
 Figaro, some remarks by one of the editors of the latter 
 upon the actresses' calling. This writer shows that the 
 public concerns itself not at all as to the effect of stage 
 acting upon those whose paid occupation it is to please: 
 " It wants to laugh or to cry, often both 
 at once; and it does not trouble itself 
 
 Figaro's opinion of 
 the actresses' calling. 
 
 about the consequences. * To be a really clever 
 
 performer, and very few are such, the various passions of 
 a woman's nature cannot be represented by one who has 
 not felt them. If I do not express an absolute fact, it is 
 at least remarkable that the lives of all the great actresses 
 have been full of intrigues ; and it may even be said that 
 the greater they were, the freer the life they led. The 
 history of the theatre, from its origin to our own times, 
 tends to prove this." 
 
 It will serve to point the moral of this part of my sub- 
 ject if I advert to the tragic end of the playwright, Salmi 
 Morse, an event which happened while these notes were 
 in preparation. Repeatedly defeated in his purpose of 
 having the " Passion Play " performed before a New York 
 audience for both the public at large and the judicial 
 The "Passion Play " authorities had declared it to be a subject 
 
 of Salmi Morse. -,i . . * , r 
 
 without the pale of scenic representation 
 overwhelmed with debt, and filled with a remorse which 
 led him to wish that the Almighty would put an end to his 
 unhappy life, he at last cast himself into the Hudson (some 
 
THE THEATRE 29 
 
 said the hand of an enemy pushed him in) and thus per- 
 ished miserably.* 
 
 It is surely not necessary to multiply condemnatory 
 testimony such as that which has been given, coming as 
 it in part does from those who have been, or who now 
 are, enabled to speak from dearly earned experience. 
 We will turn next it may be hoped with profit to 
 something said in defense of the stage, being the separate 
 comments of three writers actors, playwrights, or stage- 
 managers upon a brief arraignment of the theatre by J. 
 M. Buckley, editor of the Methodist Christian Advocate, 
 of New York City. The four articles are printed in con- 
 nection, in the North American Review for the Sixth 
 month, 1883. 
 
 Some extracts from J. M. Buckley's paper will be first 
 in order. Giving in a few lines his own experience, he 
 says : " The writer in the most susceptible period of his 
 life was fascinated by the theatre. The time was short, 
 but the fever ran high, and during his attendance he saw 
 some of the most noted actors who have appeared during 
 the last thirty years, a few of whom are Experience and 
 still in the front ranks of their profession, views of J.M.Buckley. 
 The sneers at religion and straight-laced bigots which 
 certain comedies contained embittered him toward a life 
 
 * " And because th- pH'isly introduced custom of representing to the people the ven- 
 erable passion of Christ the Lonl, and the glorious combats of martyrs and acts of the 
 saints, is brought to such a pass by the perverseness of men that it is an offense to many, 
 ard likewise .1 matter of much derision and contempt to many: we therefore decree, that 
 from henceforth the passion of OIK Saviour be no more acted neither in any sacred nor 
 profane place, but that it be learnedly and gravelv declared by the preachers in such sort 
 as that they may siir up piety and tears in the auditors." Council of Milan, A.D. 1560- 
 
30 THE THEATRE. 
 
 of piety. The excitement of the evening unfitted him for 
 the serious pursuit of his business. He lost relish for 
 lectures and solid reading ; a semi-tragical extravagance 
 with an infusion of comical slang, affected his action and 
 expression ; while the company he found there was such 
 as to destroy all interest in the society of steady 
 persons." 
 
 Following prior writers on the topic, J. M. Buckley 
 shows that, inasmuch as the success of a theatrical enter- 
 tainment depends upon its power to excite attention and 
 kindle strong emotion, it is any or all of the long array of 
 evil dispositions and wickednesses which find such ready 
 representation, and not, or rarely not, the quiet virtues of 
 " truth, honesty, temperance, industry, frugality, chastity, 
 religion," which are not readily representable on the 
 stage so as to satisfy the sense of high excitement which 
 is clamored for. The witticisms will be vulgar or 
 broadly indecent, while the attitude assumed and the 
 general behavior of those engaged in acting out the 
 vices will be broadly at variance with that Christian 
 decorum and sobriety of demeanor to which every one 
 is called. 
 
 " The result," he continues, " of an examination of 
 more than sixty of the plays which have been performed 
 in the principal theatres of New York within recent years 
 copies prepared for the use of the actors being used 
 shows that if language and sentiments which would not 
 be tolerated among respectable people in private inter- 
 course, and would excite indignation if addressed to the 
 
THE THEATRE. 3! 
 
 most uncultivated and coarse servant-girl, not openly 
 vicious, by an ordinary young man, and profaneness 
 which would brand him who uttered it as irreligious, are 
 improper amusements for the young and for Christians 
 of every age, at least fifty of the sixty plays above re- 
 ferred to must be condemned." He gives some details 
 of the plots of several of them, but it will suffice merely 
 to cite what he says in brief of two of the public's favorite 
 
 dramas, that " consists of infidelity, adultery, murder, 
 
 re-marriage, and the subsequent re-appearance of the 
 first wife to die in the house of her former husband. 
 
 is a succession of hypocrisy, covetousness, drinking, 
 
 gambling, jealousy, and infidelity, tending to impart a 
 view of life to the young which, if taken as true, would 
 lead to distrust, misanthropy, and personal recklessness." 
 
 Hence, the above writer sees no probability of a re- 
 formation of the stage, because its reform has been called 
 for for centuries and never been accomplished, it having 
 always existed under conditions which forbid the hope of 
 reform; the sane morbid demand for delineation of vice 
 continues ; and finally, as the pecuniary success of the 
 play is of the first moment to the playwright and mana- 
 ger, and as " nine-tenths of the theatre-going public call 
 for the present order of plays, they will get what they 
 call for or the management must fail." 
 
 To this serious arraignment, the first of the theatre 
 defenders, replying, is frank enough to say that the pres- 
 ent condition of the drama is "a subject for regret," and 
 that many of the plays " are open to the severest criti- 
 
32 THE THEATRE. 
 
 cism," yet he thinks that there has been some noticea- 
 ble improvement, and " that the attitude of the Christian 
 public generally is much more liberal toward the theatre 
 A forma' plea for anc ^ theatrical people than [formerly], and 
 that actors as such are not now excluded 
 from good society on account of their calling," an as- 
 severation which (if correct) can hardly be received as 
 hopefully indicating the right estimation of this pursuit 
 by the professing Church. He further asserts that, it 
 being the province of the stage to amuse and instruct, 
 vice is indeed exhibited to the intent that goodness may 
 thereby be taught by comparison : surely a dangerous 
 position to hold, and such as no concerned parent would 
 bring forward as an excuse for having permitted his sons 
 to seek the companionship of profane and immoral 
 boys. 
 
 The second theatre defender takes a more hopeful view 
 of stage morals, and claims that "the attendance is of a 
 more refined class and far larger than it ever was before" 
 a claim, as to the latter part, which, though unhappily 
 too true, proves nothing as to the righteousness of the 
 thing pleaded for. And though it be said that the Eng- 
 lish sovereign herself gives countenance 
 to the stage, and has chosen to take un- 
 
 The plea of re- 
 spectability. 
 
 der her special patronage the writer of the play of" Pin- 
 afore," yet how sorrowful the reflection that the Queen's 
 youngest son, the late Prince Leopold, came to his end 
 (if the cable dispatch be correct) in a theatre after attend- 
 ance at a ball, and that the intelligence reached his oldest 
 
THE THEATRE. 33 
 
 brother, the Prince of Wales a notorious theatre-goer 
 when the latter was present at a race-course. Neither 
 regal nor refined society can elevate the ball and the 
 theatre above the low plane where the Bible places 
 them. 
 
 In stating that some of the most violent enemies of the 
 stage are those whose sermons are rather acted than 
 preached, whose dissertations are " often greeted with 
 unseemly laughter and applause, and their salaries are 
 regulated by the success they achieve in drawing audi- 
 ences," this writer conveys a reproof which it were well 
 that some who claim to be prophets of the Most High 
 
 Ministerial " stagi- 
 ness" and Sunday- 
 school fiction. 
 
 should heed. Further, in giving expres- 
 sion to the opinion that the stage does 
 no more than is done by works of fiction in showing up 
 wickedness, he only places the two in that near connec- 
 tion which Friends have always claimed that they occu- 
 pied ; and this point is emphasized when he alludes to 
 the character of some of the fiction to be found in " Sun- 
 day-school" libraries. Here, too, are stumbling-blocks 
 which the professing Church of Christ ought speedily to 
 remove. 
 
 The last of these apologists for the stage makes much 
 of the forbearance of playwrights and stage performers 
 in not "showing up" clergymen of proved wickedness 
 as they deserve to be, arguing from thence that theat- 
 rical representations and the actors therein should be 
 handled with corresponding lenity. It seems scarcely 
 worth while to follow this pleader's argument, for he, 
 
34 THE THEATRE. 
 
 like Gibber and Garrick, would defend the acknowledged 
 immoralities of the stage upon the ground of their presen- 
 tation being the fault of the public in clamoring for plays of 
 the most debasing sort. Nevertheless, when he discourses 
 of the high intellectual standard and pure moral condition 
 The legitimate f the "legitimate" stage, instancing a 
 theatre in this city where " the stage took 
 excellent shape," I am enabled specifically to reply (citing 
 a memorandum of some years since, which it now seems 
 singular to me that I should have made) " It was pub- 
 licly stated a few weeks ago that a play had just been en- 
 acted at the theatre of first repute in this city which, some 
 years ago, the censors of even the city of Paris refused 
 to license." Clearly it cannot be safe to follow the way 
 of these easy advisers and defenders of that which is in- 
 defensible, who may have need, above many, to consider 
 the Scripture caution that " he that diggeth a pit shall 
 fall into it, and whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall 
 bite him." 
 
 One of the latest essays upon the theatre is an eighty- 
 two page tractate entitled " Plain Talks about the Thea- 
 tre," by the Presbyterian minister, Herrick Johnson. The 
 writer gives a brief historical account of the stage, show- 
 ing how the law of deterioration as to dramatic represen- 
 tations found illustration in the case of the Greeks, 
 Romans, and Hindoos, and afterward, with respect to the 
 modern European and American stage, which had its 
 rise during the middle ages. Humbling to our claim to 
 superior civilization and morals is his affirmation that 
 
THE THEATRE. 35 
 
 tneither in China nor Japan are women allowed to per- 
 form. H. Johnson also shows how the several attempts 
 at reformation of the theatre in England 
 
 and America have signally failed, the 
 
 The stage, as ex- 
 isting " under a law 
 
 of degeneracy." 
 
 efforts being spasmodic and rendered 
 nugatory by the popular demand for dramas of the sen- 
 sational and better-paying character; and he hence 
 concludes that, " supported by the record of the past and 
 present, by the very nature of theatrical representations, 
 and by the necessities of the case, the stage, as an insti- 
 tution, has wit kin itself the seeds of corruption, and exists 
 only under a law of degeneracy*" 
 
 Confirming his assertion as to the vileness of the very 
 large majority of stage plays by specific references to the 
 plots of a number of the most popular, we are fully pre- 
 pared to conclude, with Wesley, that the theatre is " the sink 
 of all profaneness and debauchery," or, with Archbishop 
 Tillotson, that it is "the devil's chapel, a nursery of licen- 
 
 Estjmate by Wes|ey 
 
 JSce"' " 
 and Rusf - 
 
 tiousness and vice." Vehement in his op- 
 position to the theatre was that eminent 
 jurist, Sir Matthew Hale; Wilberforce 
 was equally its foe ; whilst even the infidel Rousseau is 
 found exclaiming, " Where would be the prudent mother 
 who would dare to carry her daughter to this dangerous 
 school ? and what respectable woman would not think 
 herself dishonored by going there ?" To which I add 
 this faithful denunciation of our Dr. Rush : " I will 
 never publish to the world by going to the theatre 
 that I think Jesus Christ is a hard master and religion 
 
36 THE THEATRE. 
 
 an unsatisfying portion, which I should do if I went to 
 the devil's ground in quest of happiness."* 
 
 It may be now pertinent to say something concerning 
 the views of our own religious Society upon this subject. 
 Thomas Clarkson, an Episcopalian, having given in ex- 
 tenso, in his " Portraiture of Quakerism," the reasons why 
 the Friends condemn the theatre, sums up the argument 
 as follows : 
 
 " Here we are taught that though dramatic pieces had 
 no censurable origin, the best of the ancient moralists 
 condemned them. We are taught that, even in the most 
 favorable light in which we can view them, they have 
 been thought objectionable; that is, that where they 
 have pretended to teach morality, they 
 have inculcated rather the virtue of 
 heathenism than the strict, though mild, morality of the 
 Gospel; and where they have attempted to extirpate 
 vice, they have don^ it rather by making it appear ridic- 
 ulous, than by teaching men to avoid it as evil or for 
 the love of virtue. We are taught that, as it is our duty 
 to love our neighbor and to be solicitous for his spiritual 
 welfare, we ought not, under a system which requires 
 simplicity and truth, to encourage him to be what he is 
 not, or to personate a character which is not his own. 
 We are taught that it is the general tendency of the 
 diversions of the stage, by holding out false morals and 
 
 *To nn excellent tract styled "Can I Attend the Theatre?" by A. L. O. W. , pub- 
 lished by the American Tract Society, and well-adapted for general circulation, I am 
 indebted for the above quotations and some other matter which occurs in this essay. 
 
 Clarkson on Quak- 
 ers and the Theatre. 
 
THE THEATRE. 37 
 
 prospects, to weaken the sinews of morality; by disquali- 
 fying for domestic enjoyments, to wean from a love of 
 home; by accustoming to light thoughts and violent 
 excitements of the passions, to unfit for the pleasures of 
 religion. We are taught that diversions of this nature 
 particularly fascinate, and that if they fascinate they sug- 
 gest repetitions. And, finally, we are taught that the 
 early Christians on their conversion, though before this 
 time they had followed them as among the desirable 
 pleasures of their lives, relinquished them on the princi- 
 ples now explained." 
 
 Upon the single point as to dissimulation and opposi- 
 tion to truth which stage-acting involves a very import- 
 ant point, indeed, because " without " the eternal city are 
 " whosoever loveth and maketh a lie " I quote from 
 Clarkson's argument in full : 
 
 " They [the Friends] hold it also to be contrary to the 
 spirit of Christianity. For men who personate charac- 
 ters in this way express joy and grief when in reality 
 there may be none of these feelings in their hearts. They 
 express noble sentiments, when their whole lives may 
 have been remarkable for their meanness, 
 
 Play-acting speci- 
 ally condemned be- 
 cause of its violating 
 the truth. 
 
 and go often afterward and wallow in 
 sensual delights. They personate the 
 virtuous character to-day, and perhaps to-morrow that of 
 the rake, and, in the latter case, they utter his profligate 
 sentiments and speak his profane language. Now Chris- 
 tianity requires simplicity and truth. It allows no man 
 to pretend to be what he is not ; and it requires great 
 
38 THE THEATRE. 
 
 circumspection of its followers with respect to what they 
 may utter, because it makes every man accountable for 
 his idle words. The Quakers, therefore, are of opinion 
 that they cannot, as men either professing Christian 
 tenets or Christian love, encourage others to assume false 
 characters or to personate those which are not their 
 own." 
 
 In another place Clarkson says respecting the Friends 
 of his day: "I know of no people who regard truth 
 more, than the Quakers. Their whole system leads and 
 directs to truth. One of the peculiarities of their lan- 
 guage, or their rejection of many of the words which 
 other people use because they consider them as not re- 
 ligiously appropriate to the objects of which they are the 
 symbols serves as a constant admonition to them to 
 speak the truth." 
 
 Tried by this tenet, therefore, and with no need to 
 seek for any other objection, the " false frenzies" of 
 stage -players (as Bernard styles them) must be abund- 
 antly condemned by those claiming fellowship with the 
 religious Society of Friends. Indeed, it was very much 
 
 upon this ground that, four and twenty 
 Bernard and Rous- . c- i j j A i 
 
 seau against false centuries ago, bolon denounced the 
 
 frenzies. , r .. , 
 
 actor s profession as tending, by its 
 
 simulation of false character and by its expression of 
 sentiment not genuine or sincere, to corrupt the integrity 
 of human dealings." Upon the same principle did Rous- 
 seau frankly condemn the stage. " It is," says he, " the 
 art of dissimulation ; of assuming a foreign character, and 
 
Profanity of simula- 
 ted prayer. 
 
 THE THEATRE. 39 
 
 of appearing differently from what a man really is ; of 
 flying into a passion without a cause, and of saying what 
 he does not think as naturally as if he really did ; in a 
 word, of forgetting himself, to personate others." 
 
 Accompanying this personation is the frequent pro- 
 fanity involved, in word and in attitude. A lady gave 
 this as the immediate cause impelling 
 her to renounce the theatre : " As she 
 beheld actors fall upon their knees, and in simulated de- 
 votion offer up prayers to Heaven, a revelation of both 
 subject and surroundings suddenly flashed upon her." 
 
 It must have been near the time that Clarkson was 
 penning his " Portraiture" that Elizabeth Fry (then 
 Gurney), going up from Norwich to London, was'afforded 
 opportunity by her father to enter upon a previously ar- 
 ranged season of gayety in the pleasure-loving city. 
 Sprightly and very much admired though she was, she 
 had but a short time previously been 
 
 n .,* . 
 
 to reflect with seriousness upon 
 
 Elizabeth Fry re- 
 
 nounces the thea- 
 
 tre. 
 the tendency of her then course of life 
 
 through listening to the preaching of William Savery, 
 from Philadelphia. In her journal, which she began 
 early to keep, she says at this time (1798) in commenting 
 upon a visit to the theatre : 
 
 " I own I enter into the gay world reluctantly. I do 
 not like plays. I think them so artificial that they are to 
 me not interesting, and all seem so, so very far from pure 
 virtue and nature. There is acting, music, scenery to 
 perfection ; but I was glad when it was over." 
 
40 THE THEATRE. 
 
 Obedient to the heavenly vision, she immediately 
 thereafter wholly gave up attending public places of 
 amusement, for she afterward averred " I saw they ten- 
 ded to promote evil, led many from the path of rectitude, 
 and brought them into much sin." Consider the loss 
 not only to " Outcast London "but to the world at large, 
 had Elizabeth Fry come to a different decision, and con- 
 cluded that the theatre, being intended to " amuse and 
 instruct," it was little worth while for her a mere girl 
 of seventeen to disturb herself over the wretchedness of 
 the metropolis or the ills of a world which it must be 
 quite out of her power to mend or measurably alleviate. 
 How little she knew then that in turning away from the 
 theatre she should ever by an act of hers give occasion 
 for such a remark as that which was made by a certain 
 nobleman, who, seeing how she addressed the women 
 felons at Newgate, and how reaching were her pathetic 
 words, observed that it was the " deepest tragedy " he 
 had ever witnessed. 
 
 Showing a like apprehension of the unsatisfying nature 
 of the world's entertainments was the experience of 
 Mary Capper, who at the age of twenty-one being then 
 a member of the Established Church of England came 
 to London from her parent's home at Rugeley, Stafford- 
 shire. She was on her way to France for the benefit of 
 her health. She says (1776) : 
 
 " My brother Jasper called and took us to dine with 
 my brother William. After we had coffee we called a 
 coach, intending to go and spend the evening with my 
 
Experience of Mary 
 Capper. 
 
 THE THEATRE. 41 
 
 uncle Capper, in Berkeley Square, but an unaccountable 
 whim entering the head of my brother William (promp- 
 ted, I have no doubt, by his wish to give 
 us pleasure), he asked if we should have 
 any objection to see the opera to be performed that 
 night. I was inclined to refuse, but fancying that my 
 friend had a desire to hear [the actress-singer], I accom- 
 panied her without reluctance. My disappointment and 
 disgust are not to be described ; I had heard much of 
 the shining qualities of [the actress], and therefore ex- 
 pected something extraordinary; but of all the figures I 
 ever saw she is the most miserable, and her impudence 
 is inconceivable In the midst of my chagrin, I could 
 not help feeling emotions of pity for the poor, unhappy 
 wretch, who, in her serious moments, must call to mind 
 a life spent in such a manner ; how melancholy a retro- 
 spect! I may truly say, my intended pleasure was turned 
 into actual pain. I was very ill afterward." And so 
 this dedicated handmaid of the Lord, whose helpful let- 
 ters from the quiet rural home of her later life must have 
 been blessed to many of those who received them, was 
 likewise preserved for a better purpose than that of fol- 
 lowing the world's alluring pleasures. 
 
 Very like a companion piece to the foregoing the 
 place being Paris instead of London was the experience 
 in this matter of the late Christine Alsop (then Majolier), 
 who, at the age of twenty -two, being on her way from 
 the South of France to the home of William Allen, in 
 England, stopped for a brief rest in Paris. She was ac- 
 
42 THE THEATRE. 
 
 companied by a brother. Having gone to the same hotel 
 as the one selected by two of their traveling companions 
 in the diligence, they accepted the invitation of these 
 acquaintances (Christine reluctantly) to go with them to 
 the Theatre Frangais. Observing the dissipated looks of 
 those around her, she felt a sort of horror at being in 
 such a place, and thus instructively remarks : 
 
 " I durst not ask to go out, but I was very unhappy. 
 I felt ashamed that any one should see my Friend's bon- 
 net, so I took it off and put it under the seat. The 
 dresses, both of the men and women, were such as I was 
 ashamed to see. Then followed one of 
 the worst of the representations. I shut 
 
 Experience of 
 Christine Majolier. 
 
 my eyes and dared not look, and at my solicitation our 
 friends left the place. I have never forgotton the cir- 
 cumstance or my impressions at that time ; and I have 
 often felt glad that the scene was of such a description, 
 because my judgment was then quite settled ; and though 
 some who are in the practice of attending such places 
 have often tried to persuade me to go, telling me that my 
 judgment was formed on the worst example possible, I 
 have never felt at liberty to do so, persuaded as I am 
 that if those who do attend these places are not shocked, 
 it is because they have been led to it by degrees, and 
 that if a woman's modesty can be tints blunted, the influ- 
 ence must be unfavorable on her mind." 
 
 To which I would add the remark that when any, 
 in going to a place of entertainment, find themselves 
 tempted to cast aside the plain or simple attire which 
 
Attending the opera 
 gives countenance 
 
 THE THEATRE 43 
 
 they may have customarily worn, let them consider how 
 they are therein departing from the truth and treading 
 upon ground whereon they feel that Christ cannot 
 bear them company. 
 
 The writer may be allowed briefly to add, with respect 
 to his own experience (being previous to his uniting in 
 membership with a religious society), that his great fond- 
 ness for music drew him into attendance at the opera, 
 which he held to be less objectionable than the theatre. 
 Nevertheless, being one evening on his way to an enter- 
 tainment of this kind, and but a few steps from his home 
 in the city, he was. met in the way by 
 
 the merciful Spirit of Christ, who rave giv__ 
 
 to the ballet. 
 
 him to see that by attendance at such a 
 place though accounted the first of its class he was 
 countenancing performances concerning which he would 
 have no peace were his own brother or sister, or other 
 loved relative or friend, among the singers and actors ; 
 that it was not a resort where humble, godly people were 
 likely to be found, and therefore could not be a safe re- 
 sort for him ; that the habit was an expensive one, as well 
 as wasteful of time, and that it was one which was grow- 
 ing upon him. Immediately turning about, so effectually 
 was he convinced, that (he can gratefully say) he never 
 again attended the opera, or even had a desire to do so. 
 It will not be out of place to say here, respecting the 
 plea of many " church-going " people whose musical 
 tastes lead them to attend the opera, yet who would not 
 be seen at a theatre, that the ballet is an invariable, or 
 
44 THE THEATRE. 
 
 almost invariable, accompaniment of the rendition of 
 opera. In giving assent, therefore, to an unseemly 
 public display so morally damaging to the performers 
 as is the ballet, they must, if they have given the matter 
 any serious thought at all, be doing despite to the spirit 
 of grace in their hearts, unless, indeed, that God-given 
 monitor and preserver from the world's evils has already 
 ceased to be tender. 
 
 Woman's appearance upon the stage, it will be freely 
 
 admitted, did not reform it. Among the ancient Greeks 
 
 the actors were invariably males women being excluded 
 
 Woman's appear- from witnessing comedies, though ad- 
 
 ance on the stage . .. ... 
 
 did not reform it. mitted to tragedies. Women were, and 
 I believe still are, prohibited as actors upon the Chinese 
 stage ; while in Europe they did not so appear until the 
 seventeenth century first, in France, and, a little later, 
 in England, in the reign of Charles the Second. Of old, 
 the dance of the daughter of Herodias compassed the 
 death of the prophet who proclaimed the coming of the 
 Son of God : in this generation, none may number the 
 slain of the ballet and of woman's other immodest and 
 degrading appearances in the public play-house. Viewing 
 the signal dishonor thus done the sex, it would seem as 
 though there might in this connection, and in con- 
 nection with the demoralizing literature of the day, be a 
 field for dedicated labor by woman in woman's behalf, 
 which has hitherto been not much occupied. 
 
 While it is, I know, the boast of those who move in 
 fashionable life that they are well-versed in fiction, and 
 
The pious Nonna no 
 theatre-goer. 
 
 THE THEATRE. 45 
 
 that they would hold themselves quite disgraced could 
 they not say they had seen the diief plays and heard all 
 the noted singers in opera, yet a better 
 record for any Christian will it be if it 
 can be said of such a one what was said of the pious 
 Nonna by her son, the celebrated Gregory Nazianzen, 
 who, enumerating her virtues, began with this, " That 
 she never visited the theatre." 
 
 Leaving individual experiences, let us next consider 
 the character of some of the temptations through which 
 the young are led to attend the theatre, as well as some 
 of the results following therefrom. To quote again from 
 the tract, " Can I Attend the Theatre?": "The present - 
 director of the city prison in Paris says : ' If a new play 
 of a vicious character has been put on the boards, I very 
 soon find it out by the number of young fellows who 
 come into my custody.' * * ' Oh, that theatre /' said the 
 agonized mother of a felon son ; ' he was a virtuous, 
 kind youth till that theatre proved his ruin.' The in- 
 evitable effect of the play-house is the corruption of 
 youth. Prof. Knowles states that at a juvenile prison it 
 was ascertained that a large proportion of the boys began 
 their career in vice by stealing money to 
 buy theatre tickets ; and a keeper of a 
 juvenile prison in Boston gave testimony that ' of twenty 
 young men confined for crime, seventeen confessed that 
 they were first tempted to steal by a desire to purchase 
 tickets to visit the theatre.' Who has not seen famished- 
 looking boys scanning with keen interest the glaring bills 
 
 The theatre an in- 
 citer to crime. 
 
46 THE THEATRE. 
 
 that disfigure our streets, and apparently resolving, by 
 fair means or foul, to gain admittance to the play ! Of 
 fifteen young men from the country, employed in a pub- 
 lishing house in New York, thirteen, within a few years, 
 were led to destruction by the play-house." 
 
 But what led these boys to desire to attend the play ? 
 In very many cases they were doubtless brought to it by 
 the morally-destructive reading matter which they hab- 
 itually handled; for true it is that there are thousands of 
 our youth whose literature is limited to the recitals of 
 crime. Says a writer in a Methodist weekly of recent 
 date : " While visiting the State Prison in Indiana, a 
 short time ago, the chaplain of the institution told me 
 that out of one hundred and twenty-one prisoners who 
 were then confined in the prison inclosure, and who were 
 convicted before they became of age, 
 ninety-two attributed their crimes and con- 
 sequent convictions to the fact of their minds having 
 been corrupted and poisoned by reading the vile and false 
 papers and books that are to be everywhere found 
 throughout this land to-day." 
 
 The process of making bad boys with rapidity is 
 graphically told as follows by a local paper in comment- 
 ing upon late disorderly occurrences by lads of Milwau- 
 kee not acted upon " the boards," but in real life. I 
 presume no excuse need be offered for its insertion, 
 as the item brings us nearer to the causes which im- 
 pel to theatre-going. The excerpt is but one of scores 
 giving information of a similar tenor which might be 
 
 The agency of per- 
 nicious literature. 
 
THE THEATRE. 47 
 
 culled in a short time from the columns of the daily 
 press. 
 
 "The small boys in Milwaukee have risen in their 
 cunning and in their might and carried consternation to 
 the heart of every householder. Within the past month 
 there have been nine incendiary fires within a single 
 ward of that city, where the small boys have a Buffalo 
 Bill organization. According to the despatches, the city 
 is virtually in a state of siege. The police force has been 
 doubled, a tower watch has been erected by the direction 
 of the Fire Chief, the Chief of Police is in receipt of 
 letters threatening him with assassination, the local un- 
 derwriters are holding daily meetings, and they and 
 Mayor Stowell are offering special rewards for the 
 detection of the incendiaries. All this in the great 
 German town, that has heretofore boasted of being the 
 most beer-drinking and the most orderly community of 
 its size on the continent ! This state of things is a sad 
 commentary upon the sort of literature on which Mil- 
 waukee's humorist has been bringing up the boys of the 
 vicinage. He has sown the wind and now he is reaping 
 the whirlwind of bad boys. His seemingly harmless 
 pleasantries, in which the pranks of precocious mischief 
 are made the source of indulgent laughter, seem to be 
 having an unexpected result. George W. Peck, who, we 
 believe, before he became a professional humorist, was 
 himself the Chief of Police in a Western city, ought to be 
 put under bonds not to write any more books or stories 
 about bad boys." 
 
48 THE THEATRE. 
 
 The process of educating the youthful mind to a liking 
 for the pantomine, comedy, and other theatricals by feed- 
 ing it upon such pabulum as comic papers, silly and 
 Connection between grotesquely illustrated magazine articles, 
 
 juvenile pranks and t 
 
 overt crime. and the like, is not difficult to perceive. 
 
 A judicious parent, if he deems it worth while to advert to 
 the odd or simply ludicrous pranks of his little ones, will 
 generally take occasion to speak of these droll perform- 
 ances when the subjects of them are not present. When 
 we get beyond what is only humorous, and take up with 
 silly exaggerations and distortions of the truth, we offend 
 against the Scripture injunction as to our yea and nay, 
 and are welcoming that which " cometh of evil." So, when 
 a fondness for mimicry and playing practical jokes has 
 been developed in their boys, the parents of these may 
 be sure that the safety-line has been passed, and that 
 prayerful solicitude and active counteracting efforts are 
 more in place than is " indulgent laughter." 
 
 The connection which I am endeavoring to show is 
 apparent in such items of daily intelligence as this: Six 
 child burglars, nine to twelve years of age, were arrested 
 in Paterson, New Jersey. They constituted a regularly 
 organized band, and when arrested were on their way 
 from a cheap theatre. 
 
 What will they have probably seen at the cheap theatre ? 
 This flashy advertising sheet (which claims a circulation 
 of five hundred thousand), profusely illustrated with pic- 
 tures of brigand-looking heroes and Indians dashing 
 headlong over the plains, will tell us. It is an invitation 
 
THE THEATRE. 49 
 
 to the play of " Buffalo Bill's Wild West America's 
 National Entertainment," giving details of "the startling 
 and soul-stirring attack on the Deadwood mail-coach by 
 Indians," and a promise of marvelous representations of 
 free life on the frontier, well calculated to turn the heads 
 of errant boys and set them upon lives of adventure and 
 crime. That this story and play have had precisely this 
 effect, the late abundant police captures of lads going 
 West with stolen money in their pockets, pistols and 
 knives in their belts, and dime novels and pictures of 
 actors as part of their limited baggage, sufficiently attest. 
 This " City of Brotherly Love " was, last New Year's 
 Day (1884), the field of such a display of masqueraders, 
 mostly boys, as would seem to indicate how general 
 must have been their acquaintance with stage representa- 
 tions. Before noon of the previous day two hundred and 
 four permits to parade had been issued by the Mayor to 
 as many clubs and social organizations, who, accordingly, 
 in their fantastic attire, representative of clowns, harle- 
 quins, mimics, etc., paraded and capered around in a 
 manner which should have called for the shedding of 
 tears by the beholders rather than for j Juvenile masquera . 
 that indulgence in merriment or other | ders - 
 exhibition of approval which was too generally evoked. 
 One of these hilarious, reckless crews I met lads of 
 perhaps eight to eighteen years of age, and about twenty 
 in number. They had halted at the side door of a 
 liquor-saloon, and noisily accepting the invitation of the 
 laughing proprietor to step within, sat down to the long 
 
50 THE THEATRE. 
 
 lunch table, while the chuckling rum-dealer his arms 
 a-kimbo as he smiled upon the young recruits whom 
 he had gathered into his den only leered a response to 
 the warning not to deal them out any beer or other in- 
 toxicating drink. Asking myself how the fathers and 
 mothers of at least some of those boys would have felt 
 had they seen this saddening sight, I could only turn 
 away with the scarcely suppressed ejaculation, " How 
 long, O Lord! must such things be?" 
 
 A few weeks later there appeared in one of our dailies 
 a communication from a mother, signing herself " Anx- 
 ious Heart," in which counsel was craved on account of her 
 wayward son, a lad of fifteen, who persisted in running 
 the streets with bad boys and in spending his wages at 
 places of amusement. Here we behold the other side of 
 the merry-andrew's picture, which the amused public 
 cares not at all to see. 
 
 I would plead here with those parents, who, with true 
 love for their offspring, desire them to escape the hurtful 
 publications, theatre-going, and other contaminations of a 
 " world lying in wickedness," to see to it that they them- 
 selves set a good example in testifying (among other 
 things) against the purveyors of pernicious literature. 
 The proprietor of a news-stand near a much-frequented 
 railroad depot, upon being mildly expostulated with by 
 the writer for offering low papers like the Police Gazette 
 for sale, defiantly responded that he would sell anything 
 the law allowed him to. Not patronizing the owners of 
 sta ids where such debasing publications are kept may 
 
THE THEATRE. 51 
 
 at times cause one to go out of his way for his custom- 
 ary paper, or even to miss getting it altogether ; yet I 
 cannot doubt but that a Christian, jealous 
 of the honor of his Master, is as much 
 
 Faithful testifying 
 against pernicious 
 
 aga 
 
 . n . , r literature needed. 
 
 called to submit to so trifling a sacrifice, 
 as he is to keep away from saloons where vile liquors are 
 handed over the counter. And if it be said that this is 
 too slight a matter to make an issue about that there is 
 here very little of letting one's " light shine " I reply that 
 there is, nevertheless, a reward promised by the Highest 
 for the least act of dedication done (not as of works, but 
 of grace) unto Him in secret. It was said by Fenelon : 
 " He who learns, by Divine assistance, to make a right 
 application in small matters of a spiritual nature will 
 not fail to accumulate much treasure, as well as will he 
 who is attentive in temporal concerns." 
 
 Likewise should the parent exercise the same discrim- 
 ination as to the character of the daily paper which he 
 brings to or has served at his home. There are few 
 editors or publishers of such papers who keep posted in 
 their offices (and who, upon penalty of dismissal, insist 
 upon its observance) a notice like this, which is to be 
 found in the office of a daily in one of our large cities ; 
 " Nothing shall appear in the columns of the Daily News 
 which a young lady may not with propriety read aloud 
 before a mixed company." According to the Christian 
 Weekly: " An examination recently made showed that 
 in the five leading New York morning papers, excluding 
 the market reports and shipping news, an average of 
 
52 THE THEATRE. 
 
 thirty per cent, of the space given to reading-matter was 
 devoted to accounts of murders, suicides, and crimes of 
 every grade, dressed up in all the circumstantial details 
 possible to be obtained." Knowing, therefore, what 
 must be the result upon the impressible minds of 
 the young of the regular reading of a mass of such 
 details, the parent who has a concern for the moral 
 training of his children will be always anxious when 
 he sees them with a newspaper (unselected by himself) 
 in hand. 
 
 We therefore reach the point that back of the bad 
 reading which stimulates to theatre-going and overt 
 crime, there is an absence of that parental restraint and 
 tender concern which ought to prevail, so that it is in a 
 
 Absence of paren- 
 tal restraint. 
 
 great measure owing to this lack of care 
 that these hurtful habits are permitted 
 to be formed and to get the mastery. Nevertheless, 
 when the attempt is made to discover all the causes of 
 crime commission, especially in a great city, we need to 
 consider the temptations of the drinking-saloon ; the 
 pool, billiard, and gambling rooms ; the working in fac- 
 tories, with (in very many cases) the demoralizing asso- 
 ciations connected therewith; the contaminating influ- 
 ences of close crowding in tenement-houses, all of these, 
 and others unnamed, in connection with the pernicious 
 reading and the low theatres and music-halls already 
 remarked upon. When we weigh all these influences 
 thus working toward the reinforcement of the kingdom 
 of Satan, we are prepared to admit that a great deal of 
 
THE THEATRE. 53 
 
 effort may be expended, only to be largely counteracted 
 by the overpowering evil. 
 
 Thus, Judge Bulstrode, of Middlesex County, England 
 (in which county is the city of London), expressed the 
 opinion in a jury charge that one play-house ruins more 
 souls in a single year than fifty churches save. In the 
 report of the Howard Association, of London, for the 
 year 1880, it was stated on the authority of the chaplain 
 of Clerkenwell Prison, that " out of fifty boys sent to the 
 prison from the ages of 9*^ to 16 years, forty-eight had 
 been Sunday-school scholars; that forty-two of these 
 had attended regularly, and twenty-nine had received 
 prizes. Now, either the instruction had been very defec- 
 tive, or it must have been nullified by evil influences." 
 
 Further, the methods of attempted cure may be very 
 unwisely and mischievously employed. For example, 
 a wealthy tobacco manufacturer in one of our cities has 
 recently established a large free library and reading- 
 room for his employes, with the object, as stated, of fur- 
 nishing them "a place where they can pleasantly and 
 profitably spend their Sundays and evenings without 
 cost." In so far as the undertaking is indicative of a 
 feeling of real and generous sympathy on the part of the 
 employer for his work-people, it is to be altogether com- 
 mended; but as we learn that "in addition, there are 
 playing-cards, chess, dominoes, and other games," the 
 good resultant from the enterprise will be likely 
 to be counterbalanced by that which does not tend 
 to profit. A late writer in a London magazine, discours- 
 
54 THE THEATRE. 
 
 ing upon the prolific theme of the poor of the world's 
 metropolis, recommends that the factory girls, etc., be 
 Wise, and unwise aff orded opportunities for indulging in 
 dancing, gratuitous music being likewise 
 furnished. The well-to-do, argues this reasoner, have 
 their high-priced theatres and fancy balls ; the poor 
 should not be deprived of their free music and 
 dancing. Such alleviations may suit those, whether the 
 rich or the poverty-stricken, whose ken does not consider 
 the never-ending life beyond the grave for which present 
 preparation needs to be made; yet the one message of 
 George Fox, John Wesley, and Rowland Hill, to all 
 alike, in London or otherwheres, was that the Gospel was 
 commanded to be preached, and that, accepting its free 
 proffers of forgiveness and mercy, all might know " the 
 unsearchable riches of Christ " and be partakers of the 
 " joy that is past finding out." With the love of God in the 
 heart, and a tempered and purified purpose, content to 
 do the Master's bidding within the narrow way, the sad 
 problem of city life* among the lowly might be solved, 
 and the promise of Scripture be fulfilled, that " one [shall] 
 chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight." 
 
 In an article upon " Centres of Spiritual Activity," 
 published the past winter by the Pall Mall Gazette, there 
 occurs an interesting account of carefully-planned work 
 which is carried on (by the Friends) in connection with 
 the Bedford Institute, London. The following extract 
 may throw some light upon the problem how best to 
 combat the attractions of the play-house : 
 
THE THEATRE. 55 
 
 " For wet weather and winter months, the libraries, 
 lectures, discussion classes, and similar occupations are 
 rendered available. Occasionally, industrial exhibi- 
 tions are held; and these are found to be among the 
 very best means of promoting recreation and amusement 
 in connection with home and family life. The Friends 
 do not encourage theatres or dancing parties, as tending 
 in their view rather to foster pleasure-loving habits un- 
 favorable to domestic comfort and contentment ; but by 
 offering prizes to be competed for by men and women, 
 children and adults, and including a large variety of 
 handicraft work, as carpentry, cabinet work, metallurgy, 
 carving, drawing, sewing, tailoring, cooking, collections 
 of natural history objects, etc., there is secured for 
 months before the exhibitions a widely diffused and 
 deeply interested activity in many a home, which 
 not only keeps the workers out of mischief, but draws 
 forth their skill and ability, affords them a prolonged 
 pleasure in the midst of their families, and ultimately 
 meets with the sympathizing appreciation of many of 
 their friends and neighbors." 
 
 I believe that all the Churches commonly called evan- 
 gelical have declared their opposition to or have cautioned 
 against attendance at the theatre ; but it is lamentable to 
 know that in many instances the proceeds of theatrical 
 
 Receiving the pro- 
 ceeds cf theatrical 
 entertainments. 
 
 entertainments have not been refused by 
 
 the religious bodies to whom they have 
 
 been tendered. Here is another serious stumbling-block. 
 
 It was Chrysostom who said, "The Church receives no 
 
56 THE THEATRE. 
 
 offerings from the injurious." In our own day there 
 ought be no exception to the rule of refusal such as was 
 held by George Miiller, founder of the British orphan- 
 houses, who, being proffered the proceeds of a theatre 
 benefit, promptly returned the same as unlawful to be 
 used in a religious cause, though he was at the time in 
 great straits for money. The " Sunday Breakfast Asso- 
 ciation " of this city has more than once been tendered a 
 theatrical entertainment for its benefit, but its president 
 has said that he will in the future, as in the past, steadily 
 refuse to be helped by any such methods. 
 
 Respecting legislation by the States or General Gov- 
 ernment upon this matter, the United States Congress, 
 in 1778, adopted a resolution that stringent measures be 
 taken to suppress theatrical entertainments, horse-racing, 
 
 U. S. Congress of 
 1778 against the the- 
 atre. 
 
 and gaming as being productive of idle- 
 ness, dissipation, and general depravity 
 of morals. It is not probable that any such resolution 
 would be favorably reported now. Interesting in this 
 connection is the following from the diary of Mary Cap- 
 per, when in attendance at the Yearly Meeting, London, 
 in 1794: "The men's meeting sent us for perusal a very 
 interesting communication from Friends in America; 
 some of whom, in considering the late awful visitation 
 of some parts of that continent, were so deeply concerned 
 for the general good that they had believed it required 
 from them to represent to the rulers and persons in 
 power the necessity for their exerting their authority to en- 
 deavor to suppress all public amusements, gaming, stage 
 
Suppression of the 
 theatre in England. 
 
 THE THEATRE. 57 
 
 entertainments, and dram-shops, as being sources of 
 much immorality and profaneness, widely estranging the 
 mind from God and godliness." 
 
 As bearing on the phase of the subject just touched 
 upon, it may be well to refer here to some matters rela- 
 tive to the drama in Great Britian in the time of Eliza- 
 beth and in the century succeeding. During Elizabeth's 
 reign, in 1580, there was a partial suppression of the 
 theatres. It is related that certain u godly citizens 
 and well-disposed gentlemen, of London " brought 
 such a pressure to bear upon the city magistrates 
 that the latter petitioned the Queen to expel all 
 players from London, and permit them 
 to destroy every theatre within their jur- 
 isdiction. Their prayer was granted, so far as the sev- 
 eral play-houses within the boundaries of the city proper 
 were concerned, they being " quite put down and sup- 
 pressed by these religious senators." 
 
 Again, at the time of the Civil War in England, the 
 drama had a hard struggle for existence. An act of Par- 
 liament (1642), in view of the disturbances in both Eng- 
 land and Ireland, provided, among other things, as a 
 " possible means to appease and avert the wrath of God 
 appearing in these judgments," that " whereas public 
 sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor pub- 
 lic stage-plays with the season of humilation, this being 
 an exercise of sad and pious solemnity, and the other 
 being spectacles of pleasure too commonly expressing 
 lascivious mirth and levity ; it is therefore thought fit 
 
58 THE THEATRE. 
 
 and ordered by the Lords and Commons in this Parlia- 
 ment assembled, that while these sad causes and set 
 times of humiliation do continue, public stage-plays cease 
 and be forborne." 
 
 This suppressive law not sufficing, in 1647 a m c* r e 
 stringent act was passed, by which it was enacted that 
 "all stage -players, and players of interludes and common 
 plays are and shall be taken for rogues, whether they 
 be wanderers or not, and notwithstanding any license 
 whatsoever from the King or any other person or persons 
 to that purpose." This protective measure seemed to 
 operate with fair success for awhile, but, when Charles 
 the Second came in a few years later, the drama was fully 
 restored and legalized. 
 
 It is to be remarked that, whenever the plague made 
 its appearance in London, the drama was under a cloud ; 
 upon the decrease of the pestilence, it reappeared. In 
 Sir Henry Herbert's Office-book occurs the following 
 memorandum : " On Thursday morning, the 23d of Febru- 
 ary, the bill of the plague made the number of forty-four, 
 upon which decrease the King gave the players their lib- 
 erty, and they began the 24th of Febru- 
 
 ary, 1636. The plague increasing, the 
 
 Stage-playing for- 
 bidden during the 
 
 players lay still until the 2d of October, 
 when they had leave to play." 
 
 Although the closing of the theatres was rigidly en- 
 joined during the Great Plague (1666), those resorts were 
 re-opened with alacrity as soon as it appeared that the 
 immediate manifestation of the Divine judgment was 
 
THE THEATRE. 59 
 
 passing away. Thus Pepys says in his diary under date 
 Eleventh month 2Oth : " To church, it being Thanksgiv- 
 ing-day for the cessation of the plague ; but the town do 
 say, that it [the day] is hastened before the plague is 
 quite over, there being some people still ill of it, but only 
 to get ground of plays to be publicly acted, which the 
 bishops would not suffer till the plague was over."* As 
 did Israel, so did they : " In the time of their trouble, 
 when they cried unto Thee, Thou heardest them from 
 Heaven, * * but after they had rest, they did evil 
 again before Thee." (Neh. ix, 27, 28.) 
 
 Regarding Colonial and State action, it may serve the 
 .purpose of showing the laxity now prevailing with re- 
 spect to the theatre, if the legal measures early taken 
 against it in Pennsylvania only be cited. By the Great 
 Law, as it was called, passed the year that Penn first 
 came to his Province (1682), it was provided that " who- 
 soever shall introduce into the Province 
 or frequent such rude and riotous sports 
 as Prizes, Stage-plays, Masques, Revels, 
 Bull-Baiting, Cock-fightings, with such like, being con- 
 victed thereof, shall be reported and fined as breakers 
 of the peace, and suffer at least ten days' imprison- 
 ment at hard labor in the House of Correction, or for- 
 feit twenty shillings." 
 
 This act was probably repealed by the Queen in 
 Council prior to 1700, for in that year the colonists re- 
 enacted it. It was, notwithstanding, annulled by the 
 
 * Chambers' Book of D*ys, vol. 2, page 720. 
 
 The theatre not 
 wanted in early Penn- 
 
60 THE THEATRE. 
 
 royal Council, but re-enacted with righteous pertinacity 
 by the Quaker Assembly the same year. In 1709 the 
 Queen's Council again repealed it; the Assembly, un- 
 daunted, again enacted it the following year, only to be 
 met by a further repeal three years later. Nevertheless, 
 the moral sentiment of the Philadelphia community was 
 so strongly opposed to theatres that it was not until 
 1749 that the first theatrical performances were given, 
 and those were by an English company. Their unlawful 
 procedure coming to the knowledge of the city authori- 
 ties, the company was soon frightened off, and went to 
 New York. In 1759 a permanent theatre was built,* to 
 the great scandal of various congregations, who forth- 
 with petitioned the Assembly, and in the same year 
 (" where there's a will, there's a way ") an act was passed 
 which made it an indictable offense, punishable by a fine 
 of five hundred pounds, to erect any play-house, theatre, 
 stage, or scaffold for " acting or exhibiting any tragedy, 
 comedy, or tragic-comedy, farce, interlude, or other 
 play," or to be concerned in acting or exhibiting any- 
 such tragedy, etc. This act was likewise repealed by 
 the King in council the next year, only to be re-enacted 
 in the act of 1779, " for the suppression of vice and im- 
 morality." It is evident that the just sentiment of the 
 community at large (and'not that of the Friends only) 
 was opposed to the play-house, as being a prime pro- 
 moter of social debasement, for the Friends of the period 
 
 * The first regular play-house in the Colonies appears to have been set up at Williams- 
 burg, in Virginia, only seven years before (1752). 
 
THE THEATRE. 6l 
 
 of the Revolution were unrepresented in the Assembly 
 by which this prohibitory law was enacted.* 
 
 In view of the fact that play-houses, even those of the 
 vilest description, are everywhere allowed and licensed 
 in our towns and cities, and that it would be in vain to 
 look now for any municipal or State action, such as 
 above detailed, there is something pathetic in the per- 
 tinacity with which this community strove again and 
 again to turn aside to keep away that leprous invader, 
 which the mother country, like an unnatural parent, en- 
 deavored with an unrelenting persistency to fasten upon 
 it. What were the stamp act and the tax upon tea, as 
 absolute grievances, to this? The tax might be lowered, 
 or, by continuous, emphatic, and dignified protest, be 
 eventually done away with ; but, as for this canker of the 
 play-house, assured were those old-time people that, did 
 it once find legalized place, the leaven of its sorcery 
 would so work in the community, that first a tolerating, 
 then an altogether favoring, public opinion would be 
 created, so that its ultimate dislodgment The {heatre curse 
 would be exceedingly improbable. Yes, ln Philadelphia. 
 it is here now, apparently more strongly entrenched, 
 growing year by year more corrupt and vile, while the 
 measure of the woe that it brings, who can fathom ? 
 
 * The Friends, in a corporate capacity, having several times unavailingly appealed to 
 John Penn. the Lieutenant. Governor, finally (1770) forwarded an earnest address to 
 Thomas and Richard Penn, the Proprietors. In it there occurs this reference confirma- 
 tory of the above statement: '* The pious and most considerate of other religious denom- 
 inations have, at times, for some years past, been repeatedly concerned to address the 
 Governors you have placed here against the strolling-players who have come to this 
 city." 
 
62 THE THEATRE. 
 
 Such large and continuous accessions to our popula- 
 tion come to us from Europe where (except in Great 
 Britain) the theatres in the cities are far more thronged 
 than are the church-edifices on the first day of the week 
 that, one after another, our American municipalities 
 are succumbing to this ensnaring custom which obtains 
 abroad. There may be instruction for us in taking a 
 look at the custom as prevalent on the Continent of Europe, 
 but I will instance only the city of Berlin, giving the 
 concurrent testimony of two witnesses which happens to 
 be at hand. One of these, an observant American resi- 
 dent, writes thus to Friends' Review* 
 Having shown how lightly esteemed is a 
 
 The theatre's at- 
 traction in Berlin. 
 
 day of rest and religious observance on the part of the 
 people generally for he estimates that only about 
 twenty-five thousand in a population of a million frequent 
 the places of worship he proceeds : 
 
 " The principal .streets and parks swarm with human 
 life. Picnic wagons, carriages, cabs, omnibuses, and horse- 
 cars are called into utmost use, especially in the after- 
 noon. Restaurants and beer gardens do their hand- 
 somest business. Puppet shows, comic plays, foolish 
 songs, and horse races satisfy how easily and miserably 
 satisfied ! the uncultured irreligious during the afternoon 
 upon the commons and sandy fields about the suburbs of 
 the imperial capital, while brilliantly lighted music con- 
 certs, balls, theatres, and operas invite the cultured irre- 
 ligious from the entertainment of friends with dinners 
 
 * No. 18, current volume. 
 
THE THEATRE. 63 
 
 and wines to closing pleasures of the great holiday 
 which day the comparatively few in this great [so-called] 
 Christian land feel themselves called of God to keep as a 
 holy day. The receptions of foreign ministers, diploma- 
 tists, and eminent personages at the Royal Court are the 
 commonest occurrences of [First-day] afternoons, and 
 State dinners and Ministerial consultations are by no 
 means infrequent. The Imperial capital is referred to, 
 but not exclusively ; for other cities and towns imitate 
 Berlin so far as they can in this respect. 
 
 " People who attend upon worship I know such well- 
 intended Christians think it perfectly consistent to spend 
 the evening at the opera or theatre. They have grown 
 up with the habit and desire of theatre-going, and many 
 of them have no scruple about practicing it on Sun- 
 day evening, and thus clearing their minds of any serious 
 impressions they may have gathered from the morning 
 worship. And unfortunately they can readily appeal for 
 defense to the example of * our good Emperor/ The 
 Emperor is a pious man, no doubt; most people think so. 
 He and his family usually set the good example of at- 
 tendance on worship at the Royal Cathedral, and he is 
 doubtless a devout worshiper of God.* But while he is at the 
 
 * Without desiring to unnecessarily except to the above writer's charitable opinion 
 of the Emperor's piety and I know it is the one commonly entertained I would yet 
 interpose here the plea of Isaiah, when hecried (iii, 12): " O my people! they which lead 
 tkeeczvist thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Reiterating the charge, he 
 says again (ix, 16 : "For the leaders of this people cause them to err ; and they that 
 ? re led of them are destroyed." The foremost political representative of Protestantism 
 in Germany, in thus habitually frequenting the play-house on that day of the week com- 
 monly set apart for rest and religious observance, contemns before all the people that 
 
64 THE THEATRE. 
 
 Royal Theatre or Royal Opera on Sunday evening, it 
 may be witnessing the best and purest play, or opera 
 which is, for any day, not exactly commendable would 
 that he could only remember that thousands of his subjects, 
 less informed, less cultured and even-tempered, less pious, 
 are attending the most disreputable theatres and circuses. 
 A great many of this poorer, illiterate class satisfy their 
 appetites and baser desires at beer and dancing halls on 
 this evening of the week, to the discomfort and grief of 
 better thinking, religious people." 
 
 The testimony of the other witness, an editor of the 
 Christian Index, accords with the foregoing, showing us 
 the undesirable goal to which our American cities are 
 tending to which, indeed, some of them seem to have 
 already attained. 
 
 11 While Sunday," says the narrator in giving his own 
 experience, " is partially observed until one o'clock, after 
 that the day is given up to business and every form of 
 worldly amusements and enjoyments. The stores are 
 thrown open, men go into the field to rake their hay, 
 visits are made and exchanged, beer saloons are crowded 
 with both sexes, who sit for hours sipping their favorite 
 beverage, while regaled with delightful music or amused 
 with comic plays or gymnastic performances by traveling 
 actors. Having surfeited themselves with eating and 
 drinking, the younger part of the assembly repair to the 
 
 unassailable rule for the guidince of Christians of whatever degree that they "live 
 soberly, righteously, and godly." Court-preacher Stocker is, himself, authority for the 
 statement that some parishes of one hundred and twenty thousand souls in the great 
 German capital have bat five pastors, and one of eighty thousand has only two. 
 
THE THEATRE. 65 
 
 ball-room and dance until the ' wee small hours ' of 
 Monday morn, then to a little repose before beginning the 
 labors of another day. So with some. Others attend 
 the theatre or opera, whose best pieces and best actors 
 are reserved for and presented on Sunday. And these 
 are attended by all classes and conditions of society, from 
 the highest to the lowest, prices being arranged to suit 
 each class and pocket. Here are found those who were 
 at church in the morning, even the preacher often in- 
 cluded. If a performance of unusual excellence is to 
 take place in an adjoining town or city, special trains are 
 run and crowds go to Meiningen, for example, where the 
 theatre is most celebrated. 
 
 " The Germans are a fun-loving people, and have 
 numerous ' fests ' or festivals, lasting usually three or 
 four days, sometimes two or three weeks, always includ- 
 ing a Sunday, which is set apart as a * big day.' This is 
 particularly true of the ' Schuetzen Fest ' (shooting feast). 
 A large plat of ground is owned or leased by the society 
 and rented out to be used for shops, beer saloons, circuses, 
 menageries, Punch and Judy exhibitions, merry-go- 
 rounds, and all kinds of shows. While these places are well 
 attended through the week, Sunday is the great day, 
 when visitors come from many miles around, and the 
 time is spent in indescribable hilarity and excitement. I 
 remember that the authorities at our Philadelphia Expo- 
 sition would not permit the doors to be opened on Sun- 
 day. At the great exposition at Nuremberg, lasting 
 several months, and the largest ever held in Germany, 
 
66 THE THEATRE. 
 
 Sunday was always the greatest day of all, when ' the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil, all seemed in league to 
 produce an effect which would far eclipse the gorgeous 
 trappery of Bunyan's ' Vanity Fair.' " 
 
 Respecting our American cities, we at the East are, 
 in the main, happily exempt from this wholesale misuse 
 of the day of rest, so far as the opening of the theatres is 
 concerned. In the West, however, where the infusion 
 of the German nationality is large, there appears to be a 
 rapid approach to (with too frequently an arrival at) the 
 undesirable European model. It is within the memory of 
 the writer that the city of New Orleans was spoken of as 
 possessing a bad pre-eminence in that it was the only 
 one in the Union where performances at the theatres on 
 the first day of the week were openly tolerated. A re- 
 cent writer in the New York Independent, who was a 
 resident in the former city for some years previous to 
 the breaking out of the late Civil War, testifies to the 
 same fact. 
 
 If one will merely glance at the " Amusements " por- 
 tion of a Western paper, such as that of the Chicago 
 Tribune (published every day of the week), he will find 
 whole columns filled with " Special Sunday advertise- 
 ments " similar to the following : One 
 theatre announces " The Lights of Lon- 
 
 "Sunday" theatre- 
 going in Chicago. 
 
 don," another promises "A Spectacular Melodrama," at 
 the Grand Opera House will be given an entertainment 
 by an " Opera Comique Company," at another place 
 an "orchestra of forty performers" may be heard, at 
 
THE THEATRE. 67 
 
 still another the Great Chicago Museum and Theatre 
 offers its varied attractions and so on. Then there are 
 the scores of still lower music halls and play-houses, 
 whether advertised or not, which will be found in full 
 blast. Hence, we need not seek to probe the repulsive 
 depths of wickedness which these together present, to be 
 assured that a city, so unmindful of the lesson of the 
 awful fire-scourge which desolated it but a few years ago, is 
 but heaping together an accumulation of iniquities which 
 invite a sorrowful requital in the day of the Lord's visita- 
 tion, when He shall make inquiry for the souls of those 
 whom the abominations of Baal shall have overcome. 
 
 If we turn next to the " Queen City of the West," we 
 observe the like manifestation of a spirit of religious in- 
 difference and of pleasure-seeking in the midst of trouble, 
 exemplified during the calamitous period of the floods of 
 this and of the preceding year. In vain do we look for 
 that general bewailment and humbling of self which pros- 
 trated Nineveh of old at the preaching of Jonah and caused 
 ! it to'turh, for the time at least, repentant to the Lord. One 
 of Cincinnati's papers, the Western Christian Advocate, writ- 
 ing last year soon after the occurrence of the destructive 
 flood of that season, said with respect 
 to the dramatic and musical dissipation 
 
 ti6S. 
 
 of its people that " during the last few 
 months there has been an extravagant, almost an insane, 
 expenditure for the gratification of this predilection. * * 
 But while all this is going on, there are hundreds of 
 families in this city who have been in a sad state of pov- 
 
 Cincinnati and the 
 lesson of its calami- 
 
68 THE THEATRE. 
 
 erty ever since the flood, and for whom it has been 
 extremely difficult to obtain proper food and clothing 
 and shelter. * * The Children's Home, that not 
 many years ago was the pet of the churches of the 
 city, has been lately somehow made the beneficiary of 
 a theatrical entertainment. * * The fact that now and 
 then the proceeds of an operatic or dramatic entertain- 
 ment are applied to a benevolent object does not, on the 
 whole, make things better. Real benevolence is not in- 
 creased ; and the confused notions upon the subject of 
 theatre-going which are induced by such gifts are obvi- 
 ously harmful to religion." Then, adverting to the 
 thousands of flourishing whisky, wine, and beer saloons 
 permitted in their midst, the article concludes " what a 
 spectacle all this to angels and men religion struggling 
 to lift up and purify ; worldliness and extravagance 
 seeking to consume wealth in selfish pleasures and ex- 
 cesses ; drunkenness abounding, and the dregs of hu- 
 manity blacker and more abundant." 
 
 Hence, whether one city or all cities, forgetful of God 
 and unreached and unrepentant in the midst of His many 
 mercies and mercifully directed judgments, be those 
 whose awful punishment and irrecoverable fall are held 
 up to us as that of the Babylon which John the Apostle 
 saw, there is withal sore need to be re-sounded and 
 needfully kept in view what was prophetically uttered 
 concerning the callous-hearted city, that, because " she 
 saith in her heart, ' I sit a queen, and am no widow, and 
 shall see no plagues/ therefore shall her p.agues come in 
 
THE THEATRE. 69 
 
 one day, death and mourning and famine ; and she shall 
 be utterly burned with fire ; for strong is the Lord God 
 whojudgeth her. * * And the voice of harpers and 
 musicians, and of pipers and trumpeters, shall be heard 
 no more at all in thee."* 
 
 Since the above was written, the great riot at Cincin- 
 nati, with its accompaniment of killing, maiming, and 
 burning, and the attempted release and threatened lynch- 
 ing of its "jailful of murderers," has taken place. Hav- 
 ing had occasion last autumn to tarry a First-day in that 
 city, I could not but notice the large number of open 
 shops, and especially the liquor saloons with wide-open 
 doors, many of them filled with young men and mere lads. 
 Taking into consideration, therefore, the existence of this 
 wholesale and unconcealed drinking habit, together with 
 the fact that the theatres and music halls of all kinds are 
 open every night of the week, while the Bible is banished 
 from the public schools, it was obvious to the writer that 
 the \* orkers of evil were being multiplied there to an ex- 
 tremely dangerous extent. In Cleveland, again, the pub- 
 lic school buildings are being used as dancing-halls, 
 where the pupils may learn the alluring art of dancing, 
 in place of the Bible, which has been expelled. 
 
 * The writer is very far from desiring to magnify the seriousness of the situation either 
 in the cities named or in any others. Remembering that, in all our commercial centres, 
 there are found those, and many of them, who are of " the salt of the earth," he would 
 adopt the language of that gentle-hearted spirit who wrote of London in the midst of 
 its abounding wickedness : 
 
 " Ten righteous would have saved a city once, 
 But thou hast manv righteous well for thee 
 That salt preserves thee. " 
 
70 THE THEATRE. 
 
 Now, it is recorded as a circumstance indicative of the 
 reckless forgetfulness of I leaven which marked the moral 
 condition of the French populace at the chaotic period of 
 the Reign of Terror, that they proclaimed, among other 
 liberties, that of the theatre ; so that there were soon no 
 less than five and twenty play-houses open in the city of 
 Paris alone, where before there had been but six. It is a 
 historical truth that in times of war, when men's passions 
 are most stirred, and in the years immediately succeeding 
 a war, when the wave of resultant demoralization is at its 
 flood, that the play-houses in the cities are to an excep- 
 tional extent thronged. 
 
 So I think we may safely deduce from this fact that 
 the play-houses are not at those times (or indeed at any 
 time) frequented as schools wherein to witness and to be 
 improved by the characterization of virtue, and that the 
 theatre may not be thence commended as a morally safe 
 
 Seriousness of the P lace f reSOrt for th Se who make P rc - 
 
 present situation. f ess ion of the Christian name. But that 
 which gives occasion for very serious present reflection 
 is, that in this time of profound peace throughout the 
 country, and of numberless blessings showered upon us 
 from the Almighty's hand, the play-houses should be 
 looked upon with far more tolerance than in the period of 
 the Puritan Commonwealth or the early American Repub- 
 lic, while at the same time they are probably (upon the 
 average) as low in character and proportionally as great 
 in number as they were in Paris when that city was 
 under the sway of the God-denying, blood-seeking, and 
 depraved leaders of the French Revolution. 
 
THE THEATRE. 71 
 
 Perhaps there may be no more fitting place than just 
 here to refer to that misapplication of the virtue of hospi- 
 tality, which under its name and cover permits church- 
 professing men to take their guests to the theatre. A 
 Buddha- worshiping dignitary from Japan or China comes 
 to our shores, and for an evening's entertainment is taken 
 to a play, which must give him a very low conception of 
 what our Christianity permits. A blanket Indian from 
 the plains, whose children are being taught the " better 
 religion" at an agency school, or perhaps at Carlisle, is 
 marched to a variety theatre, where he is similarly im- 
 pressed by our civilization and social corruption. As to 
 the display of civic hospitality among our own people, a 
 military organization or Masonic lodge visits a distant city, 
 and all in a body, as an essential part of the programme 
 of good fellowship, are led to witness scenes upon the 
 stage which they would be ashamed to introduce to their 
 families at home. Is there aught of the grace of hospi- 
 tality in thus manifesting the work of the devil ? I 
 remember being painfully impressed with this thought 
 when, several years ago, a military company of young 
 men from a Southern city came on to New York, and 
 were taken by their hosts to theatres where notoriously 
 immoral plays were enacted. 
 
 I have felt ever since that I would like to appeal to the 
 parents, wives, and sisters of those visiting Atlanta young 
 men, and perhaps through this medium it may reach them 
 even now. And yet while I write sincerity obliges me 
 to admit, that there is a large field for the exercise of 
 
72 THE THEATRE. 
 
 solicitude and fraternal appeal right in my own city ; 
 for, in an item of last month which is before me, I read 
 how a junior cricket club of Philadelphia about two 
 dozen lads of from ten to eighteen years of age visited 
 a similar junior club of New York; how on the evening 
 of the day of arrival they " went to the theatre in a 
 body;" how they played their cricket match the following 
 day, and " again visited a metropolitan theatre together." 
 I come now to the last (and generally little considered) 
 division of my subject, it being of the nature of an in- 
 quiry as to how far the professing 
 Church may be responsible for the fos- 
 tering and present prevalence of the theatre and theatri- 
 cal entertainments. 
 
 It appears to have been in the thirteenth century that 
 the external part of religious worship was loaded down 
 with many additions, intended by their outward splendor 
 and magnificence to completely overawe the multitude. 
 " Now it was," says a late writer, " that the stage was 
 pressed into the service of the Church, and the mys- 
 teries and moralities were written and placed therein, 
 illustrating by scenic action sacred subjects." These 
 miracle plays, mysteries, and interludes were, as has been 
 mentioned before, the first theatrical per- 
 formances in the Middle Ages, and 
 
 Responsibility of 
 the professing 
 Church. 
 
 Stage "mysteries" 
 Of the Middle Ages. 
 
 marked the origin of the modern European stage. They 
 were usually given in convents, colleges, and church edi- 
 fices, or in the halls of the nobility. Of these " mysteries" 
 of the Middle Ages, Hannah More remarks: "Events too 
 
THE THEATRE. 73 
 
 solemn for exhibition and too awful for detail were 
 brought before the audience with a gravity more offen- 
 sive than levity itself." 
 
 From the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries many 
 were the protests against these and other moral abuses 
 accompanying the Papal rule, but now again in this nine- 
 teenth century of the Christian era, when it would seem as 
 though the spiritual ought to keep pace with material 
 enlightenment, the professing Church is nevertheless 
 making alarming approaches in the direction of ritualism, 
 sacerdotalism, and ceremonialism. As Howard Crosby 
 with much plainness, yet very truthfully, says : 
 
 "The Church of God is to-day courting the world. 
 Its members are trying to bring it down to the level of 
 the ungodly. The ball, the theatre, nude and lewd art, 
 social luxuries with all their loose moralities, are making 
 inroads into the sacred inclosure of the Church, and, as 
 a satisfaction for all this worldliness, Christians are 
 making a great deal of Lent and Easter and Good Friday 
 and church ornamentation. It is the old trick of Satan. 
 The Jewish Church struck on that rock ; the Roman 
 Church was wrecked on the same, and the Protestant 
 Church is fast reaching the like doom." 
 
 Upon this theme of " church ornamentation " that 
 gifted writer of religious poetry, the late Frances R. 
 Havergal, wrote thoughtfully and discriminatingly, not 
 long before her death, in treating of the matter of 
 " Christmas Decorations." Her opinion hereupon is 
 certainly entitled to serious attention, especially as pro- 
 
74 THE THEATRE. 
 
 ceeding from one who, with such a love for harmonic 
 measures in language, might have been thought likely 
 to look with an indulgent eye upon the grace of floral 
 decoration even in church edifices. With the hope that 
 her clear expression upon this subject 
 
 may be heeded in a direction where out- 
 
 F. R. Havergal on 
 church ornamenta- 
 tion 
 
 ward show, not to say " stage effects," 
 have been making rapid strides during recent years, I 
 quote the following passage : 
 
 " The experience of every honest conscience shows 
 that when we, who naturally love all that is beautiful^ 
 enter a church [building] beautifully decorated, the temp- 
 tation to wandering eyes and thoughts is just in propor- 
 tion to the exquisiteness and elaborateness of the decora- 
 tions. We have come to seek Jesus, to find the Shepherd 
 * by the footsteps of the flock ;' we want to commune 
 with Him, and we want Him to speak to our hearts ; we 
 want to be freshly and specially ' looking unto Jesus' in 
 all the meaning of that word, looking away from all else, 
 looking unto Him ; and at once our eye is caught by an 
 elegant festoon, and a singularly effective twining of a 
 pillar or picking out of a moulding, and a novel arrange- 
 ment of the panels of the pulpit. It is all lovely, much 
 prettier than last year, the general effect is so good, and 
 so on. And suddenly we remember what we came for, 
 and we make a great effort to turn away our eyes and 
 fix them on 'Jesus only;' but somehow the electric 
 chain has been severed, the ' other things ' have entered 
 in ; and when we again look up, to meet the smile of the 
 
THE THEATRE. 75 
 
 1 Prince of Peace/ we find there has been ' something be- 
 tween,' our eyes have involuntarily turned away from the 
 ' King in His beauty' to the passing prettiness of garland 
 and wreath. What have we not lost?" 
 
 Although the tendency of the times is toward the le- 
 gally setting apart as public holidays those days 
 which certain religious denominations have habitually 
 observed in commemoration of the birth, death, and 
 resurrection of the Son of God, yet the result of this au- 
 thorization has been (at least in all the cities) to so mark- 
 edly crowd the theatres and all pleasure resorts, and so 
 to give opportunity for indulgence in riotous conduct and 
 licentious revelry, that many have reached the conclusion 
 that the enactment of these public holidays was unwise. 
 
 Holy-days occa- 
 sions for excess. 
 
 One quotation from a Baptist paper of a 
 year or two since will serve for much 
 which might be adduced to show that these so-called 
 "holy-days " are made the occasions for hilarious ex- 
 cesses, which are notably on the increase, and which 
 really make them, as estimated by their results, the most 
 2/;/holy of all the days of the year. 
 
 " Our own city [Atlanta] was disgraced in a deplorable 
 manner. We hope never to be forced to see the like 
 again. Crowds of men and boys, white and black, surged 
 through the streets and obstructed the sidewalks, drink- 
 ing, swaggering, cursing, and blackguarding each other, 
 flourishing pistols, firing them in utter disregard of the 
 danger to life and limb, and otherwise indulging in acts 
 of depravity and beastliness. One or two persons were 
 
76 THE THEATRE. 
 
 murdered or mortally wounded, desperate rencontres took 
 place, many were bruised, and the few arrests that could 
 be made under this condition of affairs sufficed to fill the 
 police station until cells and corridors could hold no 
 more. The pistol, knife, club, and whisky- bottle ap- 
 peared to be the controlling factors of our communal 
 system. A day theoretically supposed to be devoted to 
 the Christian rites of peace and love and good-will, 
 and consecrated to the advent on earth of the Son of 
 God, the blessed Redeemer of the world, was turned into 
 a Saturnalia, made foul with the slime of orgies, and 
 blackened with the records of atrocious crimes." 
 
 But, it may be objected, all this iniquity is merely inci- 
 dental to those days, and ought not to be charged upon 
 the professing Church. Without conceding this, let us 
 turn from the gross and forbidding picture, and consider 
 whether the mantle of the Christian religion is not thrown 
 over practices which, if seemingly more refined than 
 those just brought to view, are yet of so insidious a nature 
 that their influence is altogether in opposition to true, 
 spiritual religion. 
 
 It cannot now be consistently claimed in many quarters 
 that the end sought in associating together as religious 
 congregations is simply the worship of God and the " com- 
 munion of saints." The Church must provide entertain- 
 ment as well. Now, from the church 
 
 Church theatricals. r 
 
 fair, oyster supper, and strawberry festi- 
 val, to amateur operatics and the stage, the step has 
 been proven to be not a long one. Thus, the first annual 
 
THE THEATRE. 77 
 
 report of a church " guild" sets forth "that during the past 
 year six entertainments were given at the club-house, a 
 series of tableaux in parish school building, and a theat- 
 rical entertainment at the Amateur Drawing Room. These 
 entertainments increased the membership of the club and 
 will be continued during the present year." 
 
 Again, we find pool and billiard tables, etc., provided 
 for clubs of workingrnen under the care of churches, and 
 series of public games between the clubs announced 
 with theatricals following. At Saratoga, early in the 
 year, a fancy dress ball for the benefit of a " Rectory 
 Fund " was given, followed by a grand banquet at mid- 
 night, and (according to a secular paper) the resuming 
 of the dancing thereafter and its continuation until a late 
 hour. The Guide to Holiness, upon this matter of " stand- 
 ing in the mixture," aptly says : 
 
 " The discovery has been made that the Church, in order 
 to hold its young people to its altars, must provide for the 
 natural craving for amusement. It used to be held that 
 Jesus and His work furnished ample resources to meet 
 the loftiest aspirations of a saved soul. * * The holidays 
 furnish occasion for the ingenious and progressive sons 
 and daughters of Zioti to make full proof of their new 
 vocation. They are now busy preparing dramas, come- 
 dies, farces, suppers, fairs, and entertainments of every 
 conceivable sort They are spending ' their wretched 
 strength for naught.' So far from preventing attendance 
 upon a full-grown theatre and opera by these efforts, they 
 are whetting the appetite of the people therefor. * * It 
 
"7S THE THEATRE. 
 
 is eating out the life of the Church it is destroying our 
 young people, rendering them unfit for all true spiritual 
 exercise. Give your money liberally for every laudable 
 Church object but stand aloof, positively, in the holidays 
 and evermore, from the unholy festivals." 
 
 Without desiring to unduly pursue this concluding 
 portion of my topic, I believe it is nevertheless of the 
 first importance that it be clearly shown wherein the pro- 
 fessing Church, in this matter, obstructs and stumbles. 
 No reversal of the popular estimate of, and attendance 
 upon, the play-house, need be looked for while the 
 Church, with mistaken charity and complaisance, casts 
 its mantle over levity and folly, instead of pointing the 
 way of light and holiness. 
 
 The views which have been just declared upon the 
 subject of entertainment and amusement-hunting by 
 and on behalf of the (outward) Church are convincingly 
 and at length set forth in a pamphlet of 61 pages lately 
 issued by the Presbyterian Board of Publication.* The 
 opinion is therein expressed (corroborating what has 
 been said before) that the Church is now rather regarded 
 as a convenient medium of social intercourse and social 
 pleasures than as an educator of the religious affections, 
 the author quoting in support of this view from an essay 
 /which has elicited considerable remark) upon " Certain 
 Dangerous Tendencies of American Life" (Boston, i88o\ 
 " The Church," according to the essayist, " is now for the 
 
 * The Sociable, the Entertainment, and the Bazar. By Alfred E. Myers, Pastor of the 
 Presbyterian Church of Ovvasco, N. Y. 
 
THE THEATRE. 79 
 
 most part a depository of social rather than religious in- 
 fluences. Its chief force or vitality is no longer religious. 
 * * * p or a very large class the Church furnishes 
 opportunity for a pleasant social life, which is in no way 
 different from the social life of amiable, intelligent people 
 out of the Church : that there is nothing distinctively re- 
 ligious about it."* 
 
 It should be premised that the Presbyterian writer is 
 solicitous not to be understood as in .any wise discour- 
 aging the commingling of those comprising a congrega- 
 tion in any right way. Indeed, there are few things 
 more helpful to the young who yearn for a better life than 
 the life they may have previously led, than the chaste yet 
 cheerful conversation of the spiritually dignified and dedi- 
 cated servants of the Lord, who give evidence that they 
 look for a " city which hath foundations, whose builder 
 and maker is God." 
 
 Having pointed out that a first result of the Church 
 " sociable " is, that instead of social distinctions with their 
 attractions and repulsions being submerged, it causes 
 them to "rise into a conspicuousness " which they 
 would not otherwise possess ; that " the 
 sociable not only does not help the spir- 
 
 itual growth of the Church, but by a fac- 
 
 titious bustle and stir diverts attention from spiritual de- 
 
 ficiencies," he next proceeds to show how the sociable 
 
 The Church socj . 
 
 * The Illustrated Christian Weekly tersely defines the distinction when it say^ : 
 "Christian workers find the social spirit active and strong among them, but it comes 
 as an incident, not as the end of their practical fellowship." 
 
80 THE THEATRE. 
 
 commonly merges into the entertainment, merry-making, 
 and feast, all showing a forsaking of the simple, apostoli- 
 cal Church economy. Now, the entertainment appears 
 to have become possible through a reversal of the Scrip- 
 ture prerogative of those who should be as " nursing 
 fathers and mothers," these, instead of leading the flock, 
 satisfying themselves with the thought that as religion 
 should be made palatable to the young it is expedient to 
 push them to tl)e front in all activities, especially in 
 amusements. Of numerous instances cited by the author, 
 it v/ill suffice to quote the following : 
 
 " A church which has recently received a number of 
 young people into active membership is the scene of a 
 humorous entertainment. A stage is laid over the pulpit 
 platform and over the place lately occupied by the com- 
 munion-table, and there the young converts, with others, 
 are encouraged to perform for the benefit of the church. 
 At another entertainment a group of young gentlemen go 
 through the form of selling at auction a young lady to 
 the highest bidder. At another of these diversions, be- 
 fore people of education and refined taste, a professional 
 musician renders a roystering bacchanalian song with 
 startling energy. Clergymen and their wives figure in 
 costume as George Washington and Martha Washington. 
 
 One minister reads humorous selections; 
 
 another sings comic songs ; others make 
 
 The Church walk- 
 ing with the world. 
 
 droll speeches. The pulpit is sometimes removed, and 
 Santa Claus and his chimney occupy the platform. Again, 
 in just such a position, along with other attractions, we 
 
THE THEATRE. 8 I 
 
 have an organ-grinder, with a wealthy middle-aged citi- 
 zen sustaining the dignified role of the monkey passing the 
 hat for pennies. The superintendent of a Sunday-school, 
 chalked and painted, poses as an ancient king, and teachers 
 amuse the audience with a semblance of stage embraces. 
 Under the auspices of a Sunday-school a college glee- 
 club provokes great merriment by its bold allusions to 
 the truths which, in the school, are taught as tremendous 
 verities. In the * Old Folks' Concert ' solemn hymns and 
 revered tunes are sung in a drawling style to raise a 
 laugh." At an " exhibition in the lecture-room of a 
 prominent church * * a worthy gentleman of remark- 
 able sobriety of deportment and visage, and excellent in 
 the prayer-meeting, played ' the sneezer/ and another 
 Christian gentleman feigned intoxication, with his fair 
 and temperate face smeared with red blotches to assist 
 the illusion." All these things, be it said, for the cause 
 (so claimed) of Christ, yet all so demoralizing in their 
 tendency, and withal so revolting to reasoning minds, 
 that only the obligation of a required duty can be excuse 
 for their presentation here. I refrain from taking up the 
 cognate subject of the Bazar, with its trivial and mis- 
 chievous accompaniments, supplying the place thereof 
 with these apt lines of the author of " The Church Walk- 
 ing with the World," 
 
 " And fairs and shows in the halls were held, 
 And the world and her children were there. 
 And laughter and music and feasts prevailed 
 In the place that was meant for prayer." 
 
82 THE THEATRE. 
 
 r Without controversy, these things can only operate to 
 deaden the spiritual life of the participants, and, in the 
 case of those who exhibit an aptitude for smartly per- 
 forming their parts, to draw them really to the stage as 
 actors and actresses. Instances of such a result are not 
 rare. It must hence be apparent that, so far from fes- 
 tivities and entertainments preserving 
 
 the younger members of the Church 
 
 Deadening effects 
 of these entertain- 
 ments. r . 
 
 from the contaminations of the world, 
 there will rather happen, as the writer from whom I have 
 quoted concludes " a graduation from the church 
 drama to the better-appointed and better-acted drama of 
 the theatre, and from the somewhat tame evening enter- 
 tainment in the church-parlor to the ball which is not 
 held in the interest of the church." 
 
 The problem, therefore, seems naturally to narrow 
 itself down to this: that if avowed Christians of" respec- 
 tability" would have the vile variety theatres of the 
 poorer classes removed from our cities, such persons can- 
 not consistently give countenance to the play-houses 
 of the so-styled " better sort ;" and if they would have the 
 low music-halls, with their tawdry and lewd accessories 
 abolished, they, on their part, should have naught to do 
 with the elegant opera, its alluring ballet and unsavory 
 plot. As discerned by the Apostle Peter, " the time is 
 come that judgment must begin at the house of God," 
 and this discernment and resultant separation (it may be 
 added) should additionally extend to the picture and art 
 galleries, the highly spiced drawing-room fiction, the 
 
The problem 
 briefly stated. 
 
 THE THEATRE. 83 
 
 private wine-cellars and billiard rooms, the stock jobbing, 
 etc., of the well-to-do and presumably respectable pro- 
 fessed Christians, if any headway is to be 
 made against the common drinking 
 and gambling habits, and the cheap, demoralizing litera- 
 ture of the day. It is not evident to the writer how any 
 other conclusion is to be arrived at, and, with this per- 
 suasion before him, he would ask attention to the 
 thoughtful words of three widely separated, but coin- 
 ciding witnesses, touching the matter of holy fidelity : 
 
 " To do all our duty," says the late Charles G. Finney, 
 " we must rebuke sin in high places. Can this be done 
 with all needed severity without, in many cases, giving 
 offense and incurring the charge of censoriousness ? No ; 
 it is impossible and to maintain the contrary would be 
 to impeach the wisdom and holiness of Jesus Christ.'* 
 
 " The law of the spiritual life," says a late writer in the 
 Independent, " is separation. God's people first separated 
 from the dead religious world at Jerusalem. The testi- 
 mony of the early Church was one of 
 life for a world to come. It gathered 
 both its testimony and its life about a risen Christ. It 
 did not study to make peace with the world or how to 
 adjust itself to its surroundings, but it steadily testified 
 against it, and called upon the people of God to break 
 with it." 
 
 Finally, to quote one who appears to be a clergyman 
 of the English Established Church, the author of the 
 brochure, " Modern Christianity a Civilized Heathenism," 
 
 Three witnesses to 
 holy fidelity. 
 
84 THE THEATRE. 
 
 "Until the world/' he says, "is wholly converted, 
 which nobody yet pretends, His [Christ's] people must 
 ever wage with it a deadly war. There can be no peace 
 between two such armies as the soldiers of Christ and the 
 servants of the devil. His disciples must fight as their 
 Captain fought, making themselves [if need be] an 
 offense, a nuisance, an abhorrence to every man who is 
 not, like them, an open confessor of His name." 
 
 Therefore, in dealing with theatrical entertainments 
 and similar stumbling devices within the pale of the pro- 
 fessing Church, as also with the theatre itself, and all 
 that is allied to it, in society and the world, it may be 
 morally profitable for those concerned to bear in mind 
 the uncompromising example set by the Master in cleans- 
 ing the Temple of that which defiled it. In Christ we see 
 infinite compassion, even unto death, for sinners, but not 
 a moment's parley with sin. Instructive, and of good 
 warrant, likewise, for our guidance, is the narrative of the 
 crafty procedure of Zion's active enemy, Tobiah the Am- 
 monite, who, in the absence of Nehemiah, the Governor, 
 so far overcame with his guile even the High Priest him- 
 self as to have plausibly persuaded the 
 
 latter to prepare him " a chamber in the 
 
 Two examples to 
 follow in dealing with 
 
 courts of the house of God." No doubt 
 Tobiah was a man of polished speech, who could min- 
 ister abundant entertainment to his hearers, yet when 
 Nehemiah heard of the evil that had been done how 
 like an odious barnacle, the world, in the person of 
 the Ammonite, had fastened itself upon the very 
 
THE THEATRE. 85 
 
 house of God it " grieved " him " sore/' insomuch that 
 he summarily *' cast forth all the household stuff of 
 Tobiah out of the chamber/' Would that all magis- 
 trates and others in authority who have to deal with 
 theatres and theatrical entertainments might emulate the 
 godly zeal (according to knowledge) of Nehemiah, the 
 righteous Governor. 
 
 In concluding this essay, perhaps I can do no better 
 than to revive the language of the Address issued by 
 Frankford Monthly Meeting of Friends to its members 
 (1880), wherein it is said : 
 
 " In much tenderness we beseech you, dear young 
 people of every class, to bring this whole question of 
 amusement and recreation to your loving Saviour. With 
 His teachings, as set forth in the New 
 Testament, before you, and by the light 
 of His grace in your hearts, pray for wisdom and 
 strength, and you will be given clearly to see what it is 
 and who they are that are truly serving God, and what 
 and who are serving Him not ; what will make for your 
 own soul's peace, and what will hinder it ; and wherein 
 your true safety lies." 
 
 A safe conclusion 
 recommended. 
 
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