or some which are most sternly condemned, and
participate in them most heartily.

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

And this too, not on the part of the careless, and pleasure loving, and
half-hearted members of churches, but of men and women high in position in
the church; persons of liberal culture and unquestionable piety. These
persons, as well qualified to understand the teachings of God's word on
this subject as any of the clergy, are asserting their right to act out
their own conscientious convictions in their amusements: claiming that
they owe to the resolutions of synods, and conventions and conferences, no
more than candid and respectful consideration, maintaining the privilege
of adopting or rejecting them at pleasure; and accordingly they are
throwing open their homes to certain banned amusements, very much to the
enhancement of home attractions; very much to the detriment of the
saloons; very much to the increase of their children's attachment to home.
Church legislation on this subject has been a humiliating failure. It has
not compassed its intent. Nay, more, it has over-reached itself. It has
kept noble and intelligent youth out of the church by insisting on their
relinquishment of certain amusements, in the proper and moderate use of
which they were unable to see evil. It has tended by this insistence to
foster that t