involved in
this question of amusements, a principle of far greater importance than
many are willing to admit; and to which, if the Christian thought of this
age do not take more pains to define it and act upon it, the eyes of the
church will be most painfully opened by and by. There is a question here
involving not only the enjoyments, but to a great extent the moral welfare
of our youth. The young will have amusements, and the question is whether
the devil or the church shall furnish them. Whether home, or the ball
room, and drinking saloon, and gambling house shall be the more
attractive. Whether Christians will resolutely take up good and noble
amusements, and give them to youth purged of their evil,--or whether they
shall let them remain girt with all their allurements, yet more widely
separated from good, and gathering yearly to themselves new elements and
associations of evil. Very probably the world, and much of the church will
assail the Christian who, in this view of the subject oversteps the line
of received opinion, with a cry of inconsistency. But remember that the
world judges the church out of its own mouth, independently of the real
merits of the case; and requires that it be consistent, not with _their_
views, but with its own as publicly expressed. Yet sometimes it is better
to be _right_ than even to be _consistent_; and if the church has with all
sincerity, yet with mistaken zeal, fostered a false sentiment on any
subject, do not Christians who discern the error owe to society the
benefit of their clearer light? Have they a right to withhold it for fear
society should turn on them and call them inconsistent? One would think
from a sentiment like this that the gospel process was to be reversed.
That not the Christian is to leaven the world, but the world the
Christian. Christian sentiment is not to wait for popular sentiment. It
claims to be in advance of it. It is to Christians and not to the world
that the promise is given, "_Ye shall know the truth_;" and Christian
thought, so far from waiting for the movement of these ever shifting
popular tides, is the luminary which God has set high in the darkness of
this world's sin to draw the tides in his appointed channels. The
practical value of truth like that of money, consists in its circulation.
It is worth nothing hoarded up or used secretly. If it is ever to be worth
anything in correcting false impressions which society may have formed of
Christian t