our youth are attracted to them only
by their native depravity; but see if there be not some goodness, some
beauty, some intellectual stimulus which renders them so fascinating. If
they need regulating, surely Christian wisdom can regulate them if
anything. If any can use them safely, it is Christians who are taught by
Divine grace to use this world as not abusing it, and not those who are
swayed by impulse and love of pleasure only. But the church does not
regulate them, and she never will or can regulate them on the old theory
of separation. Never, so long as she persists in wholesale denunciations
which she can sustain neither by scripture nor by logic, and against which
the common sense of the educated and thoughtful rebels. A more liberal
policy in the past, a juster appreciation of the gospel teachings on this
subject, would not only have done much towards separating amusements from
their abuses, but would have saved her from her present humiliating
attitude as the declared enemy of many forms of amusement, from
participation in which she has no power to restrain her members.

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

For, let me be clearly understood, I do not lay down this general
principle without recognizing the existence of practical limitations to
its action, though I assert that the fixing of these