he service of Christ.

Here, as you renew your original vow to come out from the world, it is
well that you do this with no vague idea of what you promise. What I shall
now say applies to most if not all of you, but especially to the younger
members of the church. As you enter upon a season of special religious
activity, you also enter upon a season which society is wont to devote
largely to pleasure. Ere another communion season shall have come round,
the season for evening entertainments and festal gatherings, will be at
its height. From the nature of circumstances you will be called upon to
participate in these more or less; and it is at these points that the
temptation to conformity to the world will be most likely to assail you.

Most of you are probably aware of the ground I have recently taken before
the public on the subject of amusements; a position which has excited
considerable comment, and some censure. I do not see why it should. There
is nothing novel in my views on this subject. I have merely stated the
gospel principle, the principle which Christ propounded, and by which he
lived--that the proper and only way to preserve our pleasures or anything
else from abuse, is to put Christian leaven into them. That our duty in
such matters, is not to give them over bodily to the devil and to the
world, to be abused and perverted at their pleasure; but to save them from
such perversion, and make them legitimate instruments of Christian joy and
growth, by using them in the name and under the law of Christ. If these
things are evil, we have no right to have anything to do with them. If
they are, though not evil in themselves, so under the dominion of evil,
and so dependent upon evil for support, as the theatre, for example, is,
that Christian participation cannot separate them from their abuses, we
ought to abandon them. But as to the general principle, that it is abuse
and not proper use which Christ condemns, and that many of the things
which the devil has usurped, are as much yours as his, there can be no
doubt. I have not one word to modify or retract of what I have written on
this subject. Challenged, I would reiterate it word for word, if I knew I
should go from this pulpit to my grave. And I dare any Christian to draw
from what I have written, or from what I have said to-day, license for
improper conformity to the world. If you do so, depend on it, _you_ and
not _I_ will be condemned. And I rejoice especially t