not have been countenanced..The moral and
spiritual life of many a Christian has been weakened by the eyes gazing
upon the scenes of the theater." Says he, "The Christian, through
attendance upon the playhouse, creates a relish for worldly things, and
so spiritual things become distasteful."

Then, to go to one theater, sanctions all. To have heard and to have
seen Joe Jefferson in "Rip Van Winkle," Richard Mansfield in "The
Merchant of Venice," or Edwin Booth or Sir Henry Irving, or Maude Adams,
or Julia Marlowe in their best plays, is to have received a deeper
insight into human nature, and a stronger purpose to become sympathetic
and true, but who can afford to sanction all that is base and villainous
is the institution of the modern theater for the sake of learning
sympathy and truth and human nature from a few worthy actors, when he
may find all of this as truthfully, if not as artistically, set forth
by the orator, by the musician, by the painter, and by the author? It is
not cant, it is not pharisaism, it is not a weak claim of Christianity,
but it is common honesty, mighty truth, a cardinal and beautiful
teaching of Jesus Christ to deny one's self for the welfare of the
weaker brother. Let one go to hear Mansfield in Shakespeare, and his
neighbor boy will take his friend and go to the vaudeville, and his only
excuse to his parents and to his half-taught mind and heart will be,
"Well, Mr. So-and-So goes to the theater, he is a member of the Church
and superintendent of the Sunday-school; surely there is no harm for
me to go." To the immature mind what seems right for one person seems
lawful for another. This is because such a person has not learned to
discriminate between what is bad and what is good. Therefore, if the
theater as an institution has more in it that is bad than It has in
it that is good, rather if the general tendency of the theater, as an
institution, is bad, the safe thing for one's self and for those who
read one's life as an example, is to discard it entirely.

In view of these facts, no person can attend the theater at all without
hurting his influence. The ideal life is that one which gives offense
of stumbling to no one. A successful preacher who had an aversion toward
speaking on the subject of questionable amusements, when asked what he
believed concerning a certain form of amusement, replied: "See what I
do, and know what I believe." It is a glorious life whose actions are an
open epist