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 epistle of righteousness and peace, read and believed and honored by all men.
"Some time ago a gentleman teaching a large class of young men in a Chicago Sunday-school, desired to attend a theater for the purpose of seeing a celebrated actor. He was not a theater-goer, and thought that no harm could come from it. He had no sooner taken his seat, however, than he saw in the opposite gallery some of the members of his class. They also saw him and began commenting on the fact that their teacher was at the theater. They thought it inconsistent in him, lost their interest in the class, and he lost his influence over the young men. That teacher tied his hands by this one act, so that he could not speak out against the gross sins of the theater."
Those who defend theater-going say that if Christian people would patronize the theater that it would be made more respectable. But over a thousand years of history proves that this principle fails here as it does elsewhere. A Christian woman marries an unchristian man with the hope that he will become a Christian; a steady, sensible woman in all other matters marries a man who drinks, with the thought of reforming him; one associates with worldly and sensual companions, expecting to make them better; but, alas, what blasted hopes, what wretched failures in all of these instances, at least in the most of them! You can not reform vice; you may whitewash a sin, but it will be sin, still. To purify a character or an institution one must not become a part of it by sympathy, nor by association. This is what the psalmist meant when he said, "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsels of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful." And so it is, that every effort at reforming the theater, thus far has failed. The Rev. C.W. Winchester says concerning the reforming of the theater: "The facts are, (1) that the theater in this city and country never had the support and encouragement of moral and religious people it has now; (2) that the theater here was never so bad. Clearly, if Christian patronage is going to reform the theater, the reform ought to begin. But the grade is downward. The theater is growing worse and worse." Dr. Wilkinson makes this statement on the question of reforming the theater: "Now the Protestant Christians of New York number, by recent computation, less than seventy-five thousand souls, in a population of a million. Supposing a general agreement among them all that a regular attendance at the theater was at this juncture the most pressing and most promising method of evangelical effort, they would not then constitute even one-tenth of the numerical patronage which the management would study to please." Dr. Herrick Johnson says: "The ideal stage is out of the question. It is out of the question just as pure, chaste, human nudity is out of the question..The nature of theatrical performances, the essential demands of the stage, the character of the plays, and the constitution of human nature, make it impossible that the theater should exist, save under a law of degeneracy. Its trend is downward; its centuries of history tell just this one story. The actual stage of to-day..is a moral abomination. In Chicago, at least, it is trampling on the Sabbath with defiant scoff. It is defiling our youth. It is making crowds familiar with the play of criminal passions. It is exhibiting women with such approaches to nakedness as can have no other design than to breed lust behind the onlooking eyes. It is furnishing candidates for the brothel. It is getting us used to scenes that rival the voluptuousness and licentious ages of the past." As never before to-day, has the theater asked for the support of Church members. And the ideal stage, with virtuous performers, and with pure dramas, are held up as a sample of what Christian people are invited to attend. Dr. Cuyler says: "Every person of common sense knows that the actual average theater is no more an ideal playhouse than the average pope is like St. Peter, or the average politician is like Abraham Lincoln. A Puritanic theater would become bankrupt in a twelvemonth. The great mass of those who frequent the playhouse go there for strong, passionate excitements..I do not affirm," says Dr. Cuyler, "that every popular play is immoral, and every attendant is on a scent for sensualities. But the theater is a concrete institution, it must be judged in the gross and to a tremendous extent it is only a gilded nastiness. It unsexes womanhood by putting her publicly in male attire—too often in no attire at all."
"So competent an authority as the famous actress, Olga Nethersole, recently declared that the only kind of play which may hope for success with English-speaking audiences at the present day is the play which is sufficiently indicated by calling it immoral. There is no doubt about it that the theater, as at present conducted, is pulling the stones from the foundations of public morality, and weakening, and in many quarters endangering, the whole structure of society. The atmosphere of the modern theater is lustful and irreverent. It is a good place for Christians to keep away from. It is a good opportunity for the strong man to deny himself for the sake of his younger or weaker brother."
PART II. WORTHY SUBSTITUTES.
"Get the spindle and thy distaff ready, and God will send
thee flax."