Three clubs of young men, or boys rather, were broken up soon after the new rooms were opened. I do not know their character fully, but have been told that drinking was practiced at their meetings. They now frequent the rooms of the society, and pay over into its treasury their club subscriptions. There are many more of such cases. They speak with trumpet tongues as to the value of this policy. They show that its practical influence is against the groggery and the gambling saloon, and if it work no other result, that of itself is vindication enough.
And now I leave the subject. I do not shrink from the application of this Bible principle to our amusements. The other, the separative policy, the keeping of leaven and lump apart, has been tried, and has failed, utterly failed.
Will it not be well to try another policy? I want for our youth a Christianity that shall not relax one iota of its obligation to God or to man. That shall not bate one jot from an entire consecration of heart and life to God; that shall walk closely with God, and feel as deeply as human weakness can feel, the necessity of watchfulness and of divine care to keep it from temptation. I challenge any man to draw undue license from the principles I have asserted. But I want more joy brought out of the world by Christians. I want the gospel carried boldly into some things from which it has been kept aloof. I want Christian life to be in the spirit more than in the letter. I do not plead for less but for more conformity to the spirit and teaching of Christ. Not for a lower but for a higher Christian life; for a wider application of gospel principles, a more implicit trust in the leavening power of truth; a more practical belief in the assertion that the weapons of our warfare are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. I want Christian [pg 049] conscience clothed with principles and not with dogmas. I want the word of God read and interpreted fairly, and that allowed which it allows. I protest against its being twisted and perverted into rules for the unnecessary abridgment of Christian liberty, where it lays down only general principles for the conscience. I want less of the religion that is
“Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,”
and more of that which is full of child-like trust in the love of God and the power of truth, and of freedom purged by love from license.