The Perils of the Playhouse

Younc people often ask me the questions, ‘‘Would it be right for me to go to the theatre? If not, then why not?”’

Those who propound these questions are not of the dissipated and dissolute class, but clean young men and maidens — too clean to be smirched by needless exposure to impure influences. ‘That such questions are constantly raised is not surprising, for the playhouse is increasingly persistent in its demands on popular attention and patronage. It fills a constantly enlarging place in the daily journals. Theatres multiply more rapidly than churches in some of our great cities. Theatre-going increases more than church-going. The dead walls are covered with pictorial representations of scenes and actors in full dress (or in very little dress), and many of these are of such disgusting indecency that they deserve suppression by the public authorities. If the pictures be so shameless, what must the

originals be? Before our youthful inquirers become patrons of the playhouse it is but fair that — they should know just what perils to their moral nature and their welfare as immortal beings they are likely to encounter.

First. The first peril is to purity of character. Your eyes and ears are windows and doors to the heart. What enters once never goes out. Photo- graphs taken on the memory are not easily effaced or burned up; they stick there, and often become tempters and tormentors for a lifetime. ‘‘T’d give my right hand,’’ said a Christian to me once, ‘Sif I could rub out the abominable things that I put into my mind when I was a fast young man.’’ He could not do it; neither — will you be able to efface the lascivious images or the impure words which the stage may photo- — graph on your very soul. We do not affirm that every popular play is immoral, or that every per- — former is impure, or that every play-goer is on the scent for sensual excitements; but the stage — is to be estimated as a totality, and the whole trend of the average American stage is hostile to heart-purity. ‘The exceptions do not alter the rule. Nor have honest attempts to bring the stage up to a high standard of moral purity been successful. The experiment, once made in Boston, of so managing a theatre as to exclude every indelicacy from the stage and every notoriously improper person from the audience, ended in a pecuniary failure. The puritanic playhouse soon went into bankruptcy. The chief object of the manager is to make money; and if he can spice his evening entertainment with a plot that turns on a seduction or with a scene of sexual passion

or with a salacious exposure of physical beauty,.

the temptation is very often too strong to be resisted.

You must take the average stage as it is, and not as you would like to have it. It is an imstitution which, if you patronize it, you become morally responsible for — as much as if you were to patronize a public library or a public drinking-saloon. As an institution it habitually un-

‘ sexes woman by parading her in man’s attire before a mixed audience. ‘T’oo often it exposes her in such a pitiable scantiness of any attire at all that if you saw your own sister in such a plight you would turn away your eyes in horror. Yet you propose to pay your money, through the box-office, to somebody else’s sisters and daughters to violate womanly delicacy for your entertainment. If ‘‘the daughter of Herodias”’

dances to please you, then you are responsible for

the dance in its influence on both the dancer and your own moral sense. ‘There is no evading, before God, your accountability for the theatre if you habitually support it. What its influence upon the average performer is appears from most abundant testimony. One of the most celebrated actresses of this time informed a friend of mine that she ‘‘enters a theatre only to enact her part, and has very little association with her own profession.’? A converted actor once said to me, while passing a playhouse in which he had often performed, ‘‘ Behind those curtains lies Sodom.”’

Although sorely pressed to return to his old bus- — iness, he said he would starve sooner than go on the stage again. Mrs. Frances Kemble Butler — the last living representative of the most famous histrionic family of modern times — has in her old age emphatically condemned the stage. As an institution the American theatre tolerates sensual impurity in its performers and presents scenes of impurity to its patrons. If you become one of its patrons, you go into moral partnership with the theatre.

Second. It would bea sufficient condemnation of the average playhouse if it stimulates one evil passion. But other temptations lurk about it. There are dangerous associations to be encountered there. It is a prevalent habit with young people who attend the theatre to remain until a late hour amid the excitement of the plays, and then to finish off with a midnight supper or a wine-drink at some neighboring restaurant. To this perilous practice a young lady of my acquaintance owed her downfall. Long after sensible people have laid their heads on their pillows the abztues of the theatre are apt to be add-Newiy Enlisted. 7 ing a second scene of dissipation to the first one. It must be pretty hard work for a Christian to — finish up such an evening’s experience with an honest prayer for God’s blessing. “That is indeed a poor business and a poor pleasure on which we cannot with a clear conscience ask our Heavenly Father’s approval. Certainly there are enough innocent, wholesome, and beneficial recreations without venturing “into the dangerous atmosphere of the playhouse. That is a dear-bought pleasure which involves even a risk to the im- — mortal soul.;

Third. Another peril of the theatre arises — from the fascination which it too often engen- ig ders. Like wine-drinking, it becomes an appetite, and a very greedy appetite. To gratify this growing passion for the playhouse tens of thou- ’ sands of young people most profusely squander their money and their time. Other and purer recreations become tame and insipid. Even t oe entertainments of the stage become dull unle they are spiced with new excitements to the passions. Wholesome pleasures cease to please, just as a brandy-drinker ceases’ to be satisfied with cold water or a cup of coffee. It is not recreation but stimulation — and a very dangerous sort of stimulation too — that you will be after when you become enslaved by the fascinations of the stage.

My young friends, be assured that no sagacious employer ever chooses a clerk or an accountant, or any other employé, the sooner because he is a theatre-goer. No sensible man is

apt to select the companion of his heart and ‘home because she is a frequenter of a playhouse.

No wise Christian mother wants her sons and daughters there. No pastor expects his youthful church members to go into that impure atmos-. phere without a terrible damage to their piety. I do not believe that the theatre has helped many souls towards heaven; I know that it has

sent thousands to perdition.

Now that I have in kind and candid plainness of speech pointed out some of the inevitable perils of the playhouse, ought you to take the risk?

Too NEWLY ENLISTED.

FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.