Fashion and Amusement

The growing laxity of the age gives peculiar meaning to the exhortation, “Be not conformed to this world.”f The rule of most is corrupt and dangerous; it is to do as others do. The consequence. is mutual injury and perpetual declension in the Church. You will find professors, who, as they increase in wealth, constantly enlarge their license. It requires a keen eye to discriminate between their pleasures and expenditures, and those of the ungodly. If they abstain from the theatre, they go freely to

* Jer. 10 25 f Rom, 12: 2.

the opera; or if they scruple this, they linger at the midnight ball. The step is so easily taken from apparently innocent dancing to that which is free, indiscreet, amorous, and licentious, that a tender conscience will find it safest to reject all.* Apply, if you can, to such assemblages, however elegant and however common, the divine maxim, ‘’ Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.“f That young communicant is near to his fall, who is often asking how near he may go to the brink of n, and yet be safe. Observe the families which have made this passage from ancient strictness to fashionable Christianity, and you will find their children one by one sliding away to looser forms of religion, if not to utter carelessness. The same principles apply to expenditure in dress, furniture, equipage, and luxurious living. “Let your moderation be known unto all men.”:j:

* Matt. 6 29, 30. f 1 John 2: 15. J PMUpp. 4; 5.