Ethics of Amusements

“I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with

mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure; and, behold,

this also is vanity.” Eccl. ii: i.

CEEKING PLEASURE does not bring pleasure. Solomon tried this, and gives us the results in the book of Ecclesiastes. He had power, wealth and leisure, and could therefore make a fair test of the pleasure-seeking life. He drank moderately, he gratified his pleasure aesthetic tastes in building great public works, seeking gne nouseS9 an(j {n planting vineyards, gardens pleasure and orchards, adorned with pools of water and flowing fountains. To them he added music, vocal and instrumental, the best that wealth and kingly patronage could secure. He says: u I withheld not my heart from any joy. Whatever mine eyes desired, I kept not from them.” And after such an experience of pleasure-seeking, he exclaimed in disgust, “All is vanity and vexation of Spirit, and there is no profit under the sun.’3 Then he turned himself to madness and folly. He plunged into excesses of drink and lust, which soon turned him into a misanthrope, so that he says: UI hated life, yea, I hated all my labor because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.” His verdict upon life’s pleasure and labor is that it is all vanity and striving after wind. These experiences of Solomon prove five things:

First. That the pleasure-seeking spirit does not, in the long run, bring pleasure.

Second. That the pleasure-seeking spirit fosters selfishness, and thus makes ugly character.

Third. That a pleasure-seeking spirit degenerates into a life of debauchery.

Fourth. That a pleasure-seeking spirit ends in hatred of all life, and in a sense of failure, which is positive pain.

Fifth. That a pleasure-seeking spirit, therefore, is certain, sooner or later, to banish all pleasure and fill life with disappointment and sorrow.

In a word, Solomon’s verdict is that the pleasure-seeking spirit is immoral.

Beau Brummel, after he had spent his life in rounds of pleasure, dancing with the princesses of the land, pointed to a dog as he lay asleep in the sun and said: u I wish I were that dog.”

This experience of Solomon is confirmed by the testimony of Christ and the Apostles. “Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth,” says James, u and been wanton. testimony op Ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day new testament of siaugnter.” That is, those who live in pleasure will soon become wanton. They will have pleasure at the expense of virtue, and revel in their abandonment to vice. Such persons are treating themselves as the butcher treats the calves of the stall. They are simply fattening their hearts for a day of slaughter. They are heart-murderers. The finer feelings of the soul are slaughtered by the pleasure-seeking spirit. The apostle therefore declares, u She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” The pleasure-seeking spirit really kills the soul to all that is noble. The body of the pleasure-seeker is a walking sepulchre. The soul within has become dead to high aspirations and holy motives. Like Bunyan’s man with the muckrake, he keeps his eyes on the trash and dirt of earth, with no regard for the crown above his head. The royalty of true manhood is sacrificed for the muck of passing sensation. The smoking pottage of present indulgence causes the pleasure-seeker to despise the birthright of his soul.

A mother and father in Boston are to-day mourning for a daughter whose condition is worse than physical death. She walks the streets and plies her trade of evil. A friend the great met ner the other day and asked why she did not robber gQ ilomep jjer reply was: “It is too dull;

I cannot have enough fun there.” The pleasure -seeking spirit has murdered in that young woman all love of mother and virtue. She is dead while she liveth. But the results with her have been just as Jesus said, u The pleasures of life choke the word and make it unfruitful.” That word u choke” is very suggestive. As the robber chokes his victim into insensibility that he may rob him with ease, so the pleasure-seeking spirit chokes truth and robs it of its power to save and help. This pleasure-seeking spirit is the bandit on the earth’s highway, awaiting its opportunity to choke every influence that would make us better men and women. This bandit entered the dwelling of the rich man of the parable, and, muffling his hand in the sumptuous daily fare, choked conscience and all holy aspirations, so that the beggar at the gate writh his dog companions, alive to the voice of God and duty, was the happier of the two in this world and the next.

It is the pleasure-seeking spirit that produces the kind of people described in Phil, iii: 18, “Whose god is their belly; whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.”

“Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God” are classed among the u covetous, blasphemers, unfaithful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, and despisers of those that are good, having a form of godliness, but denying the power m bad thereof.” Every pastor knows that those who company are dominated by the pleasure -seeking spirit, though they may be punctilious about the form of godliness on the Sabbath, are void of the power of godliness during the week. They may be moral in their outward lives, and religious in external observances, but they lack power to make others either moral or religious. The best that can be said of them is that they are negatively good, in that they do not break the ten commandments, but they lack positive power for holiness. Theirs is a religion of form without force. In Titus iii: 3 we have a picture of those who served divers lusts and pleasures, while they live in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. In this picture the pleasure-seeking spirit is the master, and the pleasure-seeker is the slave.

Moses was a wise man in choosing u even to suffer affliction with the people of God,” rather than to be the slave of this pleasure-seeking spirit for a season. (Hebrews xi: 25.) Pleasure-seekers are deceived into the illusion that they are free to do as they please, but really they are slaves. “Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings... while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption.” (II Peter ii: 13.)

In the light of these principles let us take a bird’s-eye view of the dance, the theatre, and the card table, the three popular amusements born of the pleasure-seeking spirit, while we reserve for future sermons a fuller treatment of each.

Dancing is not now an expression of joy, as it was in primitive times. Its purpose is to give pleasure, rather than express pleasure; and the pleasure it gives is,

according to the most competent witnesses, the silent

enjoyment of sex. The modern dance is a contrivance

for the mingling of sensuous music and sexual

THE DANCE to °.

excitement. I he physical response to music has little to do with it. If it did, the square dance, without the embrace, would be popular, but we know that it has become so obsolete that some young people have never heard of it. The pleasure -seeking spirit, based upon sex, is the swirling current that runs with incredible swiftness towards the maelstrom of ruin.

The theatre, through the eye and ear, does for the audience what the dance does through the sense of touch. The average modern play is full of suggestion and innuthe endo for both eye and ear. Undress that would

theatre no tolerated in any respectable home, even among brothers and sisters, is common on the stage. Conversation, which off the stage would mark a woman as unfit for decent company, and postures from which the face of modest virtue would turn in disgust in any other place, are not only tolerated, but are known by theatre managers to be the popular features of a play.

I received last week from a gentleman in Washington, D. C, the following letter:

My dear Sir: I was interested in your sermon on theatres, as reported in the Boston Globe last Monday. I believe it to be the imperative duty of the pulpit to speak out clearly on this money-eating, soul-destroying evil. Last New Year’s night I was asked to go to the theatre by a person who makes a practice of going at least twice a week. We went to the Lafayette Theatre, which stands directly opposite the White House. I thought, truly we shall see nothing questionable there. But, sir, from beginning to end the play was suggestive of evil. Lies were told from beginning to end. In one part there was a young woman alone on the stage with a young man. After a while they occupied one chair; then, to be more comfortable, she must needs sit on his knee. After a time the suggestion was made that her papa would object to them burning so much gas. Out went the lights. The theatre was dark as could be for at least five minutes. Another of the women sang the most suggestive song that I ever listened to, entitled “Just One Touch,” and to wind up the song she jumped into the man’s arms and was carried off the stage drawling out “Just One Touch.” Lights out again. There were many other things which I could describe, but I suppose you know them; but the surprising thing to me was the fact that the woman I was with saw nothing wrong in the play. She thought it was really pretty. She is a church member, and I believe pure, but how a person can be so blinded to the evil passes my comprehension. I believe truly, as you say, of all the institutions in the world which receive public recognition, the theatre is the most immoral and corrupting.

I have recently been informed that most of the great theatres in the large cities of America are owned by two Jewish men of wealth, and their policy is simply to make money. Actresses, who at first desire to be respectable, have been compelled against their protest to take parts repulsive to every instinct of a virtuous woman, and this will account for the horrible degradation of the American stage, as acknowledged even by its friends, during the past few years. Shylocks who care more for ducats than for personal virtue or public morals have control of an institution which, under the best of management, is bad in its influence upon all who act a part, but which, under the control of insatiable moneysharks, may become simply insufferable in its diabolical work of debasing character on both sides of the foot-lights.

The card table does not, like the dance and the theatre, strike at the chastity of men and women. It is with the dance in that it is a waste of time, and adds nothing to the intellectual store. The few phases of cards and the technique of the ballroom may be properly defined as mental vacuity. The card table strikes directly at the ten the CARD commandments, and its tendency is to make table men an(j Women dishonest. Doctor Savage, of New York, who does not stand for a very high type of spirituality, said some time ago that a friend of his had decided to quit playing cards because he had noticed that card players did not hesitate to cheat. Now, in games of pure chance, the only way to excel as a player is to cheat. It fosters a spirit of dishonesty. The mania for winning stakes, which means getting something for nothing, becomes a consuming passion which soon burns up in its flame all integrity and honesty.

From all this it is fair to infer that no conscientious person can have a good time indulging in amusements which destroy the virtue and integrity of men and conscientiousness women. He may have stamina of necessary character to resist this evil influence,

but a conscientious man cannot be happy with the consciousness that by his presence and patronage he is assisting institutions which degrade more than they uplift. And it is only with the conscientious men and women that I deal in these sermons. If one confesses that he has no conscience, that he is as willing to do wrong as to do right, that he is as happy doing harm as doing good, there is no need of arguing with him. He belongs to the immoral brute beasts, of whom Peter in his epistle speaks; indeed, he is not far removed from the dog, the goat and the pig, which satisfy their present appetites, unrestrained by moral considerations. He certainly is not a christian, and we will have to leave him to wallow in the mire until a merciful God shall reach him with a power from above and give him the new birth of a higher character.

nHMHHBaiaBi

V

Ethics of Amusements

Conscientiousness, made by the best public sentiment in favor of chaste, clean minds and lives, cannot have a good time patronizing the dance and the theatre, which are known as institutions that work against chastity and purity of mind and life. And conscientiousness, made by the standard of common honesty, cannot have a good time playing cards, when it knows that as an institution the card table is the implement of the gambler the world over and the foster mother of dishonesty.

One can be happy without dancing, card-playing or theatre-going by adopting the following principles and rules:

First, Cultivate a noble motive. If your motive has been simply to seek pleasure, discard that as unworthy of an intelligent moral being. Aspire first to do right, and then to do good. Cultivate conscientiousness with a standard as high as the law of God. Seek to do good unto all men. Make others happy by making them better. Build character in yourself and others. Remember you are living for eternity. Take not for a model the butterfly that flits from flower to flower, caring only to sip the honey that gratifies the present need. We are not insects of the day. We bear the marks of immortality. The u this worldliness “of Benjamin Franklin should be modified by the “other worldliness” of Jesus and the Apostles.

Second. Indulge only in such amusements as are clean

and not associated with evil institutions. It is evident

from the Scriptures that God is not opposed to play.

Indeed, I think He is pleased to see his children at

PLAY

play; and play, you know, is what one does for the pleasure it gives. It has its dangers, for when we pursue a thing just for the pleasure it imparts we are apt to follow it until it ceases to give pleasure, and, it

Ethics of Amusemejtts

may be, turns to nausea. One may love his work until it becomes play; and change of work is for him a change of play, just because he works for the pleasure of it.

There are amusements that are clean and not associated with evil institutions. Golf, lawn tennis, croquet, bicycle riding, the row on the river, the ramble through the woods, coasting and sleighing, and many other out-door pastimes furnish amusement which fills the lungs with fresh air, and do not smirch the morals by evil associations. For indoors, there are chess and checkers, which are not games of chance; ping pong, which requires skill and gives good exercise; cards which entertain while they instruct, and games without number which furnish rollicking fun and merry laughter. I omit billiards because of its evil associations. Discard all kissing games on the ground of good taste, as well as for sanitary reasons. Books are published, some of them under religious auspices, which furnish hundreds of merry, innocent games, which, with a little use of the brains, will give immensely more enjoyment to an evening party than dancing, cards, or the theatre.

And is it not time, in this century of boasted civilization, that we should cultivate again the art of conversation, and make an occasional evening happy with the flow of thought and the sparkle of wit and humor?

The Christian homes that allow the world to furnish their amusements with the dance and the card table do not have so good a time as the homes that entertain their guests with pleasant surprises that show thought and personality. And there is a world of music which may be enjoyed without countenancing the obscene undress of the opera and the moral nastiness of the theatre. A wholesome taste for reading, which theatre-going is more apt to vitiate than to culti-Ethics oj Amusements

vate, is an ever-flowing fountain of pleasure. An evening spent with a masterpiece of literature, while it makes character, will give more pleasure to a healthy mind than cards, the dance or the theatre, while it leaves no sting of evil association in its trail.

Third. Take Christ into your heart and life. Let Him be the umpire of pleasure and duty. Heed the words of Mary, when she said to the servants at the feast the secret m Canaan: “Whatsoever He says unto OF happiness you? do it» Always live to please Him.

Always ask, what would Jesus do? And do that thing regardless of consequences. If you have become acquainted with Christ by a living faith, and a careful study of His life in the four gospels, you can tell just about what He would do if in your place; and when you have received by grace the Spirit, and formed the habit of pleasing Him, you will begin to know what it is to have a truly good time. You will then learn that even self-denial with His approval gives more pleasure than any sort of indulgence without His approval. You will then have the secret of joy even in sorrow, of peace in the midst of confusion, of having a good time in the midst of evil times. The Christian who is separated unto Christ, and from the indulgence of all that contaminates, is the one truly happy person in this world. Others have the glitter, he has the gold. His abstinence brings more joy than their indulgence; and his indulgence in that which is good multiplies the joy of his self-denial.