(Continued from page 471, vol. xviii.)
HERE, my dear friends, lest it should escape me, I will mention what has just entered my memory of a good man, who, speaking with regard to his own daughter frequenting the theatre, said that if she knew the sense, language, and sentiments in John Bull, Pizarro, and other popular plays, he would clasp her to his bosom as one bereft of her dignity. And what remains? if the dignity of female virtue be gone; if that high and holy dignity, that attractive quality which repulses the advance of the profligate—if that dignity be gone, what remains that is worth the keeping?
I would here mention, or rather read a quotation from a high and illustrious writer with whose name you are well acquainted, the Rev. John Harris, D.D., the celebrated author of Mammon: “When the Almighty would show Ezekiel the abominations of Jerusalem, He led him through successive chambers of imagery, on the walls of which were vividly portrayed all their dark and idolatrous doings. But were a similar representation of the abominations of London to be attempted, what is the emblematical imagery that would do them justice? Where are the colours dark enough, and the imagination sufficiently daring to portray the guilty reality? There must be seen groups of demons in human shape teaching crime professionally. There must be trains of wretched females leading thousands of guilty victims in chains, and leading them through the fearful array of all the spectres of disease, remorse, and misery ready to dart upon them. There must be theatres with a numerous priesthood pandering to impurity, and offering up the youth of both sexes at the shrines of sensuality. And over the whole must be cast a spell, an all-encompassing net-work of Satanic influence, prepared and held down and guarded by Satanic agency. And to complete the picture, three hundred thousand Christians passing by, without scarcely lifting a hand to remove it.” Passing from this extract, I shall conclude this portion of the subject by reading another extract from an eminent minister whose name and person are known to many of us, and whose praise is in all the churches—I allude to the Rev. John Angell James, in his interesting and valuable Christian Father’s Present. This eloquent writer says: “I do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce the theatre to be one of the broadest avenues which lead to destruction; fascinating no doubt it is, but on that account the more delusive and more dangerous. Let a young man once acquire a taste for this species of entertainment, and yield himself up to its gratification, and he is in imminent danger of becoming a lost character, rushing upon his own ruin. All the evils that waste his property, corrupt his morals, blast his reputation, impair his health, embitter his life, and destroy his soul, lurk in the purlieus of a theatre. Vice in every form lives, moves, and has its being there. Myriads have cursed the hour when they first exposed themselves to the contaminations of the stage, and from that fatal evening they date their destruction. Then they threw off the restraints of education, and learned how to disregard the dictates of conscience; then their decision, hitherto oscillating between a life of virtue and vice, was made up for the latter. Light and darkness are not more opposed to each other than the Bible and the play-book. If the one be good, the other must be evil; if the Scriptures are to be obeyed, the theatre must be avoided. The only way to justify the stage as it is, as it ever has been, and as it is ever likely to be, is to condemn the Bible; the same individual cannot defend both.”
I have quoted this extract because it is fraught with so much importance to young men, so many of whom I am pleased to see now before me, and I preferred taking this author’s sentiments in preference to anything that I could say myself.
Some individuals may not be aware of the fact that the plays which are usually brought forward are not those plays which are the least immoral, but those which are most popular. We know, too, that performers who command large salaries are selected without reference to their morality, but with regard only to their talents and attraction; but here let me not be supposed to be passing a wholesale censure on all connected with the stage. I believe that many of them are moral, upright, well-conducted persons; persons of probity, integrity, and gentlemanly and lady-like mode of procedure. But here is the point to be considered; an actor or actress does not lose character or popularity by the most notorious vices, even though proved in a court of law, but acquires a still larger fame and attraction. I shall not dwell on individuals or names, but should there happen to be any persons present who are acquainted with even one half as much of the annals of the stage as I am, they must know that the most flagrant immoralities tend rather to increase the attractions of the guilty parties, and even enable them to demand still larger salaries from those who employ them.
Here, my dear Christian friends, let me remark, some of you say, or may say, I can go and see such a play as Hamlet, William Tell or Virginius. I leave the theatre directly the play is concluded; I do not wait to see the dancing or the farce, I feel that does not do me any injury. To such I answer, You have no right to separate the one from the other. The proprietor and manager would not separate the money from the total amount of the receipts for the night or season. I say your paying your money for that purpose incurs, in the sight of God and of every conscientious man, your full share of responsibility of all which takes place after you have left the theatre. One single night may prove unexceptionable; notwithstanding you are responsible on another night the same season, for the manager will count up his proceeds, not particularizing what you may have paid to see, but including it in the gross receipts. Managers do not set up theatres as schools of morality, they do not set them up to teach morals. No, they set them up as mere commercial speculations; they know what class the majority, and the vast majority, of their auditors and patrons are, and they take care to cater to their tastes; and we know but too well the taste of the majority of those who are its frequenters. I had marked here some extracts, which are not so exceptionable as those to which I have adverted, but I feel that I have gone already far enough; I can scarcely say so with regard to your kind patience, but almost too far for my strength on this occasion. There are many important points at which I have scarcely glanced, but on which I had proposed to dwell, had time permitted. One of them, the influence which the stage exerts on the female character by lowering the dignity of virtue, to which I adverted a short time ago. There are various other points to which attention might be beneficially directed. I trust, however, that I may at some other time, and in some other way, have a further opportunity of developing my views on this subject, but the time to which I am limited is almost gone. As an illustration of the present state of the drama, I will briefly allude to a popular play of the present season—and if there be any play-goers here, they will at once recognise the opera Loretta—which has had a considerable run at Drury Lane Theatre. I would not ask you to go in order to see the blighting immorality which is bound up in the drama, even in the most popular of our own day. And now, my dear Christian friends, I only ask you, in conclusion, for a fair and full examination of all that may be said on both sides of the subject. There may be some present who are attached to theatres; I ask them to hear and meditate on what may be said on both sides of the subject before they fix on the conclusion—What the stage is, and what it ought to be, instead of an atmosphere of pollution; or that it is a place where they may prepare for eternity, or to refer to an idea at which I have glanced; if they believe that Christ, our great example, if He were on earth now, would attend any theatre in this metropolis or out of it; if they could be willing to have sudden death come on them in the theatre, and be called from thence to meet their God, then, I say, let them go forward and be more devoted friends of the stage and its professors. Is there a conscience in this large assembly that does not give answer to that question, for you all know that this inquiry must be answered, and if God’s word be the word of truth and morality, the answer must be in the negative. Then let them ask themselves, Will they, for mere sinful amusements, bring guilt and all its woe upon the soul, and set an example, the extent of which they may not be aware of, resulting in mischiefs which they have been influential in bringing about?
I said at the commencement of this lecture that there could not be one within the hearing of my voice more attached to theatricals than I was, or could have felt more pain in the separation than I have felt. I had done harm, I had written in favour of the stage, and I felt it my duty to make restitution, which I could not make by unwriting and unsaying what I had done; but the only reparation that I could make was to devote myself hereafter to the exercise of a contrary influence.