| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 25 |
Page 4 |
The question as to what amusements are proper or what improper for us, each one must answer for himself. Questions continually asked of pastors and recognized Christian guides are such as these: “Is it right for a Christian to dance? Or may he attend the theatre or opera or circus, or play cards?” The true way to answer such questions is by an honest appeal to experience. What is the influence of such amusements on our spiritual life and enjoyment? Is prayer as sweet, as welcome, as helpful, afterward? Do we return to it from the hours passed in such pleasures with the same eagerness, the same desire, as before? Do we find our communion with God as sweet, as restful, as conscious? Do we retain the warmth and glow of heart that we felt before? Or do our amusements mar our peace and interrupt our enjoyment of the divine presence? Do they unfit us for devotion, and do we find our hearts made cold and distracted by them? Do they chill our ardor in Christian work? At what times is our life do we care most for such pleasures? Is it when our religious life is at its best, when love is most fervent and zeal most earnest? Does the young Christian, in the warmth and glow of his first love, care for those things? Do they, in our experience, promote our spirituality and fit us for higher usefulness?
This is the experimental test. All the circumstances about us are educating influences, and whatever is injurious to piety, whatever lowers character, is not proper or right as a means of enjoyment.
True and rational amusements are a great force in educating and building character. All pure joy is helpful. All pure art leaves its touch of beauty. Pure music sings itself into our hearts, and becomes thenceforward and for ever a new element of power in our life. Laughter makes life sunnier. It sweeps the clouds from the sky, shakes off many a care, smoothes out many a wrinkle and dries many a tear. Pure pleasure sweetens many a bitter heart fountain, drives away many a gloomy thought and many a hobgoblin shape of imagined terror, and saves many a darkened spirit from despair. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” Not the least highly gifted men are those to whom God has imparted the talent of humor that they may make others laugh.
Sanctified wit has a blessed mission. Life is so hard, so stern, with so many burdens and struggles, that there is need for all the bright words we can speak. The most wretched people in the world are those who go about in sackcloth, carrying all their griefs in their faces and casting shadows everywhere. Every Christian should be a happiness maker. We need a thousand times more joy in our lives than most of us get. We would be better men and women if we were happier. Like “the man who hath no music in his soul,” he who has no sense of gladness and gives forth no pleasure is “fit for treason, stratagems and spoils,” and is not worthy to be trusted.
We need, most of us, to plan more pleasures, especially more home pleasures. Busy men need them, weary, worried women need the, glad hearted children need them. There are amusements and relaxations which do not tarnish the soul’s purity or chill the ardor of devotion or break our fellowship with heaven, but which refine, exalt, purify, enlarge and enrich life.
Much harm has been done in the past by the indiscriminate condemnation of amusements, while nothing has been provided to take the place of those which are harmful. The absolute necessity of relaxation of some kind must be kept in mind. God has made us needing mirth. Amusement men will have; and in this, as in all other reforms, the truest and wisest method is not to condemn and cut off, leaving nothing, but to provide true pleasures and substitute them, and let these win hearts from the impure and the hurtful.
It was a maxim of Napoleon’s, “To replace is to conquer.” Let Christian parents and Christian people in a community provide healthful and profitable entertainments for the young, and these will gradually and insensibly uproot and replace those which are pernicious and injurious. There is no other true and effective way. This is as much the duty of Christian leaders as to preach sermons and conduct Sabbath schools. Otherwise, while one day’s religious services bring help and purity to the lives of the people and the children, six days’ worldly pleasures will more than undo all the good. Let Christian men and women quietly institute in every community such means of enjoyment as shall combine pleasure and profit, and thus the harmful shall be replaced.
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