The school of thoughtlessness and vanity

Christian parents and Christian families would do well to
consider, that the tendencies of fashionable amusements
are unfavorable to the cultivation of piety. Our children
and youth are naturally far enough from God. It is both
wise and kind--not to multiply and increase the temptations
and dangers which everywhere lurk around their path, and
beguile them to eternal ruin! The world is vain and alluring
enough already. The way of death is sufficiently enticing,
and abundantly strewed with flowers.

Nothing is more evident--than that a passion for fashionable
amusements banishes all serious regard for true piety, silences
the voice of conscience, and neutralizes the means of grace and
salvation. They may not always prove to be "the school of vice and
profligacy," but they are always "the school of thoughtlessness
and vanity," where everything else is fortified, rather than serious
thoughts of God and the coming judgment. "What is a man profited,
if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?"

Gardiner Spring, New York, March 1, 1831