Christian Recreation
and Unchristian Amusement
by T. L. Cuyler, October 24, 1858, New York.
"Then I realized that it is good and proper for a
man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under
the sun during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot."
Eccles. 5:18
"For you have spent enough time in the past doing what
pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies,
carousing and detestable idolatry." 1 Peter 4:3
"Laughter can conceal a heavy heart; when the laughter
ends, the grief remains." Proverbs 14:13
My fellow-travelers to eternity, I want to discuss
tonight, the great subject of Christian recreation and unchristian
amusement. I wish to find out as far as I possibly can, what is healthful,
and what is right; what is hurtful, and what is wrong; what every Christian
may do, and what even a lost sinner ought not to do. It is a very delicate
and a very difficult subject to treat; and I trust we may be guided wisely
and safely through it. In order to throw 'light from heaven' upon our theme,
I have grouped before you tonight three appropriate passages of Scripture.
"Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to
eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun
during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot." In
this first text, you will observe the principle that all men have a clear
and undoubted right to every healthful and innocent enjoyment. God never
created us to be wretched. Do you imagine it for a moment? He gave us
possibilities of enjoyment, and ten thousand good things to enjoy. He gave
us a taste for pleasant food, and pleasant food and fruit to taste. He gave
us a desire for the luscious grape and sunny peach; and the grape hangs on
the trellis, and the peach ripens for us in the sun-beam. He gave us a
thirst for refreshing drinks. He gave us healthful drinks with which to
refresh ourselves. Never, however, did he make this world a distillery for
alcoholic poisons. He gave us a desire to be happy, and then put within our
reach means, abundant means, for all pure and healthy happiness.
While there is a "time to weep"—O my friends! these times
to weep; how often they come and how long they last! There is also a "time
to laugh;" so God tells us in his book. There is a time to be cheerful,
there is a time to be full of sunshine, a time to be fully exuberant in the
outflow of all emotional joys, in the liftings up of high mental delight, in
the out-goings of pure and lofty spiritual enjoyment. This is right; this is
commendable; and we shall see in the course of this discussion that it is
necessary for our bodily, mental, and spiritual health to have just such
enjoyments.
"For you have spent enough time in the past doing what
pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies,
carousing and detestable idolatry." This second text is from Peter's
letter to Christians of his day. He reminds them that they ought to follow
Christ, which is the great idea of Christianity. He wished to remind them
that they used to walk in revelings, banquetings, and excess—these things
were the bitter fruits of their former ungodly tastes and appetites. They
did not know any better. But now, he says, you are redeemed ones of Jesus
Christ. Now I warn you, that you do know better, and you must put off the
evil deeds, and live spiritually and righteously in this present evil world.
You are no longer heathen, but Christians—the pledged, banded and bonded
followers of the holy Savior, the professors of a pure faith, a "peculiar
people," to keep your garments even unspotted from the world.
"Laughter can conceal a heavy heart; when the laughter
ends, the grief remains." This third text is from royal Solomon. Poor
old man! poor man! He ought to know (what he had found out to his sorrow)
that reveling is the mother of all wretchedness, and that the end of mirth
is heaviness. A heavy head, a heavy heart, a heavy load on the conscience, a
heavy stupified moral sense, a heavy weight of remorse, a heavy account with
God, an oppressive, crushing weight of final and everlasting
retribution—these are mirth's bitter catastrophe.
Now these three texts unite in giving us a double truth
for discussion. First, that Christian recreations are right, proper,
commendable, and beneficial—but that sinful pleasures are dangerous
to the body and damning to the soul. Let us enlarge upon this proposition,
beginning with the first truth that Christian recreations are right the
world over. We have already seen that God's word does not forbid rightful
enjoyments. This book is not a teacher of Popish penances, it was not
written by monks, or to turn the world into a stupendous convent. The
religion of the Bible is radiant with the light and the joys of heaven;
there is a world of sun-shine in God's book. O troubled heart! the spirit
that book inspires is never a gloomy one, nor morose. It is a libel on our
holy faith to represent it as productive in itself of melancholy, or denying
men any really innocent pleasures. It is not against innocent enjoyments,
but sinful ones, that God makes his protest.
The libel is an old one. The skeptic who wants to
caricature that bible before a young man, and the frivolous trifler who
would turn life into a long frolic and one unending carouse—repeats the
stale scoff in the face of that young man, in order to seduce him into
profligacy and ruin. But the Gospel is a system of life, deliverance, hope,
joy in the Holy Spirit. It came to make guilty men happy by making them
good, and by bringing them into peace with their God. Now, in the very
outset, I suppose that this assembly agree that we all need—that men and
women, old and young—need recreation. Not only rest from toil (and
the people of this country are the most overworking people on earth) but we
need the occasional restorative of recreation. I use that word in its
etymological sense—to re-create, to make a man over again as good as new.
You and I work ourselves down. Then we must be built up
again. We need to unbend. We should not keep the bow always strung, else it
loses its elasticity. Men were not created to be always drudges. They were
to play once in a while as well as toil. All work makes a man a sorry
slave. All play makes him a sorrier fool. The wise person avoids both
extremes. God has not only given all powers of enjoyment, but recreation is
an absolute need. I must have it, so must you. The best men have always
found it so. Biographies of the most healthful Christians reveal them as
unwinding in an innocent sportiveness. Their grave faces relax sometimes
into what the old Puritan used to call "the Christian liberty of laughing."
Their overactive brains are regaled with a healthy holiday. When at work,
they work like men and Christians. When at play, they unbend and sport like
little children. That is human nature; that is wise; that is beautiful.
Martin Luther bends over that German translation
of the book of God. Martin Luther elaborates his treatises against the great
Romish delusion; and refreshes himself by hearing his beautiful wife,
Catherine, sing sweet songs, and by decorating Christmas trees for his
children. Granville Sharp never played more sweetly on human
sympathies when he was arousing the world for the emancipation of the
slaves, than when he used to retire from his philanthropies to play upon his
flute in his terrace overhanging the Thames. Buxton is good at
hunting abuses in Parliament. He is equally good in hunting with dog and gun
over the English forest. Wilberforce battles all day for God and
humanity; labors for Bible circulation; labors for genuine reform; labors
for Christian missions, and for India; and then goes home to amuse his
children with delightful stories, and trundles a hoop with them all around
his garden at Clapham. He is as happy as a swallow. Blessed, blessed man! he
had a right to be happy, for he labored like his Master. Who had a better
right than he, to let his soul flow out in its innocent joy?
Now, then, we come to the practical point of this
discourse—What kind of recreation do men need? For whatever a man
needs, according to his God-given nature, is right. Fix that first in your
minds. Taking this as a clue in your hands, my young friends, you will be
guided into the path of right and safety.
The daily laborer who toils twelve out of the
twenty-four hours, probably finds no recreation like simple rest. Lying down
upon his bed is recreation. The Sabbath comes to him with rest; social joys
in his humble home are a part of his recreation; an occasional hour in some
library, or listening to discoursings of truth, is healthful recreation. The
great idea with him is Rest! Rest!
The student needs change of occupation—physical
exercise. That weakened form of his, which bends over the book until his
face becomes as bloodless as the page he scans, should go out into God's
free air, and all the better for him if the hand that is idle should swing
the axe, or pull the oar upon the stream. I never shall forget a walk with
that greatest of modern poets—the now departed Wordsworth—over the hills
which he has made immortal; and as I saw the hearty and healthful
countenance of the great poet, I understood what his servant meant when he
said—"My master's study is always out of doors." One of the acutest minds in
all England, Carlyle once vented itself in this way to me—"My greatest
pleasure is to mount my horse and ride out in the teeth of the wind away
from these smoky streets of London."
We have many methods of recreation open to the most
conscientious and godly minded—Books! books which lift the soul up to
the mountain-top; books which take me to Pisgah's heights, and permit me to
survey the realm of God's universe; books which enliven me and lead me to
the recesses of the heart; books which bring me nearer to God in all his
works; books which I can make fireside companions; each one of them, as it
were a vial, containing the extract and essence of a great heart. Books
make the first and purest of our recreations!
But, methinks, some one starts up in this house and
says—"May I read books of fiction?" Yes, sir, on two conditions
only—first, that you never read any but those which are pure and
soul-elevating; and next that you only read those as the occasional
recreation of a mind fatigued by severer duties. It is as if you ask me,
while sitting at a table—"May I eat that sweet dessert?" "Yes, after you
have dined on healthy food." But woe to him who feeds his body on sweets
alone! Woe to the young men or maidens, who have no good books in their
heads or hearts! I believe there is more demoralization of the young, more
loss of character and incipient infidelity, resulting from the vile pages of
certain pestilential literature, which swarms in this country, than from any
other source which Satan employs to ruin our youth. But a good book—a good
book is one of God's best gifts to us.
Next to books comes music; music from the
cradle—hymns which the sweet-voiced mother sings in our infancy—to the
plaintive dirge that floats over the green sward, where we are laid to our
rest. Music when it comes in the swelling oratorio, swelling and rolling in
surges on the soul like the sound of many waters on the beach—or the martial
air stirring the soul like the sound of a trumpet on the tented field; or
the charming evening hymns sung by our beloved ones at the altar of our
homes; or the anthems sung by the great congregations, rolling up to mingle
with the oratorios of heaven—the ceaseless song of the ransomed and
redeemed!
I care not that Satan has stolen music and perverted it
to sensual and infernal uses. That is no more reason why I should not make
my heart praise my Maker, than that the vile abuse of anything is an
argument against its uses, unless as in the case of alcohol, where the use
be an abuse of the user. The great dangers connected with the opera do not
lie in the music, but in the usual accompaniments of the play-house;
a subject of which we shall speak hereafter. Galleries of art, scientific
lectures—are all means of recreation within the reach of the young; and I do
thank those public benefactors, who are bringing to our shores so many
masterpieces of genius; and were I possessed of a princely fortune (like him
who was the princely constructor of this edifice,) one of the best gifts I
would give to the young men of New-York would be some great hall, in which,
turning their feet from every wicked place, they might come in and enlighten
their reason and purify their hearts in the long evenings of this season of
the year.
Without dwelling farther on specific recreations, we come
to this principle—that whatever makes your body healthier, your mind
happier, and your immortal soul purer, is Christian recreation. If you
never depart from these good sayings, you will never bring down the
maledictions of God, who pronounced such fearful curses upon the reveler and
those who are given to banquetings and excess.
In treating of recreations, I have gone upon the
principle that they are sought for useful and lawful purposes. "Whatever you
do, do all for the glory of God." Every Christian ought to take his religion
into his pleasures, just as much as into his business or his church. No
Christian ought ever to spend an evening in any place, from which he could
not return with the most devout and graceful approach to his Savior, as he
bends on his knee in his closet to spend the last hour of the day, as it
flies up to God with its account.
Secondly, when most people when seek amusement, there
is something very different in their minds, than a desire for healthy and
wholesome recreation. In this part of my discourse, I wish to treat of
this different thing. It is not recreation; it is not for the sake of being
better fitted for life's cares and toils and heroic duties—but it is
pleasure for its own sake and ultimate end—and the gay, frivolous, and
pleasure-loving are generally in pursuit of that. They do not merely
seek refreshment; they desire stimulation and high excitement. A wise man,
for instance, drinks for refreshment. Of course he drinks pure water, or
something that will not stimulate. On the other hand, the sensualist drinks
for stimulation. He goes to the bottle which maddens and intoxicates. The
love of excitement is what fills our taverns. The great mass of men go to
immoral places for what? for recreation? Not at all—but for excitement; and
the more fiery, the more stimulating, the better.
Here is the supreme attraction of the theater, the
gaming-house, the drinking-saloon, the billiard-room. Within those
brilliantly lighted places, the chief attractions are the high excitements
to the lusts of the youth, as well as the worn-out debauchee. The only
reasons why young men seek such places, are the very reasons why they should
not seek them. Instead of rest to the body and delightful entertainment to
the mind, they are indisputably destructive and poisonous. Such writers as
those in this city who, during the last few months or the last year, have
advocated dramatic entertainments, mistake the main position, when they
confound innocent recreation with sinful pleasures. One is right and the
other is ruinous. Everything that rests my body or mind, improves my health
and elevates my soul, is commendable. Everything that stimulates my lustful
propensities, until I become a walking maniac; everything that debauches my
body, weakens my conscience, excites impure thoughts, and makes my soul a
horrendous house of imagery; everything that makes me forget God and
eternity; is dangerous, and in the last damnable.
To this test we must bring the theater, the midnight
carouse, and the ball-room. Do they provide refreshment of strength and
mind? Does the drinking-house provide such refreshment? Do they improve or
profit, or do they demoralize and destroy for time and eternity? That is the
question. I do not suppose any 'ideal' or 'imaginary' theater, any ideal
ale-house. I am not discussing an imaginary state of the drama, where the
audience are all saints, the actors are all apostles; where the curtain
would rise to the sound of prayer instead of an overture, and the
performance would close with the Doxology instead of a song sung by a
buffoon; where no possible farce on the stage could be so ridiculous a farce
as the audience. Such a state of things is imaginary.
Introduce such a thing into a New York theater, and it
would be deserted in one day! Introduce a theater in which such plays as
Hannah More's sacred dramas were to be performed by conscientious
performers, and the whole class of theater-goers would desert it in a week.
As the preacher entered at one door, the profligate would go out of the
other. As the deacon entered, the beer drinker would retire. As the gracious
mother came with her pure daughters, the painted harlot would take flight to
some more congenial environment.
All who are attracted and stimulated by the lustful
drama, by the indelicate innuendo, by the ballet dancers, by the
wine-saloon, never, depend upon it, would waste a dollar upon a puritanic
theater! It would be tasteless and insipid to them—it would be deserted in
mass—and who would fill their places? Would you? Would I? Would my
congregation like to know that I filled one of the vacant places in that
theater? For myself, I can say that I have succeeded in obtaining all the
recreation I have felt necessary, and an exuberant flow of spirit, without
ever having entered the theater, witnessed an opera, played a game of cards,
attended a ball, or indulged in the excitement of the wine-cup.
Millions tonight are empty in purse, character, and
godliness, and empty of hope, from having tried each or all of them! Why, do
you not know that the real attraction of such places is the temporary
excitement? All that is passion-exciting in tragedy, and mirth-exciting
in comedy, is brought in. In one thrilling scene, a mother shrieks out her
agony for her lost boy; in another, a betrayed mistress wreaks revenge on
her paramour; and in another, a ribald scoffer burlesques the most sacred
passages of the blessed book of God. It feeds the passion; the eye is not
forgotten by the scene-painter, nor the actress in the dress that captivates
and inflames the lust.
Those that cannot be drawn by the stage are drawn by the
exciting accompaniments—by the music, the wine-saloon, the presence of
tempters to midnight debauchery.
"Skilled in doing evil!" would I write over the
entrance of every theater that ever stood in this metropolis. "He that is
wise, let him not enter in there."
"By their fruits you shall know them," is the test the
world applies to us, my beloved fellow-professor of Christ's gospel. It is a
good test. I wish Christians would not forget it. "By their fruits you shall
know them;" and I in turn say to the lover of pleasure—will you let me apply
that to your own amusements? By your fruits I would know you. And now I come
to the theater, (saying nothing about cards, the wine-cup, or the
ball-room,) and ask—Does it improve the morals of those who deliberately
attend it? Would a sensible merchant hire a young man into his business,
make him his bookkeeper, confident, or cashier, on the strength of the
knowledge that that young man regularly attended the theater? The theater
has led more to the workhouse and to ruin, than probably any other source of
temptation to the young, ever known in the history of our metropolis.
Secondly—if the theater is a good school of morals, why
do not the teachers learn and practice their own lessons? It is a poor
gospel that does not convert its own advocates. Now, far be it from me to
impugn the character of all performers; but in the best days of the dramas,
Dr. Johnson used to say, he avoided their company, because of their tempting
him to lust. Ought a lady to attend any place where she will see her own sex
unclothed? That simple fact, a part and parcel of theatricals, is one of its
most bitter and burning condemnations.
Again, if the drama is conducive to piety and morality,
if it is productive of purity, why does it attract the debauched, the
drunkard, and the profligate? While I do not say that no man of good morals
has ever attended it, I do say that the loathsome people of this city have a
most striking passion for theater-going; and where the immoral all love to
go, the Christian ought never to go. Would any young lady in this house like
to hear that her pastor had been in the playhouse? If she saw me preaching
Christ after seeing me there, would she not probably have a far more vivid
recollection of the play-house than appreciation of the truth I tried to
teach? But God's test is the best—"when the laughter ends, the grief
remains." Proverbs 14:13
When Dr. Harvey heard a lady speak of the pleasures of
the theater in reply to the question as to what they were—"First," she said,
"the pleasure of anticipation before I go; secondly, the pleasure of
participation while I am there; and thirdly, the pleasure of
recollection in recalling the play after I am gone." "Madam!" said that
Christian gentleman, "madam! you forget one pleasure." "What is it, sir?"
"It is the pleasure of retrospection, when on the dying-bed you look
back on a life immersed in such frivolities as that." That was her last
"pleasure of recollection" of a night in a theater.
Do you say that many dramatic productions are
masterpieces of intellect? I do not deny it. I do not deny that
Shakespeare's plays are the best of all plays, and yet across that
resplendent sun of his imperial intellect, how many a dark spot of obscenity
and profanation, almost blasphemy. So much so, that when a female master of
the art undertook to read those plays before a promiscuous audience, she was
obliged to leap from point to point, from passage to passage, as one
crossing a stream would leap from stone to stone, in order to keep a dry
foot.
My friends, it is not necessary to enter a theater to
receive intellectual pleasure, from Shakespeare or any other dramatist. You
can have it by the fireside without the contaminating vices of the
play-house. But if the grandest dramatic pieces that ever leaped full-grown
from the brains of the great master of English poetry and philosophy, are
only to be learned by my son and daughter at the expense of their virtue,
I would lay them in their graves, ignorant of the first line that
Shakespeare ever penned! There are higher walks of knowledge still—walks
that I can tread in company with the angels—walks that I can take with my
Divine Master—walks from mountain-top to mountain-top, out into the great
landscape in which I study God, and see my Father in all his works.
Now look upon this question in whatever light you choose,
these places of excitement, not recreation, cannot bear scrutiny any more
than any of the sinful excitements I have barely alluded to. I have dwelt
upon the theater as a 'representative amusement', knowing that much we have
said in regard to it would apply to kindred places of pernicious excitement.
My last argument against it is, oh! how many a heart that
has been touched by the Holy Spirit during the last revival year; how many a
young man who has melted in the prayer-meeting, thrilled under the sermon,
been aroused by the Spirit to the grandeur of a Christian life and the
claims of God and the glory of heaven—how many such a young man dates his
first relapse, and first steps of apostasy, to one or more of the ten
thousand scenes of 'fashionable amusement', which surround him in New York!
That noble man, Mr. Noel of London, allied by birth to the nobility of
earth—and by the new birth to the nobility of heaven, says that a youth came
to London and gave himself up to teaching and Christian service. By and by
he missed him from the church—(that is the first step, my young
friends)—then he heard that he was the frequenter of a play-house; from the
play-house he traced him to the tavern; from the tavern to the skeptic's
club; and then down he went rapidly with the necessary gravitation of sin,
to the very depths of sin and debauchery. That young man, whose mother would
not have recognized him had he been brought to her door, lay stranded upon
life's shore, wrecked in body and wrecked in character. Mr. Noel was
summoned to his dying-bed, and as he entered the room he saw that the young
man was within a step of eternity. He took him by the hand—(oh! that pastors
of the present day would take young men by the hand! you, my young friends,
need men's hands, but God's hand most of all)—he took him by the hand and
talked with him of Christ and hope in the dying hour. The young man lay
under it all in total and terrible despair, as if he had quenched the Spirit
forever—the last light seemed to have gone out. Noel bade him farewell and
left him in indescribable agony of soul; but as he lifted the latch, the
young man started up with a convulsive movement and begged him to return.
The pastor went back to his bed. The young man mustering all his strength,
drew his face down and whispered in his ear, "I am damned! I am damned!" and
then fell back upon his pillow, and in a few moments was before his God!
If the play-house and the skeptic-club bring such
retributions as that, what Christian father or mother will ever consent that
their loved ones should tread such fearfully slippery places?
I will now present several
simple tests, and I shall have completed this discussion.
1. Every recreation which makes me stronger in body,
happier in mind, and purer in heart, is beneficial.
2. Every amusement which is not an excitement, but the
means of healthful recreation and improvement, is allowable for a Christian.
I stand upon my Christian right in reference to them all—a healthy
conscience enlightened of God, is to be the best judge.
3. No Christian should ever take part in any
entertainments from which he cannot conscientiously turn to his Bible and
his closet.
4. No Christian should frequent any place which Jesus
Christ would forbid if he were personally on earth; nor should he be seen in
places so questionable that irreligious people would be startled in finding
him there. "Abstain," my friends, "from all appearance of evil."
5. Let me remind you of the best rule of all—God's rule.
Here it is, "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do," in work or
pleasure, "do all to the, glory of God." Then, when all your
activities are in full play for God, and your brain at work in blessed
schemes for studying and honoring him, your hands occupied in leading men in
paths of purity and truth, your whole self happy in your work, your
principles, your recreations—that is life, oh! That is life!
You and I have heard sometimes a military band
approaching from the distance. We first catch the notes of the horn, then
the rich swell of the bugle; then, as the band comes nearer, the finer,
gentler, and more delicate instruments mingle in with their harmony, until
at length they come upon us with full burst! The ear feeds on the exquisite
harmony, as the bee feeds on the honey of the flower. So a man who says,
"Whatever I do, I will do for the glory of God," finds in one act a
beautiful melody; in the next act a sweet harmony; in the next a delicious
joy; and so he goes on in full play and full work, nobly blending power with
power, affection with affection, and all with God; and making life a joyous
procession to the sound of horn, timbrel, and trumpet, he sweeps in at last
through the heavenly gates to the raptures of Paradise. O blessed Savior!
let your service be my unending recreation—your presence my everlasting
delight!