Then, to go to one theater, sanctions all. To have heard and to have
seen Joe Jefferson in "Rip Van Winkle," Richard Mansfield in "The
Merchant of Venice," or Edwin Booth or Sir Henry Irving, or Maude
Adams, or Julia Marlowe in their best plays, is to have received a
deeper insight into human nature, and a stronger purpose to become
sympathetic and true, but who can afford to sanction all that is base
and villainous is the institution of the modern theater for the sake of
learning sympathy and truth and human nature from a few worthy
actors, when he may find all of this as truthfully, if not as artistically,
set forth by the orator, by the musician, by the painter, and by the
author? It is not cant, it is not pharisaism, it is not a weak claim of
Christianity, but it is common honesty, mighty truth, a cardinal and
beautiful teaching of Jesus Christ to deny one's self for the welfare
of the weaker brother. Let one go to hear Mansfield in Shakespeare,
and his neighbor boy will take his friend and go to the vaudeville, and
his only excuse to his parents and to his half-taught mind and heart
will be, "Well, Mr. So-and-So goes to the theater, he is a member of
the Church and superintendent of the Sunday-school; surely there is
no harm for me to go." To the immature mind what seems right for
one person seems lawful for another. This is because such a person
has not learned to discriminate between what is bad and what is good.
Therefore, if the theater as an institution has more in it that is bad than
It has in it that is good, rather if the general tendency of the theater, as
an institution, is bad, the safe thing for one's self and for those who
read one's life as an example, is to discard it entirely.

In view of these facts, no person can attend the theater at all without
hurting his influence. The ideal life is that one which gives offense
of stumbling to no one. A successful preacher who had an aversion
toward speaking on the subject of questionable amusements, when