asked what he believed concerning a certain form of amusement,
replied: "See what I do, and know what I believe." It is a glorious
life whose actions are an open epistle of righteousness and peace,
read and believed and honored by all men.

"Some time ago a gentleman teaching a large class of young men
in a Chicago Sunday-school, desired to attend a theater for the
purpose of seeing a celebrated actor. He was not a theater-goer,
and thought that no harm could come from it. He had no sooner
taken his seat, however, than he saw in the opposite gallery some
of the members of his class. They also saw him and began commenting
on the fact that their teacher was at the theater. They thought it
inconsistent in him, lost their interest in the class, and he lost his
influence over the young men. That teacher tied his hands by this
one act, so that he could not speak out against the gross sins of the
theater."

Those who defend theater-going say that if Christian people would
patronize the theater that it would be made more respectable. But
over a thousand years of history proves that this principle fails here
as it does elsewhere. A Christian woman marries an unchristian man
with the hope that he will become a Christian; a steady, sensible
woman in all other matters marries a man who drinks, with the
thought of reforming him; one associates with worldly and sensual
companions, expecting to make them better; but, alas, what blasted
hopes, what wretched failures in all of these instances, at least in the
most of them! You can not reform vice; you may whitewash a sin,
but it will be sin, still. To purify a character or an institution one
must not become a part of it by sympathy, nor by association. This
is what the psalmist meant when he said, "Blessed is the man that