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HERE is a preliminary question to be settled before entering upon this subject. Have Christians any business with any amusements? If they have not, there is no blinking the conclusion that all such things, without exception, belong to that world which was renounced, together with the flesh and the devil, in Baptism. There can, then, be no discussion of comparative innocency, since the sin lies in being amused, and not in the means taken to obtain amusement.

We should not have raised this point, were it not that some very good people use it, not, however, as a logical principle, but, as good people will, for a convenient objection to whatever they hold to be .injurious.

There is no more common fallacy than this of censuring an undoubted evil in terms large enough to cover not it alone, but a great deal more.

Thus it is clear enough to the average mind and conscience that a Christian should not gamble. But when the reason why is found in the statement that a Christian should not amuse himself, good reasoning is turned into bad, unless the proposition can stand. Now, when the proposition is fortified by numerous instances of pernicious and doubtful amusements, it is apt to make a decided moral

impression. But, of course, any reasoner can see that one example to the contrary is sufficient to upset it, and many examples can be cited. We believe that there are some, indeed, who carry their argument a step further, and argue that a Christian, having given his time to God's service, has no right to take any of it for pleasure. We simply commend this position to that rigid practical reductio ad absurdum which every sensible person will at once apprehend.

We prefer to meet the objection by the plain statement that amusements are necessary, and that a healthy humanity can no more do without them than without food, drink, or sleep, and that only by drawing arbitrary and conventional lines, and calling things by false names, can the anti-amusement theory be propped

up.

For what is amusement? Whatever has for its prevailing purpose pleasure rather than use. We have known people work problems and solve geometrical puzzles involving hard mental labor, simply for amusement. Horne Tooke's "Diversions of Purley" is a tolerably abstruse work, even for professed philologists, and, with ninety-nine out of an hundred readers, would pass for severe study. Still, to some it would be an agreeable relaxation. There can be no drawing of arbitrary lines, only it is not quite fair to mingle use with amusement. The one is apt to destroy the other. It is one thing to find delight in one's work, and quite another to work for one's delight. There is a true difference between delight in work and delight in play. If the boy sent upon an errand cheat his fancy by pretending to be a traveller crossing the desert, he will hardly do his work as faithfully as if he kept his imaginings for his proper sport; nor will he take quite the same comfort in them. The two interfere. We take, therefore, the purpose as the only test. There may be the severest toil in amusement, and the utmost rejoicing ease in work, yet the two are radically different.

Amusement, then, meets a want in man's nature, and, as a complementary condition, is attached to the highest and best forms of work. It is to the ethical part of man's being what sleep and rest are to the physical. It is exertion without responsibility.

It may be said that an accountable being is never free from responsibility; but we maintain that, in the matter of amusement, responsibility extends only to the choice and duration of the amusement. It takes the child, as it were, to the garden-gate or play-room door, and, bidding it not to stray, leaves it to be happy in its own way, now that lessons are done, till it shall be called to duty again.

Broaden out this illustration, and it covers the whole of life. If lessons are to be well learned, students must have relief and compensation in play-time. This, then, is the test of responsibility. Amusement must be innocent per se, and it must be in harmony with the burden of work laid upon the amused.

By this canon we propose to examine the subject of popular amusements, a subject of no small importance in this country, and for all Christian people. Amusements divide themselves broadly into two classes,-active and passive. Active are those in which the pleasure comes from what a person does. Passive is enjoyment of what others do. The two often overlap and blend, but can be easily distinguished one from the other. Thus, the lookers-on at a boatrace and the rowers represent each their own class. This brings up the first limitation of responsibility. While all active amusements need only take into account the effect upon the actor therein, all passive amusements must be considered by their effect upon those who minister to them. It is often said, for instance, that there is surely no more harm in listening to the reading of a play of Shakes peare's, than in reading it one's self; and it is asked, Why, then, is there any more harm in listening to it when dramatically recited, with appropriate adjuncts? That may be true, but it is not the sole question. The Spartan made his helot drunk, by way of giving his own children a more impressive homily on the evil of intoxication than could be done by word of mouth. But, then, the Spartan felt no responsibility for either the mucous membrane or the moral sense of a helot. A fortiori, no amusement can be innocent which involves injury to the active ministrant; and, by the subtle working of moral law, that which is harmfully produced cannot escape doing harm to those who consent to its production. We do not say that acting Shakespeare is hurtful to the actor, only that if it is, it must do some harm to the spectator. Observe here, however, another limitation, viz., that the ministration must be necessarily degrading. A preacher of righteousness may be a bad man, but his congregation, who do not suspect it, need not be harmed thereby. There is no necessary connection between preaching and immorality.

The further question, then, is as to the tendency of passive amusements upon their ministrants. We maintain, furthermore, the broad proposition as to the ministration of amusement, that whenever enjoyment and action are wholly severed, so that that becomes one person's business which is another person's pleasure, there is a tendency to injury. Passive amusement is not, in itself, wrong. Active amusement is not in itself wrong. The danger lies in mak

ing the one the slave of the other, and thus converting it into taskwork. We do not care to enter into the metaphysics of this, but only to state and illustrate the fact.

Thus, if two school-boys are running a race, and the rest are looking on, it may be a healthy, innocent game for all; but just as certainly as the two are compelled to run that the others may see them, will an immediate effect for the worse be visible on all. It is right to give pleasure in whatever way it may innocently be done. But when it comes to selling pleasure, the pleasure or the seller is sure to be degraded.

This may, in some cases, be so slight as to be that "infinitely small quantity" which, as mathematicians tell us, "may be neglected." Thus, a poet does not harm himself by selling his verses to the public, or the public, by buying them, harm him. But if a laureate bind himself, by acceptance of an annual gratuity, to produce a certain number of verses on fixed occasions, the result has been proved beyond a doubt to be bad for the verses. The very term, "Court Poet," has a flavor of contempt in it.

We come now to another broad proposition which must be considered. Art, in its various departments, evidences certain capacities-passive in the mass, active in the few-both for receiving and giving pleasure. Certain ones are born specially musical, or with very keen perceptions of form and color, or with singular intellectual gifts of imagination and fancy. These are talents given such to be cultivated and used. Most readers will probably concede that the mimetic art comes under the same head. It is absolutely right to receive pleasure by the exercise of these, therefore not absolutely wrong to give pleasure. We admit their subordination to higher duties, but we do not admit that they are weeds which should be rooted up in the garden of life, any more than we admit that the only proper gardening work is raising edible vegetables.

We come now to another consideration still, which must be considered in regard to the two,-how far it is right to convert active pleasures to passive uses. Active pleasures, sports, games, and the like, derive their enjoyment from the doing, not from the thing done. Take, as instance, a boat-race. It is enjoyment for a young man, with firm muscles and sound wind, to put out his strength in the contest. Rather than not do it, any oarsman will race against time, or with any moving thing, steam-tug or sailing craft, which gives him a chance of competition. It is also enjoyment for him, when older, to look on at other youths rowing their matches. In both cases the enjoyment is legitimate," because in the one it is exer

tion, in the other sympathy, which gives the pleasure. But when those who never touch an oar look on at the rowing of professionals, it is illegitimate. Just so far as the latter row for gain, it is ignoble toil. If they can win a race by putting out a part of their strength, they will do it. If they can win by bribing their adversaries, they will do it. If they can make more money by appearing to contest and losing, they will do it. Consequently, the spectator has no pleasure of sympathy with human earnestness, pluck, or courage, but only the mere excitement of a trial of speed, or, worse still, the gambler's excitement at a game in which he is playing with marked cards and secret confederacy. If matches were only rowed by professionals, all interest to lookers-on would be this secondary and illegitimate enjoyment. The whole would mean betting, and nothing more. The turf, in Great Britain, shows what the result would be. Therefore, we hold that, in the case of active amusements, they must be amusement to the actor, or no one has any right to take pleasure in passively sharing them.

We once thought that the evil of professionals in such things lay in a misuse, which was to be feared, indeed, but was not inevitable. We now see that the thing itself is false, and that the moment the money element enters in, it is degrading. There is the same difference between the amateur and the professional, as once was between the knight-errant and the bravo.

The legitimate passive amusement, then, becomes limited to something which one is obliged to have done by another, but which one may take delight in seeing or hearing done, because of some excellence in the thing itself. Thus, acting gives enjoyment, whether it be by an actor or an amateur. It is Hamlet, or Lear, or Rosalind, or Lady Macbeth, whom we see and hear, not Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so. In fact, it heightens the illusion, and disturbs us less, when it is a professional who plays, because no sense of incongruity between the person and the character enters into the thought.

In the same way listening to music, vocal or instrumental, looking at feats of juggling or of skill, are all separated from the character of the performer. They are judged by themselves. If St. Cecilia attempt to sing or play, and cannot, it is a disappointment which no moral excellence on the Saint's part can make up to the auditor whose ears have been cheated. Nobody would now care to hear Madame Goldschmidt, though she is as good and pure as when she was young Jenny Lind. We do not mean to say that immoral performers may not and should not be let alone because of their morals; but but we do say that goodness, with a weak voice and defec