“What Are Amusements For?”
REPLYING to this question the editor of the Sunday School Times, in his issue of February 6, makes these sensible comments:— We need amusements in life. We ought not to try to get along without them. But what are amusements for? They are for re-creation: they should re-create our strength, mental and physical; and they should do this in a way that harms no one. They are not the chief business of life; they have a place in life in order that we may turn from them better able to do our best. There are plenty of amusements that fulfill these conditions. But card playing and dancing are not among them. Card playing, while perhaps innocent in itself, has two objections. It is a game of chance. Skill enters into it also. But chance is a chief factor in the game; and card playing tends to place an unhealthy emphasis upon chance as a factor in life. Moreover, card playing has associations that are demoralizing. It is a game that, while played in all classes of society, is peculiarly appropriated by the most disreputable. It would surprise everybody to see such men as D. L. Moody, or J. Wilbur Chapman, or Billy Sunday, or John G. Paton, or Robert E. Speer playing a game of cards. Are the card players in any community conspicuous for their active, evangelistic Christian service? Dancing is openly disreputable. It sanctions physical liberties between men and women that would not be tolerated under any other circumstances. It would at once lose its grip on society if there were no dancing between the sexes,—men dancing only with men, and women only with women. Can we imagine our Lord Jesus Christ, while on earth as a man, dancing?