AMUSEMENTS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 7, 1869

AMUSEMENTS.

The amusements and recreations which are lawful and innocent, are those, and only those, which tend to promote health of body, vigor of mind, purity of soul, and thus qualify for a better discharge of higher and more important duties.

We consider all amusements or pastimes, which tend to stimulate the passions unduly, excite impure emotions, and corrupt the heart, sinful, and to be strictly avoided.

“Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass by it, turn from it, and pass away.” Prov. iv, 14, 15.

Every diversion, beloved reader, attended with dissipation, cruelty, immorality, and impiety,—everything giving pain to a fellow-creature, everything tending to vitiate or pollute the mind, or render it indisposed to devotion,—must be wrong and strictly avoided.

We have no right to visit any place of amusement from which we cannot return to our closets with as ardent a flame of holy devotion as when we left them. Some of the amusements we consider lawful and innocent, and which may be safely recommended to persons enjoying health, strength of body and mind, are gardening, walking and riding, sacred music, drawing, painting, botany, a survey of natural and artificial curiosities, the use of the globe, the telescope, the microscope, useful company, agreeable conversation, and entertaining books.

“Let us not so wrong and vilify the bounties of Providence, as to allow for a moment that the sources of innocent amusement are so rare that men must be driven, almost by constraint, to such as are of doubtful quality. On the contrary, such has been the Creator’s goodness, that almost every one alike, of our physical, intellectual, and moral faculties—and the same may be said of the whole creation which we see around us—is not only calculated to answer the proper end of its being, by its subserviency to some purpose of solid usefulness, but to be the instrument of administering pleasure.

“Our Maker, also, in his kindness, has so constructed us, that even mere vicissitude is grateful and refreshing—a consideration which should prompt us often to seek, from a prudent variation of useful pursuits, that recreation for which we are apt to resort to what is altogether unproductive and useless.

“Yes, rich and multiplied are the springs of innocent relaxation. The Christian relaxes in the temperate use of all the gifts of Providence. Imagination, and taste, and genius, and the beauties of creation, and the works of art, lie open to him. He relaxes in the feast of reason, in the intercourse of society, in the sweets of friendship, in the endearments of love, in the exercises of hope, of confidence, of joy, of gratitude, of universal good will, of all the benevolent and generous affections, which, by the gracious ordinance of our Creator, while they disinterestedly intend only happiness to others, are most surely productive to us of complacency and peace.”

We might mention numerous other things equally innocent and useful; but this is sufficient to prove how easy we may be amused without running after the silly frivolities of an unsanctified world, and which, under the pretense of enjoying necessary recreations, debase our nature, and involve us in misery.

A passion for amusements wastes time, enfeebles the body, dissipates the mind, destroys usefulness, and leads to great expense. “He that loveth pleasure,” says Solomon, “shall be a poor man.” The most popular amusements are inconsistent with the principles of Christianity, hazardous to the soul’s life. No question is exciting greater interest in the Christian public, than that of amusements, or pleasure-seeking.

We read that the “joy of the Lord is your strength,” and that our rejoicing must be in God to make it a religious joy. It is not a religious joy where professedly religious men indulge in gratifications that are worldly and frivolous.—Earnest Christian.