Amusements—When Innocent, When Sinful.
By D. F. Newton
OBJECT to amusements for little folks or great folks? When—on what occasion? Not a breath of it. We delight to see every one, little and big, mounting up on eagle’s wings joyfully. The whole world is alive, on fire, with things beautiful, musical. The twinkling stars, the sun, the moon, and all nature pour forth their sweet melodies. The little hills skip like lambs, the mountains break forth into singing, and all the trees of the forest clap their hands joyfully. The birds of the air amuse themselves; the beasts of the field, the fishes of the sea. Sooner hush the tuneful lark, tie the legs of the skipping squirrel, stop the flowers from blooming, or the woods and the fields from growing green, as deprive the buoyant youth of innocent recreation. The question is not between amusements, and no amusements, but between those that are innocent, and those that are hurtful. The world is on fire for something to feed the passions, gratify a corrupt taste. Volumes on volumes are written, regions above, and regions below, ransacked to kill time, and murder the soul! The rush is perpetual after the ephemeral or evanescent, the thirst is to sip at the foul sediment of corrupt pleasure, which, at last, biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder; though every sunbeam is winged with glory, and every snow-flake drops heavenly benedictions from the skies for our pleasure. God is love. Gladness meets us at every step. Our walks, our rides, our pleasure labor, our social interviews, our books, our innocent, virtuous, hallowed festivities, afford ample and varied means for rational exhilaration. Who, then, but a fool or a madman, would plunge into the whirl of fashionable dissipation? All amusements and recreations, 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. Oh! that parents and children would see and feel this. How many are now weeping tears of blood for the first step in this downward path! One wrong step prepares the way for another. The way of evil is downward. “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.” Prov. 4:14, 15. Dancing parties, masquerades, every species of gambling, chess, checkers, marble and card-playing, prize-fighting, cock-fighting, betting of all kinds, horse-racing, the public revel, the barbecue, the circus, the theater, the billiard-table, the soiree, the tea-party, going from house to house on the first day of the new year, partaking to surfeiting rich and costly dainties, sipping the wine-cup, deemed by some innocent, are more or less expensive, foolish, hurtful, soul-destroying, pitfalls of Satan. The most popular amusements are inconsistent with the principles of Christianity, hazardous to the soul’s life. Theaters in all ages have been nurseries of vice, sinks of iniquity, places of abominations, and strongholds of the devil. The very atmosphere around these haunts of iniquity is polluting! In these strongholds of Satan are personated the worst characters in vivid colors, utterances given to profane and immoral sentiments, and they are resorted to, by the most vicious characters. Thus they offer the contamination of corrupt associations, and are prolonged to late hours, which are additional sources of danger. 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 globes, 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 are of doubtful quality. On the contrary, such has been the Creator’s goodness, that almost every one of our physical, intellectual, and moral faculties, and the same may be said of the whole creation which we see around us, are 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 gratifying 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 and disgrace. A passion for amusement 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.” D. F. NEWTON, Ed., “Apples of Gold.”