PERVERSIONS OF SCRIPTURE.
IN a recent caustic review of some of the arguments commonly used by apologists for the opera and its accompanying ballets, the Christian Standard says:— "We must not close without noticing a mischievous perversion of Scripture—for now, as in the olden time, the devil can quote Scripture! 'To the pure all things are pure,' quote the ballet defenders. Hence if one condemns the ballet as impure, it simply shows that he is impure himself! On this we wish to make three remarks. "1. When Paul used this language, he was not discussing moral purity at all, but was replying to those who insisted on legal distinctions of clean and unclean in reference to meats, and persons, and rites. He declares that to the enlightened Christian all such distinctions are valueless. But he did not say concerning drunkenness, adultery, and other offenses against moral purity, 'To the pure all things are pure.' "2. If the text is even applied to moral purity, it is as well to keep the whole text in mind: 'Unto the pure all things are pure; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.' Tit. 1. 15. It will not be pretended that the spectators at these ballet performances are, in the main, an assembly of saints. They are the lovers of fun and pleasure—the 'unbelieving,' as Paul would describe them, to whom such an exhibition must, according to this inspired authority, be anything else than pure. "3. There certainly are some things which are not pure to the pure—rotten eggs, for instance; and much more impure must be rotten hearts and rotten lives. Nothing that is known to be impure in itself, or of impure tendency, can be pure to the pure. And so far are the Scriptures from encouraging familiarity with such things, that the voice of wisdom is, 'Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of wicked men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.' 'Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.' It is better to put wax in one's ears than to listen to the song of sirens."