ANOTHER PROPOSED INNOVATION.
By W. N. G.
"MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD suggests a Christian theater,—one conducted, as she says, in such a way that religious papers could advertise and recommend it, to which a young girl might be taken without fear of anything on the stage that would bring a blush to her cheek." So says the Church Union. The absurdity of the idea is manifest in the fact that the term "Christian theater" is a contradictory expression, excepting in the remote sense of a field of operations. The idea intended in the recommendation, evidently, is that of theatrical performance. In such a sense, a "Christian theater" is an impossibility. Theatrical performances are always mere mimicry, or representation, with sole reference to pleasing the multitude, and getting gain. Christianity, on the contrary, is reality itself, based on a "covenant of sacrifice." Every imitation of it, on the stage or elsewhere, is the direst fraud and deception; and anyone who should engage in such imitation with a view to benefiting either the church or the world, could not be otherwise than wofully self-deceived. The expression of solicitude for the "young girl," that she might have the privilege of a theater without the fear of seeing anything that would "bring a blush to her cheek," is entirely superfluous. The young ladies who have a taste for theater going are not much troubled in that way. Hundreds and thousands of them who profess the Christian name attend the existing playhouses with an avidity that indicates a quite482 general relish for what they see and hear. The Christian professor, young or old, whose life is absorbed in the realities of Christianity, will have no time or affinity for the gauzy imitations that the most alluring artist can place upon the stage. Christianity is light, and not shadow; it is life, and not dead imitation; it is truth, and not falsehood. Christianity never can be dramatized.
W. N. G.