DANCING | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 6, 1880

DANCING.

The Sunday School Times says a great many good things, but we have seen none more just or seasonable than this: "Fashion fairly justifies a great many social customs, habits of living, and changes in dress; but fashion can never justify that which is in itself indecent or immoral. There are certain claims of propriety and purity which are paramount to every demand of popular favor. . . . No social approval can make what are called 'round dances' otherwise than an impurity—whatever may be thought of dancing generally. Nor can the ballet, or other popular form of obscene theatrical performance, be made else than repellant to a pure mind by the sanction of fashionable spectators. Fashion can neither abrogate the moral law, nor lower the standard of true purity."—Christian Statesman.

Bishop Coxe, of New York, says: "The gross, debasing waltz would not be tolerated for another year if Christian mothers in our communion would only set their faces against it, and remove their daughters from its contaminations, and their sons from that contempt of womanhood and womanly modesty, which it begets. Alas! that women professing to follow Christ and godliness should not rally for the honor of their sex, and drive these shameless dances from society."

Mrs. Gen. W. T. Sherman writes thus:— "The advocates of these dances have had their own way long enough, sneering upon and ridiculing those who quietly decline to participate, openly and constantly insinuating that they are evil minded, impudently quoting, as their only weapon, the maxim 'Honi soit qui mal y pense,'—and then throwing themselves into the arms of men, to prove their own purity of mind." The same lady has since written another letter in which she says she has noticed "the wail of the wounded and the guilty" since her first denunciation of the amusement, and adds: "It is not expected that young girls, who are unconscious of evil in the beginning, should reflect long enough to summon up moral courage to resist the allurements of the dance, unless with the encouragement and support of their parents. To the honor of pure maidenhood be it said, however, that there are young girls who decline from instinctive delicacy, even when their parents would have them join the throng who dance down the broad road of worldly pleasure."

George William Curtis, editor of Harper's Weekly, has this to say of round-dances: "We saw at a private ball a few young men looking upon the dance very soberly; and upon inquiry learned that they were engaged to certain ladies of the corps de ballet. Nor did we wonder that the spectacle of a young woman whirling in a decollete state, and in the embrace of a warm young man, around a heated room, induced a little sobriety on the lover's face, if not sadness in his heart."

The following expression of opinion is from a member of the Board of Police Commissioners for the city of Cincinnati:— "Mr. Carson, a member of that Board, recently received a letter from some one asking the police to suppress the ballet-dancers. Mr. Carson said he was in favor of suppressing these shows, but he had carefully weighed the matter, and he was not quite sure now whether the reform should not begin higher up—whether before this dancing in the variety theaters was forbidden it were not better first to suppress round-dances and low-necked dresses in society parlors. He agreed with Mrs. Sherman in saying that the round-dance was the most demoralizing kind of entertainment, and he wanted people to understand that, before they undertook to dictate to the police commissioner respecting ballet-dancing, they ought first to do away with round dancing and low-necked dresses in their own parlor—they ought first to learn the wrong of copying Paris fashions, Cora Pearl dresses, and men-milliners. If they try to mimic Paris society, what can they expect but that the theaters will copy Parisian models? Yet people allow the embraces of the waltz, and low-necked dresses, and then want the ballet girls arrested."

The Rev. A. B. Leonard, pastor of Grace Methodist Episcopal church, of Dayton, Ohio, recently read a paper before the Ministerial Association of that city, which was afterwards published at the request and with the endorsement of fifteen other pastors, who desired in this way publicly to express their judgment, and utter their testimony. He said:— "The motions and movements of the waltz cannot be described without giving offense to true modesty while the positions of the bodies of the dancers cannot but brush virtue's glow from the cheek of purity. "To a young man who was passionately fond of dancing I once put the question: Did you ever swing a young lady in the dance for one half hour without arousing a passion in your nature that you would have been ashamed to have made known? Instead of answering he blushed and turned his back, thus admitting the fact which the question implied. Many a pure girl has been in the arms of a lecherous villain, and swung in the dance until all her physical and moral energies have been relaxed, after which in a secluded place, she has surrendered her person, virtue and happiness to her destroyer. "But the evils of the modern dance do not stop with the ruin of unmarried women. They go further, and separate, in not a few instances, husband and wives, and turn Eden homes into perditions of wretchedness and sorrow. A writer has recently said: 'The dancing hall is the nursery of the divorce court, the training-shop of prostitution, the graduating school of infamy.' It is a fact which cannot be successfully denied that in what is known as fashionable society, the dance occasions a large percentage of the divorce cases that occur—perhaps larger than any other social influence."

It will be observed that these opinions are not from a set of "puritanical bigots." They are from a popular Sabbath-school paper, from a bishop of the Episcopal church, from the editor of Harpers Magazine, from the wife of the General of the United States Army, from the police comissioners of Cincinnati, and from sixteen pastors of the city of Dayton, Ohio. What is the duty of Christians in view of testimony like this? We have no hesitation in saying that it is the duty of all Christians to shun dancing as they would the plague. Let the world dance if it will, but let the bride of Christ keep herself from this poluting and deadly pleasure.—Christian Cynosure.