THEATER going is on the increase. Sentiment against theater going is on the decline. A good per cent of theater attendance is from the churches. Whatever may be the claims and apologies made for the theater as an institution, its influence is on the side of evil. An old actor, now in active Christian work, said of the theater: "The life is demoralizing and immoralizing." Can the church stand four-square against moral evil, and patronize the theater? Can a church maintain its integrity as a church of Jesus Christ, and suffer its members to attend the theater? What fellowship has light with darkness, has Christ with Belial, has the believer with the infidel? Where will this thing stop? Should not the lines be drawn—at the theater? Doesn't God call for separation? "Large streams from little fountains flow." Many a fellow has become a confirmed and conscienceless gambler from the turn he got in the polite company of the parlor game. Many a girl has started on the pathway to ruin in the parlor dance. In some of our ladies' colleges the entertainments are nothing more nor less than theatricals on a small scale. They are first lessons in theater life. Girls get "stage struck," and the general effect is to create a taste and a sentiment in favor of the theater. Even churches sometimes take a turn at the theater business. A Baptist church that we know of gave, under its auspices, two theatrical entertainments. The young people, members of the church, learned, practised, and gave a straight-out play. The proceeds were for church purposes. They were amateurs, of course, but the affair was, to all intents and purposes, a theatrical. Is this not indirectly to encourage theater going, and create a taste for it?—Word and Way.