Not a Playhouse | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 6, 1879

Not a Playhouse.

A CHURCH turned into a hall, where actors, with disfigured faces and strange apparel, play for the amusement of the crowd! Is this right? What says every enlightened conscience?

"The church in the world," says a recent writer, "is like a ship in the ocean. The ship is safe enough in the ocean so long as the ocean is not in the ship. The church is safe enough in the world so long as the world is not in the church."

This is evidently sound doctrine. The church is safe so long as she remains true to her mission, but is she safe when her doors are thrown wide open to give an entertainment which, from beginning to end, savors more of the theater and the ballroom than it does of any other place or institution? Every student of sacred history knows that one of the main reasons why the Church became so corrupt during the Dark Ages was that she lowered the standard of purity and invited the world to come in and assist her. Are we not in a measure in danger of the same catastrophe? Are we not by these theatrical entertainments, given in our churches, inviting the world to come in and lend us the aid of its unsanctified talents and wealth? It may be pleasing to the natural man to have an enthusiastic gathering in the church; it may call forth the loud applause of the multitude, and help materially to defray the current expenses; but can God's house be desecrated with impunity? Can it be made a theater instead of a Bethel, without our sooner or later reaping the consequences? — N. Y. Observer.