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Lovers of Pleasure

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 25, 1862

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 20, No. 26.

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Lovers of Pleasure.

By R. F. Cottrell

It is remarkable that, while the country is involved in a most destructive and terrible war, and mourning is in every neighborhood, and almost in every house, our pleasure-loving people find no time to pause in their revelry and mirth, but festivities, parties, balls, and all sorts of amusements, are the order of the day.
How much, in this respect, does our own nation resemble France in the days of the triumph of infidelity! And yet ours is called a Christian nation. In Clarke's Lectures to Young Men, p. 127, we have the following concerning infidel France:
"While the courts of justice, says Burke, were thrust out by Jacobin tribunals, and silent churches were only the funeral monuments of departed religion, there were in Paris no fewer than twenty-eight theatres, great and small, most of them kept open at the public expense, and all of them crowded every night. Among the gaunt forms of famine—amidst the yells of murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries of despair—amid these, the song, the dance, the mimic scene and buffoon laughter, went on as regularly as in the gay hours of festive peace."
Look on that picture, and then look on our own little capital in this enlightened, and, so-called, Christian, land.
"Six theatres and two circuses are in full blast in Washington—the circus tents on Sunday are used for religious services."—Niag. Co. Intel., Nov. 12, 1862.
Washington is only a specimen. Every city and large village are infected with the same malady. And besides the theatres, circuses, and parties in private and public houses, troupes of professional fun-makers are traveling the country in every direction, receiving the countenance and support of the people. The watch-word seems to be, "On with the dance! let joy be unconfined."
Are we approaching the conversion of the world and the temporal millennium which we have been hearing so much about? R. F. COTTRELL.