491. Amusements, Good and Bad

Amusements, Good and Bad

1Co_7:31 : ’93They that use this world, as not abusing it.’94

For the last hundred years the Church has spent much of its time in denouncing hurtful and dangerous amusements’97a cautionary work most important and necessary; but it seems to me that we have stopped short of the mark. Having been so long in telling the people what they must not do, it seems to me about time to tell them something they may do. This world will never be reformed by a religion of ’93don’92ts.’94 My text implies that there is a lawful use of the world as well as an unlawful use of it, and the difference between the man Christian and the man un-Christian is that the former masters of the world, while in the latter case the world masters him.

For whom did God make this grand and beautiful world? For whom this expenditure of color, this gracefulness of lines, this mosaic of the earth, this fresco of the sky, this glowing fruitage of orchard and vineyard, this full orchestra of the tempest in which tree branches flute and winds trumpet and thunders drum and all the splendor of earth and sky come clashing their cymbals? For whom did God spring the arch bridge of colors on the buttresses of broken storm cloud? For whom did God hang the upholstery of fire around the window of the setting sun? For all men, but more especially for his dear children. Suppose a man built a large mansion and lay out around it beautiful grounds at vast expense, and there are deer and statuary and fountains, and every botanical and horticultural luxury; and then he spreads a banquet to celebrate the completion of the work, will he send his children down into the cellar, or turn them out on the barren fields, while strangers come in and sit at the banquet? Oh, no! He will be very glad to have his neighbors and friends and strangers come in to rejoice with him at the festival; but all his children must be home that day. And I have to tell you that while the beautiful banquet of this world, and this grand mansion of the world with all its surroundings, may partially be enjoyed by those who are strangers to God’92s grace, the chief place, the best place, is for the sons and the daughters of the Lord Almighty.

When a man becomes a Christian he is not put on the limits, but turned out into a larger sphere. What does the Bible mean when it says ’93all are yours’94? Why it means all’97all innocent hilarities, all innocent amusements, all innocent beverages. ’93All are yours.’94 When a man becomes a Christian he becomes not less of a man but more of a man. Yonder is a factory with a thousand wheels, but it is low water. Now only fifty of the thousand wheels are in motion, but after a while the spring freshets come, and the floods roll down, and now all the thousand wheels have bands on them and are in motion. Before a man becomes a Christian only part of his nature is in activity and employment. The grace of God comes in with powerful floods of mercy and new impetus to action, and now instead of the fifty faculties or the fifty wheels, there are a thousand all in play and in full motion. Vastly more of a man since he became a Christian than before he became a Christian.

If any of you have dolorous sympathy with the large multitudes of people who stand up to profess faith in Jesus Christ, you only waste your sympathy. If you say within yourself: ’93Now, those people are going down into hardship and trial and trouble; why did they not stay a while and enjoy the world, and enjoy the felicities of this life, and then after they had enjoyed this world, in time to get ready for the next, give their hearts to God?’94’97they need none of your sympathy.

Before I get through I think you will get the intimation that those who stay out of the kingdom of God have the hardships, and those who come into the kingdom of God have the joys and the satisfactions. I mean this morning to serve a writ of ejectment upon all those’97all the sinful and the polluted’97who have squatted on the domain of worldly pleasure, and I am going to claim the inheritance of the sons and the daughters of the Lord Almighty. It seems to me wrong to stand Sabbath by Sabbath and year by year before people in whom there is a divine principle demanding recreation and amusement, and say this is wrong and that is wrong, and the other thing is wrong, without showing them something that is right.

So this morning, I shall go into a field not usual for sermonizing, but I shall preach what I think all common-sense men and women will conclude is a practical sermon, while I show you styles of amusement and recreation which are not only necessary but healthful’97good for the body, good for the mind, and good for the soul, and answer hundreds of questions which are asked me and asked other religious teachers.

First, I commend to you in the way of indoor recreations and amusements, music, vocal and instrumental. Among the first things created was the bird. Why? Because God wanted the world to have music at the start. And this infant world, wrapped in swaddling clothes of light, so beautifully serenaded at the start is to die amid the ringing blast of the archangel’92s trumpet; so that as the world had music at the start, it is going to have music at the last. I am glad there are so many homes in which music has been brought as a charm and as an education and as an elevation. What a delightful thing it is to have children brought up amid the sound of cultured voices and amid musical instruments. If you can afford the time and the money, have in your house harp or flute or piano or organ. Just as soon as the child’92s hand is large enough to compass the keys, teach that hand to pick out the harmony. And I say to all these young men, try the power of music upon your moral character, and in your entertainments and in the proper occupation of your hours of silence and solitude. Many a young man has been kept away from the temptations of this life because, although he has had only one room perhaps in a boarding house, in that room he has had some instrument of music that was his charm in time of solitude and temptation. There is something in it to soothe pain, to quell passion, to reclaim dissipation, to strengthen the immortal soul.

When Napoleon was in battle and found a favorite regiment falling back he said: ’93What is the matter with that regiment? It is made up of some of our bravest men,’94 and the word came to him that the brass band had stopped playing. Then he called up the fifers and pointed out to them the music turning over the portfolio and said play that, and they played it; and the retreating regiment fell into line, rallied their courage and won the day. O ye who are falling back into temptations and sorrows and annoyances and exasperations of this life just try the power of music to rally your scattered battalions. I am glad to know that in the cooler months of the year in our great cities there is hardly a night in which you cannot find sweet voices in concert or hear grandest players on instruments. Patronize such institutions. If you can afford the time and money buy a season ticket for the Philharmonic and the Handel and Haydn societies. The dollar or the dollar and a half or the two dollars paid for such entertainments, for the hearing of a great artist while he plays or sings’97that investment will be a profitable investment. Let your Steinway Halls and your Academies of Music roar with the acclamation of appreciative audiences at concert and oratorio.

I go further and I commend to all the people who are asking for innocent amusement and recreations, the gymnasium. I am glad to know that one has been established in connection with the Young Men’92s Christian Association in most of our cities, and that nearly all our colleges and seminaries that are worth anything have gymnasiums. It is an outrage to turn a young man out after four years’92 curriculum with destroyed bodily health however much an institution may have cultured his intellect. There is something about a gymnasium that is very charming and very elevating, and it is free from dissipation and from the temptations that come around many other forms of amusement. Some of you understand the virtue of such entertainments and recreations. Others of you perhaps do not. There are Christians who have been mightily benefited in their spiritual condition by such an institution. There are Christians who go all their life writing doleful things about their immortal souls when there is nothing the matter with them except an incompetent liver. There are people who have an idea that in order to be pious they must be poorly. Because Robert Hall and Richard Baxter were invalids all their life, and yet achieved great usefulness, these people have an idea they must go through the same sickness to the same grandeur of character. Now, I will tell you that God will hold you responsible for your invalidism if it is your own fault, and if with proper physical exercise, you could get rid of it. Take advantage of all that there is of health in such an institution.

There are multitudes of Christians who have all their prospects of heaven blotted out by clouds of tobacco smoke. They shatter the vase in which God has placed the jewel of eternity. They have a splendid intellect in a ruined body. Grand machinery capable of driving a steamer across the Atlantic fastened in a rickety river propeller. Now, my friends, take all the advantage there is in the gymnasium for the elevation of body and elevation of mind and elevation of soul. It is observable always that if you start out two men with equal consecration of soul, but the one is healthy in body and the other unhealthy, the man who is healthy will always accomplish the most good. The world has scoffed a great deal at what it calls ’93muscular Christianity,’94 but in the great contest for the world’92s deliverance we need much of the muscular. With such a puny set of Christians as we have got in this day we will never capture this world for God, I tell you. It is outrageous that a man with a good physique given by the Lord should allow it to go into sickness and into ruin, and instead of spending his life in behalf of some great enterprise, in behalf of God and the truth, spending all his days in studying what it is good to take for dyspepsia! A ship that ought to have all sail set, with every man at his post, having all the hands employed in stopping up the leakages. When you could, through the gymnasium or similar institutions, work off your querulousness and one-half your mental and physical disorder, how can you turn your back upon such a grand medicament?

I commend also to you among indoor sports and recreations, parlor games and amusements. We might make our homes a hundredfold more attractive than they are. You will never keep your boy away from outside dissipation until you make your domestic circle brighter than any other place he can find. Do not sit glum and with half-condemnatory look amid the sportfulness of your children. You were young once yourself. Let your children be young. Do not put on a sort of supernatural gravity, as though you never liked sportfulness. You liked it just as much as your children do. Some of you were full of mischief you have never admitted to your children or your grandchildren, and you never got up in the morning until you were pulled out of bed! Do not stand before your children pretending to be specimens of immaculate goodness. Do not, because your eyesight is dim and your ankles are stiff, frown upon the sportfulness which shows itself in the luster of the eye and in the bounding foot of robust health. Do not sit with the rheumatism wondering how the children can go on so. Thank God that they are so light of spirit, that their laughter is so free, that their spirits are so radiant. Trouble comes soon enough to them, and dark days and heartbreaks and desolation and bereavement. Do not try to forestall it. Do not try to anticipate it. When the clouds come on the sky it is time enough to get out the reef tackle.

Introduce into your parlors those innocent games which are the invention of our own day, and those that have come down from other days: chess and charades and battledore and tableaux and calisthenics and scores of others that young people can suggest and those that are suggested to you, many of them having on them not one taint of iniquity. And then you will want to take your family out with you sometimes. Beware, O man, if you never take your family with you to those places where you go for amusement. It is always a good sign when you see families going together to places of amusement.

I go further and commend to you field sports. I hail the croquet ground, and the sportsman’92s gun and the fisherman’92s rod and archery and lawn tennis and golf and scores of other amusements belonging to the fields. The fact is, there is something so unhealthy in the. city life that when the taker of the census says there are in the city four hundred thousand people there are only two hundred thousand, since it generally takes about two men to amount to one man, there is something so unnerving, so exhausting in our metropolitan life. We want more fresh air, more sunshine.

I cry out in behalf of the Church of God as well as in behalf of all healthful secularities, we want more sunshine and fresh air in our theology as well as in our secular literature. The reformers of the world, go into the studies, and they sit and they sit, and they study and they study, and they get morbid and bilious and think everything is going to ruin. It is not going to ruin; it is going on to salvation; and those of us who are the children of God are not on the way to a penitentiary but to a palace, and this world is not going to be all desert, it is going to be all garden. We want more sunshine in our theology. How are you going to get people in the kingdom of God’97drive them in? You cannot drive them in. How does this old book say they are to be got in? ’93I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.’94 You cannot drive them in. We want more fresh air and sunlight in our theology. So I wish that every winter our ponds and lakes might be all aquake with the heel and the shout of the swift skater; but now that warm weather has come I wish that the graceful oar might dip the stream and the eventide be filled with the song of the boatman, the bright view splitting the crystalline billow. I am glad there are so many field sports, so that men may come back with strength in the arm and luster in the eye and ruddiness in the cheek and courage in the heart. In this great battle now opening against the powers of darkness there is need not only of a consecrated soul but a strong arm and stout lungs and steady nerve and healthful physique. I am glad there are so many recreations’97some of them indoor, some of them outdoor’97that are good for the body, good for the mind, good for the soul, and it is time that the church of God woke up; instead of standing and saying all the time, ’93don’92t do this and don’92t do that and don’92t do the other thing,’94 tell the people of something they may do.

I come now’97for I want my sermon to be climacteric’97I come now to a grander recreation, and that is the pleasure of doing good. I have known a young man cross and sour and queer and feeble of body and mean of soul, disgusting everybody, under a heavenly touch transformed into a man buoyant and blissful, the earth and the heavens breaking forth into music. ’93Oh!’94 says some one, ’93I admit that that must be a great recreation, doing good, and I would employ that mode if I had the means.’94 You have the means. Some one says, ’93my means are extremely limited; you would be surprised how small my means are, and I can’92t employ that mode of recreation.’94 My brother, have you two hands? ’93Yes.’94 Have you two feet? ’93Yes.’94 Do you suppose that during the coming year you could devote ten dollars to charities? ’93Yes.’94 ’93Will you during the year be able to give twenty-five hundred cheerful looks to the desponding? ’93Yes.’94 Would you during the coming year have five thousand words of encouragement if you should seek for them? ’93Yes.’94 Magnificent equipment you have.

To-morrow morning on the way to the ferry you see a case of real destitution’97for sometimes there is a call from God in such a case’97and you can see right through and know the difference between a sham case and a real case of destitution. You contribute two pennies out of those ten dollars you are going to give during the year, and as the pennies rattle down into the blind man’92s hat he hears it and says, ’93God bless you, thank you, thank you, thank you.’94 You look indifferent. You pass down with assumed indifference for fear some one is looking at you. You look as if you were not elated, but from scalp to heel you feel a thrill. No need of denying it. You feel a great satisfaction in having made that man happy.

Forenoon passing along, you see a poor lad trying to get a wheelbarrow up over the curbstone. He has failed in the attempt. You say, ’93Here, stand back, let me try that,’94 and you push the wheelbarrow over the curbstone, you put it down, you start on. The poor lad is so surprised he has not even thanked you. You go on looking indifferent, but how thrilled you are. There is a great satisfaction, body, mind, and soul. You are made better. You are recreated.

After a while, perhaps in the middle of the afternoon, going along on some business errand, you see a sick man. He is not poor, he does not want any of your money, he has ten times more money than you have; but he is sick, so very sick, so despondent. Now you try on him one of those cheerful looks, one of those twenty-five hundred cheerful looks, one of those twenty-five hundred sympathetic, loving looks. You look at him as you pass. It thrills him. You are thrilled. You pass on. You do not tell any one the story; but in body, mind, and soul you feel it. You know it helped that sick man. On your way home you come by the store of a man whom you know very well, who is not getting on very well in business. He is embarrassed and discouraged. You go in and say, ’93Why, you have a nice store here. Business, I think, will be better after a while in your department. Sometimes there comes a strange lull in certain styles of business, but you will get over this; after a while there will be plenty to do, I have no doubt. Besides that, I have some friends whom I will introduce to you, and I think they will trade with you. Good-by!’94 ’93Good-by!’94 he says. You are thrilled again through and through with a holy satisfaction.

You get home. Somehow the door-plate is brighter than it used to be, and you pass in the door, and everything is bright. It seems as if you never had such a beautiful supper as you have that night. And then after a while you are seated by the fire and you sing a little and you talk a little and whistle a little, and you say after a while in an outburst, ’93Well, I don’92t know what is the matter with me; I never felt so splendidly in all my life.’94 I will tell you what is the matter with you. You gave two pennies out of the ten dollars that you are going to give during the year; you helped the boy up with his wheelbarrow; you gave ten or fifteen of the twenty-five hundred cheerful looks; you gave twenty or thirty or fifty of the five thousand cheerful words you are going to speak. That is what is the matter with you.

Why, the most magnificent recreation on earth for body, mind, and soul is doing good. Some of you have tried it. You know it better than I do, the whole story. Some of you, I have no doubt, have given a lad a dime just to see him hop and skip and jump. There are such men and women in the world, thank God. I cannot tell you the story. You can tell it better to me. But I will tell you I never had so bright a time in Prospect Park as one day when I was on the lake in a boat. I had been through the park hundreds of times, sometimes riding with very radiant friends, delightful friends; but I never had such a time as that day. I was in a boat on the lake in the park and two ragamuffins on the bank said, ’93Here, mister, won’92t you give us a ride?’94 I said, ’93Certainly.’94 So I pulled up to the bank and said, ’93Get in;’94 so they got in, one of them at one end the boat and the other at the other end the boat. Well, to hear those lads chatter and to see the joy they had in their hearts, and shining out in their faces! for God knows they had not had many boat rides’97they had done the most of the journey of life on foot, and bare foot. One of them said to me, ’93Mister, it seems to me I have seen you somewhere.’94 Said I, ’93Perhaps you have; you may see me again some time.’94 They tried to guess who I was and I tried to guess what their names were, and after about half an hour I put them on the bank, and I really did not know whether they had given me a ride or I had given them a ride. I think they gave me a ride! It was a little thing to do, but you all know the joy of having made somebody else happy.

Now, what is the use of choosing out bad amusements when there are so many innocent ones. Go forth to your healthful entertainments and recreations. Why will you stop your ears to a heaven full of songsters in order to listen to the hiss of a dragon? Why will you turn your back on a mountain side abloom with wild flowers, and adash with glittering torrents, in order with blistered feet to climb up the hot sides of a fire-belching Cotopaxi?

I admit that the path of sinful pleasure seems to open brighter than the path of Christian pleasure. The young man says, ’93Come, now, I am going to have a good time. Never mind the economy. I’92ll get money. If I can’92t get money one way, I’92ll get it another. Come on. The road is smooth. Crack the whip.’94 On they dash over the highway. ’93Fill high the cups, boys. Drink! Drink to health, drink to long life, drink to plenty of rides like this.’94

Hardworking men standing by the road, say: ’93I wonder where those men got their money. We have to work. We can’92t do that thing. They don’92t work and yet they have plenty of money.’94 They go on down in their merriment. They swear, they swagger. The midnight hears their guffaw. They jostle decent people off the sidewalk. They parody the hymn they learned at their mother’92s knee, and when some man draws before them the picture of their coming doom, they say, ’93Who cares,’94 or to some one giving them kindly advice they say, ’93Who are you?’94 Passing along some night in the street, you hear a shriek in a grogshop and the rattle of a watchman’92s club and the rush of the police. What is the matter? Killed in a grogshop fight. He is carried home and the old people come and wash the blood off the wounds and close the eyes in death. They forgive him; although he cannot ask it now, they forgive him. And the mother will go out into her little garden and gather the sweetest flowers she can find, and she will twist them into a garland for the still heart of her wayward boy, and will push from his swollen brow the long locks which were once her pride, and the air will be rent with the father’92s outcry as he says: ’93O my son, my son! my poor boy, would God I had died for thee. O my son, my son!’94

The day is coming when we will have to give an account for our amusements, for sinful amusements, if we have indulged in them, and if we have led anybody else into them. It seems a very smart thing to get into sin yourself and lead somebody else into it, does it not? So smart to get some one else into sin. There are young men who pride themselves on that. It is the pride of their life that having gone into sin they got somebody else on the same road. But they will have to answer for all this. I see before me a great theater. It is the theater of the Judgment. Scene, the last day. For stage, the rocking earth. Enter lords, dukes, princes, clowns, beggars. No sword, no tinsel, no crown. For footlights, the kindling flames of a world. For orchestra, the trumpets that wake the dead. For galleries, the clouds with angel spectators. For curtain, the heavens rolled together as a scroll. For plause, the clapping hands of the sea. For tragedy, the doom of the destroyed. For farce, those that tried to serve God and serve sin at the same time. For the last scene of the fifth act, the tramp of nations to receive their doom’97some to the right, some to the left.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage