St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-05-04
DR.. Talmage Discourses Eloquently on
All Kinds of Pleasures,
Good and Bad.
The Healthful Results of Many Recreations
That Build Up the Body
and Soul.
InduIgences that Lead to Robbery i,
Bankruptcy, Drunkenness, Mis-
cry and Often the Prison.
Bright Domestic Circles That Have
Been Broken Up and Ruined by
Sinful Amusements.
Talmage's Sermon.

nacle this morning ON the subject, Opera
houses, theaters, bowling alleys, skating
rinks and all kinds of amusements, good
and bad, on trial. The opening hymn
was
awake, my soul, stretch ev'ry nerve
And press with vigor on!'
The text was from Judges xvi, 25:
"And it came to pass, when their hearts
were merry, that they said: Call for Sam
son that he may make us sport; and they
called for Samson out of the prison house
and he made them sport"
In this course of sermons l am now
you must have noticed that have
no sympathy with ecclesiastical straight
jackets, or with that wholesale denuncia-
ton of amusementS to which many are
pledged. believe the church of God has
made a tremendous mistake in trying to
suppress the sportfulness of youth and
drive out from men their love of amuse-
ment. If God ever implanted anything in
us He implanted this desire. But instead
of providing for this demand of our nature
the church Of God has, for the main part,
ignored it. AS in riot, the mayor plants
q battery at the end of street and has it
fred off, so that everything is cut down that
happens to stand in the range, the good as
well as the bad, so there are men in the
church who plant their
BATTERIES OF CONDEMNATION
and fire away indiscriminately. Everything
is condemned. There are great many who
lenounce ball-playing. They hate puzzles;
they despise charades; they abhor tableaux;
they say away with all parlor games 'They
talk as if they would like to have our youth
dressed in blue uniform, like the children of
an orphan asylum, and march down the path
Of life to the tune of the Dead March in Saul.
They hate blue sash or rosebud in the hair,
Or tasseled gaiter, and think man almost
ready for Sing Sing who utters conun-
drum. Young Mems Christian associations
of the country are doing glorious work.
They have fine reading rooms and all the
influences are of the best kind, and are now
adding gymnasiums and bowling alleys.
where, without any evil surroundings our
young men may get physical as well as
spiritual improvement. We are dwindling
away to narrow-chested, weak-armed,
race, when God calls us to a
work in which he wants physical as well as
spiritual athletes. l would to God that the
time might soon come when in all our col
leges and theological seminaries, as at
Princeton, a gymnasium shall be established.
We spend seven years of hard study in
for the ministry and come out
with bronchitis and dyspepsia and
LIVER COMPLAINT,
and then crawl up into the pulpit and the
pulpit and the people say: Don't he look
because he looks sicl1ly. Let
the church of God direct rather than attempt
to suppress the desire for amusement. The
best men tnat the world ever knew have
had their sports. William Wilbefforce
trundIed hoop with his children. Martin
Luther helped dress the Christmas tree.
Ministers have pitched quoits. Philanthro-
phists have gone a-skating. Prime minis
ters have played ball.
This church to-day is filled with men and
women who have in their souls ullmeasured
resources of sportfulnesS and frOlic. Show
me man who never lights up with sport
fulnesS and has no sympathy with the rec
reations of others and I will show you
man who Isl stumbling block to thekingdOm
of God. Such men are caricatures OF relig-
ion. They lead young people to think that
a man is good in proportion as he grOanS
and frowns and looks sallOw, and that the
height of mans Christian stature is in
proportion to the length of his face. I
would trade off 500 such men for one bright
faced radiant Christian On whose face are
the words, ''RejOice, evermOre!"
Now, all opera houses, theaterS, bowling
alleys, skating rinks and all styles of amuse-
ment, good and bad, 1 put on trial to-day
and Judge of them by certain cardinal prin-
ciples. First, you may judge of any amuse-
ment by it's healthful result or by its
BALEFUL REACTION.
There are people who seem made up of
hard facts They are combination of
multiplication tables and statistics. If you
show them an exquisite picture they will
begin to discuss the pigments used in the
coloring. If you show them beautiful
rose they will submit it to botanical anal
ysis, which is only the post-mortem exam
nation of flower. They have no rebound
in their nature. They never do anthing
more than smile. There are no great tides
of feeling surging up from the depths of
their soul, in billow after billow of rever-
berating laughter. They seem as if nature
had built them by contract and made
bungling job out of it. But, blessed be
God, there are people in the world who
have bright faces and whose life is sun, an
anthem, pean of victory. Even their
troubles are like the vines that crawl up the
side or great tower, on the top of which
the sunlight sits and the soft airs of sum-
mer hold perpetual carnival.
Still further; those amusements are
wrong which lead you into expenditure be-
yond your means Money spent in recre-
alton is not thrown away. 1t is all folly
for us to come from place of amusement
feeling that we have wasted our money and
time. You may by it have made an invest
ment worth more to you than the transac
ton that yielded you hundred or a thou
sand dollars. But how many properties have
been riddled by costly amusments? The table
has been robbed to pay the club. The cham
pagne has cheated the children's wardrobe.
The carousing party has burned up the boys
primer. The table-clOth of the corner saloon
is in debt to
THG WIFE'S FADED DRESS.
Excursions that in day make tour
around a whole months wages; ladies
whose lifetime business it is to ''go shop
ping'' have their counterparts in uneducated
children, bankruptcies that shock the money
market and appal. the church, and that send
dashing into the mirror and
drowning out the carol of music with the
whooping of bloated sons come home to
break their old mothers heart. When men
go into amusements that they cannot afford,
they first borrow what they cannot earn
and then they steal what they cannot bor-
row. First they go" into embarrassment
and then into lying and then into theft;
and when man gets as far on as that, he
does not stop short Of the penitentiary.
There is not a prison in the land where
there are not victims Of unsanctitied amuse-
ments. How often I have had parents
come to me and ask me to go over
to New York and beg their boy off from
crimes that he had committed against his
taking of funds out of the
employers till or the disarrangement of the
Why, he had salary enough to
pay all lawful expenditure but not enough
salary to meet his