The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-11-22

The morality OF these plays is sound;
the philosophy is optimistic and genial;
not pessimistic and morally hateful like
the modern French plays. The modern
burlesqne and farce degrade the legitimate
stage; there is no art in burlesque and
rearing farce; they teach nothing: teach
no depth OF human nature, but foster its
shallow, silly side. But because the stage
is abused we cannot afford to surrender its
splendid possibilities to those who seek TO
corrupt it and sink it to base ground.
The great John Wesley sang his hymns
to many secular airs, saying "the
devil ought not to have all the
good tunes" and the stage. which is as
old as literature and all other art, which
has always been with US and will always
be with US, cannot be given over to those
who degrade it any more than literature,
painting, sculpture and music can be sur
rendered to those who have pinned their
wings to the shoulders of the devil and his
host of the fallen angels of human nature.
The possibilities of the theater make for
inestimable good or for inestimabie evil,
according as its art, like the art of litera-
ture, painting, sculpture, music and poe
try is used TO lift up human nature or
drag its better angel down.
While this is to be said in simple JUS
tice of the beneticent power of the stage,
we do not agree with the extrava-
CANT estimate of those who, not con-
tent with defending and praisng the
stage, have placed it, as Anna Dickinson
did, above the pulpit. To say this of the
stage and Its actualities is absurd, be-
cause, from business point of view, the
primary purpose of the stage is successful
that can catch the largest number of PEN
MES. Moral and spiritual instruction, in
spiration, rebuke, remonstrance and APP
peal stand for the primary purpose of the
pulpit. 1t is no reproach to the church
that it does not "draw" as well as the thea
ter; you might as well reproach Christian
ity because it does not "draw" as many
millions after it as Mohammedanism or
Buddha. Dime novels sell faster than the
great fictions of Scott. George Eliot and
Thackeray, and many newspapers that are
full of tainted meat and poisonous fruit
flourish where ADLER and purer journals
faint and sometimes fail for lack of sup
port. 1t is easier to make men laugh or
cry it is easier to entertain men than it is
to capture their reason and judgment,
purify their consciences and lift them up
to the level of life of duty, not by prick
ing their superficial sensibilities, but by
plain, incorporating rebuke and un-
sparing denunciation.
The stage, even in the highest form we
behold it, is so far inferior to the pulpit in
its purpose and methods that it is a sure
sign of Goddess church when you find
theatric tricks of style in the sermon and
the affected note of melodramatic intens-
ity in the preachers voice. Sensational
preaching is nothing but the church in
the spirit of servile imitation touching its
cap to the theater. The pulpit that has
the smallest suggestiveness of theatric
methods and purpose of mere
entertainments is the pulpit of
the simplest and most earnest
Christianity. The man who wants a
excited between laughter and tears all the
time is just the man who will surely de-
grade the church with the dust, for his
church is naturally the theater, because
he has no care or thought for serious
illumination; he only wants to be amused
or excited. To claim for the stage supe-
rior moral influence to the pulpit is pure
= Al.
unexaggerated voice of moral principle and
purpose, like the pulpit; it is .mimetic
and dramatic art which may or may not
be instinct with high moral purpose and
effect.
The church, if it lives up to its high
office, deals with the sincere substance of
things, while the stage is but their shadow
dance. The preacher is presumably not
an actor at all; he is an exhorter and per-
suader, an inspirer and consider, with a
distinct continuous moral purpose behind
his profession. His purpose is not to
amuse, to entertain, but to instruct, re-
| buke, TO call sinners to repentance and re-
form. The stage and the pulpit ought not
| be enemies, but friends; the pulpit should
rebuke the stage when it stoops to please
the ditch with immoral representations
and obscene suggestions, but the pulpit
should welcome the stage when its art of
/ entertainment is subordinated to decent
| methods and high and humane representa-
| tons of both the weakness and the
| strength OF human nature. The stage
/ should be priced for what 1t is at its best;
/ not denounced without discrimination be-
cause of what it is at its worst; and it
should not be praised for what it is not,
/ by comparing it with the pulpit.
/ The stage at its best has large infiu-
epce for good; its satire never spares
/ society or politics, and does not always
spare the pulpit when the preacher is not
/ true TO himself and his high Office. but
! It's best influence for good is when il
/ seeks deeently as a matter of art to hold
| the mirror up TO human nature rather
than when it attempts deliberately
/ the specific presentation of what
| is termed "the moral drama" 1t
/ very likely does sober people no
/ good to witness on the stage the real
/ istic presentation of the horrors of intem-
| perance, it not seldom does those who
! drink to excess positive harm. During
| the performance of Drink" in London
several years ago, the audience in the gal
leries consumed great quantities of bottled
II