The Yale expositor., 1900-03-23
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
DRAMATIC ART THE SUBJECT
LAST SUNDAY.
The Text Is /. Corinthians VII, 81
"They That Use This World as Not
Abusing It"-Purify but Do Not
Suppress 1t.


course is that l have been kindly in
vited by two of the leading newspa-
pers of this country to inspect and re-
port on two of the popular plays or
the day-to go some weeks ago to Chi
cago and see the drama Quo Vadis
and criticise it with respect to it's mo-
raj effect and to go to New York and
see the drama "Ben-Hur" and write
my opinion of it for public use. In
stead of doing this | propose in n SER
mon to discuss what we shall do with
the dramatic element which God has
| implanted in many of our natures, not
in 10 or 100 or 1000, but in the vast
majority Of the human race. Some peo-
pie speak of the drama as though IT
were something built up outside of
ourselves by the Congreves and the
Goldsmiths and the Shakespeares and
the Sheridans of literature, and that
then we attune our tastes to CORE
spond with human inventions. Not at
all. The drama is an echo from the
feeling which God has implanted in
our immortal souls. 1t is seen first in
the domestic circle among the children
three or four years of age,playing with
their dolls and their cradles and their
carts, some ten years after in the play
houses of wood, ten years after n
parlor charades, after that in the
elaborate representations in the acade-
mics of music. Thespis and Aeschy-
lus and Sophocles and Euripides mere
ly dramatized what was in the Greek
heart Terence and Plautus and Sem
eca merely dramatized what was in
the Roman heart. Congreve and Far
! Quhar merely dramatized what was
in the English heart. Racine, Cor
nellie and Alfieri only dramatized what
was in the French and Italian heart.
Shakespeare only dramatized what
was in the great worlds heart. The
dithyrambic and classic drama, the
sentimental drama. the romantic
drama, were merely echoes of the hui
man SOUL
l do not speak of the drama on the
poetic shelf, nor of the drama in the
playhouse, but speak of the dramatic
element in your soul and mine. We
make men responsible for it, but not
! for the original implantation. God
did that work, and l suppose he knew
what he was about when he made us
We are nearly all moved by the spec
| tacular. When on Thanksgiving day
we decorate our churches with the cot
ton and the rice and the apples and
| the wheat and the rye and the oats,
our gratitude to God is stirred. When
on Easter morning we see written in
| letters of flowers the inscription, He
Is Risen," our emotions are stirred.
Every parent likes to go to the school
exhibition with it's recitaticns and its
dialogues and it's droll costumes. The
torchlight procession Of the political
campaign is merely the dramatization
Of principles involved. No intelligent
man can look in any secular or religi-
GUS direction without finding this
dramatic element revealing, unrolling,
demonstrating itself. What shall we
! do with it?
Shall we suppress it You can as
easily suppress its Creator You may
direct it, you may educate it, you may
purify it, you may harness it to multi
potent usefulness, and that it is your
duty to do. Just as we cultivate the
taste for the beautiful and the sublime
by bird haunted glen and FOSTERING
stream and cataracts let down in up
roar over the messed rocks, and the
day lifting its banner of victory in the
east, and then setting everything on
fire as 1t retreats through the gates
Of the west, and the Austerlitz and Wa
terloo Of an August thunderstorm bla-
zing their batteries into a sultry after
noon, and the round, glittering tear Of
q world wet on the cheek of the night
as in this way we cultivate our taste
for the beautiful and sublime, so in
every lawful way we are to cultivate
the dramatic element in our nature.
by every staccato passage in literature,
by antithesis and synthesis, by every
tragic passage in human life.
Now. have to tell you not only thai
God has implanted this dramatic ele-
ment in our natures. but | have to
tell you in the Scriptures he cultivates
it, he appeals to it, he develops it. /
do not care where you open the Bible,
your eye will fall upon a drama. Here
it is in the book of Judges, the fir tree,
the vine, the olive tree, the bramble-
they all make speeches. Then at the
close OF the scene there is a coronation.
and the bramble is proclaimed king.
That is a political drama. Here it is
in the book of Job: Enter Eliphaz,
Blldad, Zophar, Elihu and Job. The
opening act of the drama, all dark-
ness; the closing act of the drama, all
sunshine Magnificent drama is the
book of Job!
Fifty essays about the sorrows of the
poor could not affect me as a little
drama of accident and suffering | saw
one slippery morning in the streets of
Philadelphia. Just ahead of me was a
lad, wretched in apparel, his limb am
putated at the knee; from the pallor
Of the boys cheek, the amputation not
long before. He had a package of bro
ken food under his arm-food he had