The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-12-15
ALLUSION TO "BEN.HUR"
REV. j. CUMMING SMITH FINDS A
LESSON IN THE PRODUCTION.
Tint Saw the PIay-Whar Ought
to BE Done.

Tint Saw the Play-Whar Ought
TO Be Done.
The Rev. ]. Cumming Smith at the Tab
ernacle last evening preached on The
Dramatization of Truth" He said: "A cell
ebrated fiction is now being dramatized in
our city in a masterful manner. and the
fact that the theater has been thronged.
not alone by those who go to it a rule,
but by many who honestly look upon il as
sin to darken the doors of such worldly
resorts, is surely significant To some 1T is
ominous of evil. To some il means the
fatal identification of the church and the
world. To others of equally sincere and |
profound piety il marks a new era. 1t
opens the chance of lifting the stage TO |
higher level. a large number of stage |
managers really desire. For my own part |
there would appear two honorable alterna-
tives for earnest Christians: Either from !
conscience to avoid the 'theater altogether |
as an inherently depraved and irredeemable /
institution, or to remodel it and reconsti- |
tute it by demanding the highest art and |
teachings it's boards and lend your
patronage to the stage when it becomes the |
organ of truth and wholesome lessons of !
virtue. No doubt the church will yet eaven
the entire social system, but only on the
condition that it enter the arena and in
wrestle overthrow the enemy. The condi-
ton is severe. You cannot wrestle a rule
away from your opponent. You must Crap
pie The monastic plan was avoidance.
The modern plan lis mastery To leave the
world is not TO save it, and to starve the
theater when il offers vrtuous drama is
hardly to reform it. Try to annihilate it IL
your conscience commands. but annihila-
ton of what has lasted so long and of what
has incalculable possibilities in the direc-
ton OF the best things looks doubtful or
unwise: The millennium means not flight.
but fight; not abandonment, but the occu-
patton OF the whole world by the good; a
time OF universal brotherhood and bound
less freedom, because a redeemed huma nifty
shall carry Gods ideals into every realm
of life.
Now you will permit a deeper sugges-
ton. There seems to be an instinct to
dramatize the recent literature or human
life. The dream haunted the poet till it
found its garment of verse; the plot gave
no rest until ii found a permanent express
sion In the novel, and then II seemed to
torment some parties until it was repro
duced on the stage in some vivid spectacu-
lar manner. AS the frost must perfOrce
trace its delicate etchings on the window
pane or as the springtime cannot be re-
strained in its tendency to bring out the
myriad blooms on sunny slopes, so every
where there is a genius of expression.
everything must come out. The law of ex-
| preston enters as another secret of nature,
but only to make more chaste and subdued
| the eloquence which is universal. There
| can be no secrets locked forever. The most
| guarded bank vaults must empty out. Life
| tempts out the coy hidden virtues IN
| conscious actions are detectives of our in
nermost selves. Our featured faces are in
| formers of our passions and generosities or
| avarices. When the day of Judgment
| comes, as in generic sense 1t has come
| long ago, then no books will need be opened
and no clerk of court will need to read the.
| charges. but on the entablatures of memory
be written, and the deeps of a lifetime will
expose themselves to view.
THE LAW OF BEING
Everything comes out by an irrevocable
law of being and externalizes itself 1t
| seems a zeit-geist, not of fictions alone,
but of modern impulses. The abstract into
the concrete; the theory into action; the
poem into the prose Of each hour; the truth
into flesh and blood the new law of science
into marketable utility; the creed into
life. And is not this on the whole a happy
| and genuine sort of tendency? Is IL not
based on the fact that life is the frst and
| the last, that life is all, that no god can
| claim our worship If not god teemng and
pregnant with life, and that no immortality
can entice our imagination unless it in
| wolves the constant outgo of life in innum-
cradle forms? Heaven is tropical with
growth or ii is not a heaven for us.
Look for moment at the simple light
this tendency toward self-expresson or
GENERALIZATION which marks all life
throws upon the central truth of the
| gospel. Can God be mute and secretive
| and uncommunicative? If our best minds
thirst to convey their findings, can the
supreme mind be different? Is not a reve-
lation a logical necessity? Can skies be
| silent when earth is one vast choral voice I?
ITO be sure, we must not too closely
liken the Infinite to the finite mind. for
there must be some human capacities of a
semblance in essential qualities between the
Maker and the made, then we cannot know
Him and we are agnostics at one stroke.
To the agnoStic all nature and history are
vocal of powers and beauties working
in them, but they are all silent on the un-
seen. To the believer ali things sug-
gestive of an eternal personality, not mere
ly dwelling in the mysterious backgrounds,
but pressing himself on our recognition at
every turn, and, furthermore. unable to
secrete His plans of love- The Bible is a
revelation based on the idea, sovereign
throughout all realms, of Standardization
and a God so organized that He cannot
bower himself away in some luxurious Sc
| clusion or f1owery retreat, but must breathe
upon all souls out of His own exuberant
life. Such Is our God.
.s'Then came something more than a rev.
| citation to mems minds; there came in due
time an incarnation. | hold that the divin-
| ity of Christ is the central fact of our
| faith i cannot see how we can read il
out of the Bible without destroying the
Bible altogether. And what essential rea-
| son is there against it? If the world from
| its birth, if nature from the lowliest to the
most complex organic forms is one inter
minable system of life struggling out into
suitable forms, why doubt that even the
| divine nature must obey the same law and
| become manifest? Then came the infinite
reincarnation of Christ in Christian mer
and women, in the holy catholic church
| i'm government and home and school, sc
that everywhere We find the holy life
bound to permeate all theaters of action as
| the electric current must thrill along every
wire and light up not only the lofty arches
of the temple, but the rooms of the poor
or sick.
ITO be sure the incarnation of the divine
life in our worlds life is slow and ardu
Gus effort. But there again Ii Is on tbs
, same footing with all Our greatest develop
, ments. Velocity is usually the brand-marl
, of incompetency and tawdriness. The
| mushrooms of the woods. or the epheme
) rides of summer are of little account Th'
development of art and education and true
responsible government requires centuries
Christianity has undoubtedly been toll
some and slow-footed progress. This onl,
, proves its solemn grandeur. 1t bears in 1T