Mower County transcript., 1904-05-11
CARDS RlDIls| / y | / i, III! lE;a'IRE
All Three sSi,osald be Tabeoed by the
School teachers Rev. #. IE. r.
Miller Delivers Sermon ON Subject.

ASOHs - ~. V1. NAaAAoA AA%AAo CuAANoy
evenings sermon at the First Baptist
church in Mankato ON 1.-THE School
Teacher and the Amusement Question"
maintained that every person has q
right to the freedom of conscience in
the choice of amusements, yet people
who are before the public eye, and in
particular school, teachers, should be
willing to sacrifice such amusements as
are fraught with danger to the young
and inexperienced, inasmuch as the
young love to initiate the teacher and
other persons in public authority, and
are liable to fall a victim to the int1u-
ences that the person whom they imi
tate may be strong enough to resist.
For the sake Of her pupils the teacher
should be willing to forego the amuse-
ments of dancing, cards and the theatre.
Such amusements may not hurt the
teacher, bat they are liable to hurt the
pupil, who indulges in them because he
sees the teacher doing so.
Rev. Miller indorsed the opinion of
DR.. Macarthur, that "churches greatly
err, when in their manual of discipline
they forbid all dancing and practically
all amusements. Such prohibitions are
errors in tactics as we'll as in morals,
for they are constantly violated, and
the churches issuing them seldom have
the courage to make their discipline
mandatory"
He went on to remark that the anti
cipated action of the Methodist body
in it's conference in Los Angeles, CaI.'
this month of May is not that it will
alter it's standards OF the Christian life,
but that it will repeal useless rule,
and place the subject of amusements
for the Christian where it belongs not
upon the official board, but upon the
conscience of the individual
It behooves us to say: "Eyerything
is allowable for me. Yet everything is
not profitable; everything does not
build up character; 1 must not study
my own interests solely but the interests
Of others alsO.''
Out of respect to the opinions of a
large element in every community,
whose conviction IS that dancing, cards
and the theatre abound with tempta-
tions that lead to sin and vice, the
taacher, OF any person who holds a
position of similar moral responsibility
in the town, should sacrifice himself or
herself to the highest good.
The teacher is the center of all the
forty or fifty pairs of eyes in her school
room six hours of the day, five days of
the week, four weeks of the month,
nine months of the year. And what
the pupils observe in the school room
is not all they know of the teacher.
Those sharp detectives, ever on the
track of lapsing human nature, are
aware of the teachers habits, place of
residence, company, dress and social
life. Parents can often find out more
about the teachers work and her
methods and discipline in school hours
by watching the play limitations of
their children, than by twenty visits to
the school room.
Parents, preachers and teachers have
a whole generation of future men and
women perceiving them from their
very beginnings, and the deepest i'm
pulses of life. The children are draw
ing from these preceptors impressions
and molds of habit which, if wrong, no
heavenly discipline can altogether re-
move; OF, if right, no bad association
utterly dissipate.
Dancing, cards and the theatre have
been eschewed and put under the ban
by the best thought of the time. TO
substantiate this claim, the speaker
cited quotations from Cardinal Glib
bons, Cicero, Edwin Booth and Dr..
Herrick johnson.
Everyone should play. The function
of pleasure is to sweeten life and give
it tone. Seriousness is likely to degener-
ate into moroseness and acidity, if it is
not diluted with all infusion of the
play impulse. The Puritan fathers
made the mistake of suppressing all
enjoyment, teaching and compelling the
young to be demure and sedate, and
causing either a semblance of pre-
mature old age in their children, or
INSTRUMENTATION and excess.
All Christian young men may pro-
perly enjoy the tennis racket, the cro-
quet mallet, the baseball club, the
anglers rod, the sportsman's gun and
the cyclists steed. Where the God-fear-
ing youth are assembled, wit and
hilarity should abound and the shout
of innocent laughter rend the all.
Healthful sports should expand the
chest and strengthen the muscles.
Discrimination between rational and
irrational amusements is a thing to be