The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1904-05-06
CARDS, DANCE, THEATRE
All Three Should Be Tab00ed BY the
School Teachers.
Rev. +. E. R. Miller Delivers Sermon
on Subject Last Night.
The Pedagogues Are Initiated by Those
Whom They Instruct.
Should Do Nothing That Is Hurlful
to the Pupils.
From Mondays Daily.

From Mondays Daily.
Rev. F. Z. R. Miller in his last eve
ning's sermon at the First Baptist church
on "The School Teacher and the Amuse
ment Question" maintained that every
person has a right to the freedom of con-
science 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 infu-
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 amusements of
dancing, cards and the theatre. Such
amusements may not hurt the teacher,
but they are liable to hurt the pupil,
who INDUCES in them because he sees
the teacher doing So.
Rev. Miller Endorsed 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 manda-
tory"
He went on to remark that the anti
cipated action of the Methodist body in
its conference in Los Angeles, Cal, this
month of May is not that it will al
ter its 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 consci-
ence of the individual
1t behooves us to say: Everything 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
large element in every community, whose
conviction is that dancing, cards and the
theatre abound with temptations that
lead to sin and vice, the teacher, or any
person who holds position of similar
moral responsibility in the town, should
sacrifice himself or herself to the high
est good.
The teacher is the center of all the for
ty of 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 pu-
pills 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 from them their very
beginnings, and the deepest impulses of
life. The children are drawing from
these preceptors impressions and molds
of habit which, if wrong, no heavenly
discipline can altogether remove; or, if
right, no bad associations utterly dissi-
pate.
Dancing, cards and the theatre have
been eschewed and put under the ban by
the best thought of the time. To sub
stantiate this claim, the speaker cited
quotations from Cardinal Gibbons, Cicero,
Edwin Booth and DIR. 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 an 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 premature old age in
their children, or INSTRUMENTATION and ex-
cess.
All Christian young men may properly
enjoy the tennis racket, the croquet NAL
let, the baseball club, the anglers rod,
the sportsman's gun and the cyclists
steed Where the God fearing youth
are assembled, wit and hilarity should
abound, and the shout of innocent laugh
ter rend the air. Healthful sports should
expand the chest and strengthen the
muscles. Discrimination between nation
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