The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1905-01-24
REV. HENRY BROWN piscouRsEs
ON INTERVIEW GIVEN OUT ~
ANOTHER CLERGYMAN.
Made II the Subject Of HE Sunday
Night Sermon in the Methe-
dist Church.

The large auditorium of the First
Methodist Episcopal church was
crowded Sunday night. The pastor,
Rev. Henry Brown, had announced
through the press and from his pulpit
that he would discuss the theme: The
Pulpit VS.. The stage,v with special
reference to a published interview
with clergyman Of this city, in which
said clergyman had said some things
that were Objectionable to him.
He stated that he wished to be per-
fectly fair in his remarks, and had no
intention to abuse any one. He read
the entire interview as published, and
then proceeded with somewhat
caustic discussion of the same. His
discourse, which lasted nearly an hour,
was listened to with marked attention
by the large congregation. He said in
part:
1.-The minister of the gospel should
be a man who, by his words, by his
acts, and by his daily life, should so
impress the people that they will con-
slider him a man of God.
'"The minister of the gospel should
be an exemplar of our holy religion,
and one whose example may be safely
followed by the people where he may
abide.
1.-The minister of the gospel has no
right to so conduct himself as to gain
for himself the reputation of being
sport
Taking up the article containing
the interview he read where the re-
porter speaks to the clergyman about
the proposed new opera house in Wal
la Walla and goes on to say:
".How does this project. impress
you from the standpoint Of religion
To which the clergyman answers:
g Frankly 1 know nothing that
could please me to greater extent.
We have schools enough, churches
enough, money enough and wheat
enough; but above all things else now
we assuredly need the stage
This" said the speaker, 'is said
with a full knowledge OF the fact that
within three blocks of this place, right
under the shadow of the city hall, is
'hells half-acre' Of this city, where
day and night the work of death goes
on. He knows that there is a propo-
sition before this community to build
and equip a splendid Y. M. c. A. hall
to safeguard the young men of the
city, but in his estimation the stage,
and not the Y. M. c. A. building, is
the supreme need Of the hour.
Remember that he is speaking
from the standpoint of religion and
listen to this: shakespeare was only
a fair actor, but he was the mightiest
preacher that the world has ever seem
Here with one hand he tears the
crown from the head Of Noah, from
Abraham, from Moses and the
prophets, and with the other he plucks
the diadem from the brow of ePter, of
Paul, and the other apostles, the
fathers, the reformers. and all the
mighty ministers of Jesus Christ
through all the centuries back to CAL
vary, and casts them down at the feet
of Shakespeare.
"He considers the stage helpful in
a moral and religious way, and says:
ON the whole the stage is elevating.'
Now 1 will ask you to kindly listen to
what Henry Ward Beecher says about
the stage, this school Of morals that is
so highly priced by this Walla Walla
clergyman: 1T is notorious that the
theater is the door to all the sinks of
depravity. It is through this infa-
nous place that the young learn to
love those vicious associates and
practices to which, else, they would
have been strangers. Half the victims
of the gallows and Of the penitentiary
will tell you that these schools for
morals were to them the gate of de-
bauchery, the porch of pollution, the
vestibule of the very house of death
"Now, my friends, I submit that this
great man who lived in the metropolis
of the nation, where vice in all it's
multiplied forms flourishes, must have
known what he was talking about,
though he may never have attended
opera in Berlin and Munich, and may
naver have been-as this Walla WAL
la clergyman says he has-.in the
Occur d'Alene in Spokane
Aro vny, musicale Tf ~ <3or,< ox,or