Taking Children to Entertainments

QUESTION: Is it wrong to take children to see strenuous athletic contests, a street trapeze, or a man dive from a bridge or a logging contest for prizes?

ANSWER: It is wrong to give children low ideals. "Just as the twig is bent the tree is inclined."

— Steele's Answers p. 245.

Church Entertainments

QUESTION: How can we best manage church entertainments?

ANSWER: The Question Box is not an expert in this matter. He never announced one, and never heard one announced from the pulpit till after his retirement from the active ministry. Then he attended one to see what it looked like. The new institution did not commend itself to him. He is sure that fun and frolic in the house of God are damaging to that spirit of reverence which should be cultivated in the young. I think it is Dr. J. M. Buckley who advises that a censor be appointed to supervise the program and eliminate improper readings and other objectionable performances. This would require of the pastor — for he ought to be the censor ­ eternal vigilance as the price of decency, and unusual courage and skill in the minister already sufficiently burdened.

— Steele's Answers p. 146, 147.

Cleansing the Temple & Church Fund Raisers

QUESTION: Does Christ's cleansing the Temple apply to modern methods of supporting the Gospel by fairs, banquets and entertainments?

ANSWER: So far as these are resorted to to shift the support of Christian worship upon outsiders, so that the church members may hoard their money and become rich, they are a stench in the nostrils of God. The spirit of sacrifice must be in all acceptable worship.

— Steele's Answers p. 143.

Church Entertainments

QUESTION: Is it wrong for a person entirely sanctified to attend. church entertainments; if so, why?

ANSWER: The phrase "church entertainment" is a solecism, an impropriety of speech, a contradiction in terms — suggesting the idea of a conglomerate of the church and the theater, or the ball-room, or the card party. A pure heart desires a holy place for worship dissociated from fun and frolic. He wants to take his children on the Lord's day to a temple consecrated to God., where the very place will inspire reverence. This cannot be in the edifice where the children and youth often assemble for amusement. There seems to be an incongruity between purity of heart and the frivolities of the so-called church entertainments. Many of the public readings in them are so low as to awaken disgust in a person of refined taste, to say nothing of a holy heart. For these reasons the writer gives them a tremendous letting alone. They lead downward. and not upward. Right-down Christian earnestness eschews them. They prevent the coming of a revival and they kill the revival that has holcome.

— Steele's Answers pp. 125, 126.

The Dancing Choir

QUESTION: What is the duty of a Methodist Episcopal pastor towards a choir who dance, play cards, attend theaters, and some drink beer?

ANSWER: The book of Discipline places the choir under the control of the pastor, who may if he wishes have a committee of which he is chairman, or he may have the sole direction. Let him discreetly use his power to weed out improper persons.

— from Steele's Answers p. 51.

Operas and Sunday Pleasure Riding

QUESTION: What should be done with a Sunday school superintendent whose example it would not be safe to follow in the matter of operas and Sunday pleasure riding?

ANSWER: Kindly labor with him. If he will not reform, you may persuade him to resign.

— from Steele's Answers p. 49

The Theatre

QUESTION: Cannot the theater be made helpful to Christianity?

ANSWER: We are confronted not by a theory but by a condition. That condition always has been bad, and I fear always will be, despite the opinion of Dr. Sheldon, the author of "In His Steps." I have never found any of "His Steps" leading to the play house. Pollock thus sings in his "Course of Time":

"The theater was from the very first
The favorite haunt of sin; tho' honest men,
Some very honest, wise, and worthy men,
Maintained it might be turned to good account;
And so perhaps it might; but never was.
From first to last it was an evil place;
And now such things were acted there, as made
The devils blush; and from the neighborhood,
Angels and holy men trembling retired."

Nearly a century after these lines were penned Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, in denouncing "Parsifal," confirmed their truth: "A play is an acting lie and a speaking lie. There is no compatibility between a lie and Christianity." Make the theater decent and moral and "the Play will not pay for the candle." This was once tried in Boston in the Tremont Theater, and failed, and the Baptists bought the building, now Tremont Temple, in which the Gospel of Christ is now preached every Lord's day. When the Christian is tempted to go to the theater let him ask himself this question, Will I be sowing to the flesh to reap corruption (eternal perdition) or to the Spirit to reap life eternal life? (Gal. 6:7.)

— from Steele's Answers pp. 38, 39.

A Game of Cards

QUESTION: Is there any more harm in playing a social game of euchre or cinch or any other game of cards than there is in playing flinch?

ANSWER: My education in card playing was totally neglected. Thanks to my parents, I know nothing of the difference between the games. I believe the testimony of converted gamblers that the preparatory school for the gambler's den is not that den itself, within locked doors, all spectators being shut out lest there be a detective among them, but the parlors of respectable and nominally Christian people, where the young become skilled in so-called innocent, social games. This skill is the young man's temptation. When away from them, he fairly aches with desire to be exercising his dexterity in the exciting manipulation of cards. Thus he is drawn into the gamblers' hell, which has proved to be the vestibule to the devil's hell. American Methodism began with the burning of a pack of cards snatched by a godly woman out of the hands of a backslidden local preacher. Oh, for millions of Barbara Hecks in the Christian churches!

— From Steele's Answers pp. 14, 15.