as the holding of liberal sentiments on dancing or
billiards.

Once more. The pulpit, in some places, though alive to the importance of
the subject, is holding sternly by its old, stringent views. It is laying
down the law authoritatively, decrying as sinful all but a very limited
allowance of amusements.

The results of this policy so long and so thoroughly tried, are before us.
With all this preaching, the prevalence and variety of amusements steadily
increases. Year after year such utterances of the pulpit fall with less
weight. Year after year the character and standing of those who openly set
them at defiance renders it more and more difficult to back them by
discipline. The clergy are not gaining ground with the youth. Hundreds of
the latter, repelled by this teaching, are tearing themselves away from
the churches of their fathers, to unite with folds where a more liberal
gospel is preached. A prominent merchant of the Methodist church, a man
whose name is known in both hemispheres, wrote me, not more than a month
ago, "the teachings of my own church on this subject have had the effect
to drive nearly my whole family into the Protestant Episcopal church."

It is sometimes said: "Let them go. We are better without such. We do not
want members who will not relinquish these suspected amusements. We do not
want half way Christians, conformed to the world, trying to hold fast to
pleasure and secure heaven at the same time." But such statements do not
fairly represent the case. Again, the whole question is begged. Many of
those who refuse to conform to the churches dicta on these subjects care
nothing whatever for the amusements in question. The matter is entirely
one of principle. They leave our churches, not because conscience is
relaxed, but because it is acutely sensitive, and because they would keep
it unsullied. The above method of putting the case assumes that all the
conscience is on one side; that, while it operates strongly to condemn, it
cannot possibly operate to approve. Many of these persons resort to other
communions, because they are too honest to compromise with conscience;
because they cannot see these questions in the light in which their own
churches present them; and rather than go to God's altars with even an
implied falsehood upon their consciences, or embrace the alternative of
remaining outside of Christ's fold, they will sever life-long ties,
entwined with some of their dearest and tenderest r