came this thing there? Who is responsible for a state
of sentiment in the church which makes it inexpedient to declare the plain
teachings of Christ on _any_ subject? There can be but one answer. The
responsibility lies between the church and the world, and the world surely
has not done it. The church herself has made this sentiment, has created
the factitious conscience, has awakened the morbid sensibility, by
preaching on this subject a theory which shrivels at the touch of Christ,
and which she has clearly shown her inability to carry into practice. And
the fact that such a sentiment exists, so far from calling for silence, is
the strongest of all reasons why the church should speak out with a voice
of thunder, and set herself right with the vast mass of conscience which
she so powerfully influences.

Would you then, says one, free this matter entirely from the restraints of
the church? By no means. On the contrary, I am calling upon the church to
regain influence which she has forfeited. I am pleading for a _regulation_
of these things by the church which does not now exist. Indulgence is
going too far in the church itself. But from her present stand-point on
this question, the church is, from the very nature of the case, almost
powerless to regulate. Assuming that the recreations in question are evil
and only evil, she _must not_ regulate. That would be compromising. She
must _crush_. Hence the matter resolves itself into a war of extermination
on both sides. Either these forms of amusement must be exterminated from
the church, or they must get the upper hand of the church's statutes, in
which case the church has no law for them. She has only provided for
destroying them; and failing in this, must stand and see them run riot in
her very courts.

I would not have the church compromise one hair's-breadth with sin. Better
that she should err in excessive stringency. But I would have her gain a
new vantage ground _by being simply true_, and not proclaiming unmixed
evil, where evil and good are blended in liberal proportions. By not
undertaking the task of _extermination_, where her duty is that of
_discrimination_. The moment she begins upon the principle of _analyzing_
these mixed elements, casting only the bad away, and using, developing and
enjoying the good, that moment she mounts to a point from which she can
regulate _any_ matter which falls under her jurisdiction. And to be thus
true, she must go direct to Chris