osing a general agreement among them all
that a regular attendance at the theater was at this juncture the most
pressing and most promising method of evangelical effort, they would
not then constitute even one-tenth of the numerical patronage which the
management would study to please." Dr. Herrick Johnson says: "The ideal
stage is out of the question. It is out of the question just as pure,
chaste, human nudity is out of the question..The nature of theatrical
performances, the essential demands of the stage, the character of the
plays, and the constitution of human nature, make it impossible that
the theater should exist, save under a law of degeneracy. Its trend is
downward; its centuries of history tell just this one story. The actual
stage of to-day..is a moral abomination. In Chicago, at least, it is
trampling on the Sabbath with defiant scoff. It is defiling our youth.
It is making crowds familiar with the play of criminal passions. It is
exhibiting women with such approaches to nakedness as can have no other
design than to breed lust behind the onlooking eyes. It is furnishing
candidates for the brothel. It is getting us used to scenes that rival
the voluptuousness and licentious ages of the past." As never before
to-day, has the theater asked for the support of Church members. And the
ideal stage, with virtuous performers, and with pure dramas, are held up
as a sample of what Christian people are invited to attend. Dr. Cuyler
says: "Every person of common sense knows that the actual average
theater is no more an ideal playhouse than the average pope is like St.
Peter, or the average politician is like Abraham Lincoln. A Puritanic
theater would become bankrupt in a twelvemonth. The great mass of
those who frequent the playhouse go there for strong, passionate
excitements..I do not affirm," says Dr. Cuyler, "that every popular play
is immoral, and every attendant is on a scent for sensualities. But the
theater is a concrete institution, it must be judged in the gross and to
a tremendous extent it is only a gilded nastiness. It unsexes womanhood
by putting her publicly in male attire--too often in no attire at all."

"So competent an authority as the famous actress, Olga Nethersole,
recently declared that the only kind of play which may hope for success
with English-speaking audiences at the present day is the play which is
sufficiently indicated by calling it immoral. There is no doubt about
it that the theater, as