gone to the theatre without being injured by it; and I have known
many of my friends who have never been injured by it."
_Mr. Falkland._--"It may be so; but would you like a son or a
daughter to acquire a passion for theatrical amusements? And would
you suffer them, if they had acquired it, to go alone?"
_Mr. Talbot._--"No, Sir, I should not like my children to become
_passionately_ fond of the theatre, though I should not object to
their occasional attendance, yet I would not suffer them to go
alone."
_Mr. Falkland._--"Not like them to become passionately fond of an
amusement, which is intended and calculated to promote the growth
of their virtues! Surely, good Sir, you don't wish their virtues
to be stunted for want of nutriment; and though I can easily
conceive that the expense attending this source of gratification
and moral improvement, may form one formidable objection against
its repeated indulgence, yet, can money be better laid out, than on
the cultivation of our children's virtuous principles and habits?
Suppose, for example, you have a son who is somewhat inclined to an
evil course--one, over whose mind the grave lectures of morality
which the clergy deliver have lost their influence--who is rather
prone to treat parental authority with contempt; would you not
wish to see him cherish a passion for theatrical exhibitions,
which, according to the opinion of Mr. Proctor, and in which
opinion you concur, are designed and adapted to recommend virtue
and discountenance vice; and thus prove, by an appeal to the
senses, rather than by a process of reasoning, that virtue is
its own reward, and vice its own tormentor? If he should feel no
deep interest in these exhibitions, it is not likely that they
will produce any more powerful effect on his mind, than the grave
lectures of morality which he instinctively abhors; but if his
passions are strongly excited, and he returns to this school of
wisdom and of virtue, _con amore_--if he cannot refrain from going,
without doing violence to his feelings--if he long for the hour of
evening dress, and for the agreeable alterative of mind, which is to
divert him from the dull, monotonous duties of his station--if he
enter into the spirit of the comedy, which usually makes a libertine
the most attractive character in the piece--or if the spirit of that
character enters into him--do you not suppose that he will soon be
reclaimed from vice, and be so smitten with the charms of virtue,
as to follow her through evil and through good report? And suppose
several such young men should meet in the lobby of a theatre, which
you know, Sir, is not impossible; and suppose they should sit
together during the play, and should retire together, after the
curtain falls, and the last charms of the comic muse have passed
from the eye and the ear, do you not think that they will very
naturally begin to resolve on amending their evil course, and as
naturally resolve to become chaste, and temperate, and domesticated
in their habits? Of course you cannot for a moment imagine that they
will retire from this school of virtue to the tavern or the brothel!
No, Sir! The comic muse would stand in their way, and dispute
their passage, even if they should have a secret predilection for
such haunts; as a dumb ass once reproved the madness of a certain
prophet, on whose mind no other agent of persuasion could operate!"
_Mr. Talbot._--"Satire is no argument, Sir."
_Mr. Falkland._--"But it often puts forth a biting one, from under
the folds of its concealment; yet, as you seem to dislike it, I will
dismiss it, and return to the more grave form of debate. Permit me,
then, to ask you, if the company into which the young are introduced
at a theatre, does not form a very powerful objection against it?"
_Mr. Talbot._--"This is an objection against theatrical amusements,
which I have been expecting to make its appearance for some time;
and now it is out, I am not unwilling to meet it. I will then
confess, 'that the English box lobbies are too much disgraced by
the open display of female prostitution,' and that too many of the
baser sort of our own sex frequent the theatre; yet, as the wisest
and the best are always to be found in attendance on the comic muse,
we may very easily keep with them, and thus avoid that contagion
of evil, to which you imagine we are necessarily exposed. We know
that vice, like every other marketable commodity, will be offered
for sale in all great public assemblages. But, Sir, can you see the
vast majority of an audience rivetted on the scenic representation,
without confessing that many a youthful passion is preserved
from the _out-of-doors_ temptation to vice, by this intellectual
occupation of his time within? London, and all large towns, are,
by reason of their congregated numbers, hotbeds of vice; you know
licentiousness would find other haunts, and not be one whit limited
by the suppression of the theatre; it would be hard, indeed, that
virtue should imprison itself, because vice frequented the same
resort; on that principle we might not walk the great streets of the
metropolis, in broad day light, because of the 'polluted' neighbours
on all sides."
_Mr. Falkland._--"Then you admit that the theatre is one of the
haunts of vice; and yet you say that the wisest and the best are
always to be found in attendance there, _and from choice_! How odd,
that the wisest and the best of our wise and good men and women,
young and old, should choose to go where the most profligate and
licentious resort! Surely, you will not adduce their conduct on
this point, as a conclusive argument in favour of their superior
wisdom, or their superior love of virtue! You say, if we go, we may
keep with them! But, how shall we know the wisest and the best from
the most depraved, in such a promiscuous throng as usually crowd a
theatre?--From instinct? or from some secret sign which, like that
of the Masonic order, is concealed from every one but the initiated?"
_Mr. Talbot._--"When I go to the theatre, if I go alone, I keep
apart from others; and if I go in company, I keep with them; so that
I have no intercourse with the general audience."
_Mr. Falkland._--"Very possibly; but do all who attend the theatre
adopt the same judicious maxim?"
_Mr. Talbot._--"They may if they choose, and if they do not, they
alone are to blame."
_Mr. Falkland._--"Yes, they may! but do they? No, Sir, they do not!
Is it not there that the evil spirits of impurity spread their
nets for thoughtless and unsuspecting youth? Is it not there that
he often picks up an acquaintance, who leads him, after the play
is concluded, to the tavern--to the gaming-table--and to the house
of ill-fame? Is it not there, that the profligate female practises
her arts of seduction,[18] that he learns a profane language, and
familiarizes himself with vice in its most disgusting forms? Is it
not to this school of virtue--to this resort of the wisest and the
best--to this elysium of bliss--to this paradise of excellence--that
many of the young of both sexes have ascribed their ruin? Wonder,
O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth! The school of virtue teaching
vice!--the resort of the wisest and the best the haunt of the
most licentious!--the elysium of bliss the common receptacle of
outcast misery!--where iniquity reigns, as in the high place of
its dominion, and on which thousands look in all the bitterness of
anguish, as the spot where they fell from their original purity and
honour to degradation and crime!"
[18] An intelligent gentleman, who had served the office of
constable in a large midland town, once remarked to the author,
"I observed the number of prostitutes was considerably increased
very soon after the opening of the theatre; many also coming from
neighbouring towns during the theatrical season." Strange, indeed,
if the stage be the school of virtue, that these pests of society
should always be found existing near it! When we see the vultures
flying towards any particular spot, there we may expect to find
death and corruption.
_Mr. Talbot._--"You can paint, Sir."
_Mr. Falkland._--"But not the theatre as it is. That's impossible.
I cannot describe the evils, the contaminating evils, to which
a young person is exposed who visits this haunt of vice--this
dwelling-place of sin--this temple of lewdness, of whose priests
and priestesses 'it is a shame even to speak of those things which
are done of them in secret'--this Augean stable of infamy, which
no waters have ever been able to cleanse. You say, that while the
youth is within the theatre he is preserved from the temptations
which are out of doors--a truism no one will doubt; and so he is,
when in a gaming-room, and so he is when in a tavern; but, Sir, is
he not, when coming away from the theatre, exposed to the out-door
temptations, and very often prepared, by what he sees and hears,
to yield more easily to them. The following fact, which is too
well attested to be denied, lets us into the awful secret of the
tendency of theatrical exhibitions; and if it were necessary, I
could adduce many instances of the most promising young men, and of
the most amiable females, who, by frequenting a theatre, have lost
their character; blasted their prospects of happiness for life, and
brought down the gray hairs of their parents with sorrow to the
grave:--
"'The robberies committed daily in the streets, during the
representation of the _Beggar's Opera_, were beyond the example of
former times; and several thieves and robbers confessed in Newgate,
that they raised their courage in the playhouse by the songs of
their hero, Macheath, before they sallied forth on their desperate
nocturnal exploits. So notorious were the evil consequences of its
frequent representation become, that the Middlesex justices united
with Sir John Fielding in requesting Mr. Garrick to desist from
performing it, as they were of opinion that it was never represented
on the stage, without creating an additional number of real
thieves.' Thus we see the debt of gratitude which the morality of
the public soon contracted with this agent of its reformation, who,
for sixty-three nights in succession, during the first season of his
labours, delivered his maxims of wisdom, and his lessons of virtue,
which, by some peculiar fatality, became the means of corrupting
the audience to a most alarming extent; but to hold the stage
responsible for this, would be, of course, a breach of the law of
charity! 'The second season of this opera was as productive as the
first; nor were the provincial stages without their gleanings from
the poet's harvest; it was acted fifty nights at Bath and Bristol.
Not only Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, but Minorca, and other
distant regions, saw it in their theatres; while its songs were
everywhere to be read on fans, handkerchiefs, and fire-screens.'
Wherever this thief-maker went, he was received with raptures by the
admirers of the drama; they sung his praises and gave him the homage
of their affection as the idol god of their theatrical adorations,
and he had, like ancient Moloch, the high gratification of seeing
many of his devoted worshippers doomed to an untimely destruction.
And yet, Sir, with such facts staring you in the face--with such
confessions of convicted guilt--you have the temerity to maintain
that the theatre is favourable to the cultivation and the growth of
public and private virtue! Can you hope to gain proselytes to your
opinion? Do you imagine that we are to be duped into the admission
of an assertion which no argument can support, which recorded facts
so unequivocally disprove, and which the worst men, in common with
the best, reject as an insult offered to the obvious dictates
of their understanding? Do you suppose that we have reached the
dotage of our existence, when the intellect, paralyzed by some
extraordinary visitation of Heaven, or worn out by the intensity of
its own labours, is to sit down at the feet of absurdity, to receive
the monstrous extravagancies of convicted falsehood as the lucid and
resistless enunciations of oracular truth? No, Sir. A general belief
is gone abroad, and it exists no less firmly amongst many of the
admirers of the drama, than amongst its most determined opponents,
that while the stage may be vindicated as a source of amusement,
an attempt to vindicate it as the handmaid of virtue is no less
disreputable to the understanding, than it is to the moral taste of
the advocate, who, however dexterous he may be in his pleadings,
labours under the disadvantage of appearing in court, after the
judges have taken the verdict of an honest jury."
_Mr. Proctor._--"I am now, Sir, decidedly of your opinion on this
point; though I must confess I have often enjoyed a good play. The
stage, in its present state, amuses many, and gratifies their taste,
but it certainly does defile the imagination, and too often pollutes
the heart; and where one young person receives any moral good, very
many, I do believe, are corrupted and ruined. It may be defended as
a source of amusement, but it is no handmaid of virtue; it is a very
demon in the art of seduction. I had many qualms of conscience, when
I did go to the theatre; but it is now more than two years since I
entered one, and I must confess, that the present discussions have
satisfied me, that I have acted a wise and a safe part by abstaining
from going; nor will I ever go again, or allow any child of mine to
go. In fact, I think it would be a public good, to shut up all the
theatres in the country."
_Mr. Falkland._--"My respected friend, I assure you, I am highly
gratified to hear from your lips, such a candid confession and
such a noble resolve; and I think my formal antagonist in these
discussions, on cool reflection, will admit, that a passion for
theatrical amusements had better be repressed than encouraged; as it
is always hazardous, and sometimes fatal, especially to the young
and incautious."
UNITARIANISM RENOUNCED.
The power of early impressions and education is universally
admitted; and when erroneous views have been imbibed from infancy,
and become associated with everything that is hallowed in our
domestic recollections, the influence exercised by them on the mind
is so strong as very generally to maintain undisputed authority
throughout life. Truth will sometimes, however, assert her
supremacy, and succeed in producing conviction, even where she has
to contend with the most deep-rooted feelings and long-cherished
prejudices. These remarks are suggested by the history of Mr.
Macfarlane, an intelligent and pious young man, whom I met at the
house of Mr. Proctor, on the occasion of the discussion narrated
in the foregoing chapters. I had frequently heard of him from a
friend, of whose church he was a member, and been led to take a
great interest in him from the account which had been given me of
his religious history and that of his sister. This I shall now
proceed to narrate, as exhibiting the progress, from the frigid zone
of Unitarianism, to the warmth and sunshine of pure evangelical
religion.
Mr. Macfarlane's father was a wealthy merchant in the town where
I resided, universally esteemed for his amiable character and
unsullied integrity. Descended from ancestors who had borne a
distinguished part in the struggles for civil and religious liberty
during the seventeenth century, he was himself the son of pious
parents, but their death, within a short period of each other, while
he was but a child, deprived him of the advantages which he might
have derived from their example and instructions. Left to the care
of a maternal uncle, whose sentiments were of no decided order,
he grew up to manhood with no one to guide him in his religious
belief; and having, on his first entering into business, formed an
intimacy with some zealous Unitarians, he imbibed their opinions,
and regularly attended the ministry of one of their most celebrated
preachers. He was too eager in the pursuit of wealth to devote much
time to speculative inquiries, and of too retiring a disposition
to take any part in discussion when theological topics became the
subject of conversation; but he cheerfully and conscientiously
supported the benevolent institutions connected with his
denomination, which he thought the most enlightened and intelligent
in the kingdom. While he admitted the truth of the Christian
religion, he thought its records so ambiguous, or so corrupted in
the early ages, that they ought not to be implicitly received. "I
will believe nothing," he often used to say, "which I cannot fully
comprehend; and I feel myself as much at liberty to dispute the
opinion of an apostle, when he speaks on any speculative doctrine,
as I do to examine the opinion of any other man." He rejected the
divinity of Jesus Christ as indignantly as a Christian would the
divinity of the pagan deities--often expressed his surprise that any
enlightened man could be brought to believe in the doctrine of the
atonement--and regarded the belief in the reality of a supernatural
influence over the human mind, as one of the corruptions of
Christianity, which exposed it to the ridicule and contempt of
infidels.
But though a decided Unitarian, he did not condemn those who
differed from him, believing that the Supreme Being is altogether
regardless of our speculative opinions, if we do justice, love
mercy, and walk humbly with him. "If we are virtuous in this life
we shall be happy in the life to come,"--was with him a favourite
saying. He was the living personification of the social virtues; and
justly esteemed for his kindness, his generosity, his integrity,
and universal benevolence. Mr. Macfarlane, Senior, was a widower,
with two children, a son and daughter, who, at the time I speak
of, were between twenty and thirty years of age. The son was in
business with his father, and the daughter managed the household
affairs. Miss Macfarlane was a young lady of amiable temper, retired
in her habits, fond of reading, and devoted to the promotion of the
happiness and comfort of her father and brother. As she had a good
deal of leisure at her disposal, she was employed as the almoner of
her father's bounty; and took much pleasure in this work of mercy.
She was somewhat religiously inclined; but as the system of
religion under which she was educated possessed no power to
interest the heart, her religion was confined to a cold assent to
a few speculative opinions, and the observance of some external
ceremonies. She occasionally read the Bible, but from her religious
training she yielded no submission to its authority; and, as a
natural consequence, she was strongly prejudiced against the
evangelical sentiments of orthodox Christians. Though she had
several friends belonging to their number, and among others Miss
Reynolds, a young lady of decided piety, yet even with her,
notwithstanding their great intimacy, she invariably declined to
enter into conversation on the subject. She usually accompanied
her father and her brother on the Sabbath to the Unitarian chapel,
where the celebrated Dr. R---- preached, to whose ministry they
were all much attached. On one occasion he delivered a discourse
from the beautiful words of the psalmist:--"Thou wilt shew me the
path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right
hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Psalm xvi. 11). After an
eloquent dissertation on the nature of the Deity, and the assistance
afforded by Him to those following the arduous path of virtue,
he concluded thus:--"Supposing the ideas which I have set before
you to be no more than the speculations of a contemplative mind,
such as were wont of old to be indulged by the philosophers of the
Platonic school, still they would deserve attention, on account
of their tendency to purify and elevate the mind. But when they
are considered in connection with a revelation which we believe to
be Divine, they are entitled to command, not attention only, but
reverence and faith. They present to us such high expectations as
are sufficient to determine every reasonable man to the choice of
virtue, to support him under all his present discouragements, and
to comfort him in the hour of death. Justly may they excite in our
hearts that ardent aspiration of the psalmist:--'My soul thirsteth
for God, for the living God; O! when shall I come, and appear before
him?' But with this wish in our hearts, never, I beseech you, let us
forget what was set forth in the first part of this discourse;--that
in order to arrive at the presence of God, _the path of life_ must
previously be shown to us by him, and that in this path we must
persevere to the end. These two things cannot be disjoined--a
virtuous life and a happy eternity."
As they were conversing together in the evening of the Sabbath,
a reference was made to this discourse, when young Macfarlane
expressed the high degree of pleasure which it had given him. "I
never," he remarked, "heard a more interesting sermon. What a
sublime prospect does Christianity open before us! I wonder how any
intelligent person can reject it."
"Yes," said his father, "it was a very judicious sermon. I was much
delighted with it. We have something to look forward to when it
shall please God to remove us by death; for as I have often told
you, _If we are virtuous in this life, we shall be happy in the life
to come_."
"But, father," said the son, after a short pause, "if only the
virtuous can attain to a state of felicity in heaven, as we were
informed this morning, what will become of the wicked?"
"I cannot tell; and I think that Dr. R---- displayed his accustomed
good sense in making no reference to them."
"But, father, we know that the majority in every age, and in every
country, are wicked; and it strikes me, though I confess I have
never thought on the subject before, that if the Deity condescended
to reveal a system of religion, to promote the present and future
happiness of his creatures, he would reveal one that is adapted to
the moral condition of the majority, rather than to that of the
select few."
"We have nothing to do with others; it is enough for us to know,
that if we are virtuous in this life, we shall be happy in the life
to come."
The subject was now dropped till after their father had retired
to rest, when it was resumed. "Your remark on the sermon we heard
to-day," said Miss Macfarlane to her brother, "I think is a very
just one. It certainly demands attention. If the virtuous only can
be saved, the great majority of the human race must perish."
"Very true; and we know that many who become virtuous in old age,
have been dissipated in their youthful days. Can such persons expect
a state of future felicity as confidently as though they had always
been virtuous? And, after all, what is virtue? It is simply a line
of conduct that runs parallel with the requirements of the society
amongst which we live, and which we know varies so much in different
nations and amongst different people, that what some call a virtuous
action, we should condemn as an outrage on the feelings of humanity.
A Hindoo applauds the virtue of the eldest son, who sets fire to the
pile which is to consume his deceased father and living mother; but
were he to do such a deed here, he would be execrated as a monster,
and amenable to the law. Can we suppose that the Supreme Being will
award a state of future happiness to a Hindoo, for an action for
which he would punish an European, by excluding him from heaven?
Impossible!"
"And beside," said Miss Macfarlane, "how shall we know when we have
acquired that _exact degree_ of virtue which will entitle us to
expect a state of felicity in the life to come? The more I think on
the subject, the more I am perplexed. What shall we do, for I feel
the subject too important to be dismissed?"