The idea of _development_, which is perhaps the fundamental one of Christianity, has been to a very great extent swallowed up in the idea of _safety_. It is not an uncommon error to regard Christianity almost exclusively in a defensive aspect; the Christian merely as a _safe_ man, protected by Divine safe-guards from temptation, rescued by Divine mercy from the terrors of death and judgment. Correspondingly with this mistake, the tendency has grown to strengthen the defenses of character, rather than to foster its growth. To keep it from temptation, rather than to teach it to overcome temptation. To teach it its danger from the world, rather than its duty to the world. Consequently we have heard more about keeping unspotted from the world, than of going into _all_ the world, and preaching the gospel to every creature. More about coming out and being separate, than of knowing the truth which shall make free. More of separating wheat from tares, than of leavening lumps. The false instinct of self-preservation, which sent the Romanist into cloisters and convents, and tore him from the sweet sanctities of domestic life, has perpetuated itself more than some of us think in Protestant thought and church legislation. And in nothing has this tendency revealed itself more distinctly than in the matter of amusements. For amusement, having the effect to make men feel kindly toward the world, and, more readily than duty, falling in with human inclination, has been regarded as unsafe, and therefore as a thing to be kept at arm’s length by the church, and admitted to her folds only under the strictest surveillance, and in gyves and handcuffs. The developments of this spirit are so familiar that I need not stop to enumerate them. The important thing now is to discover the right stand-point for discussion. And here let me say what, until recently, I had supposed there was no need of saying: that amusement is a necessity of man’s nature as truly as food, or drink, or sleep. Physiology, common sense, experience, philosophy, are all at one on this point. Man needs something besides change of employment. He needs something pursued with a view solely to _enjoyment_. Those who deny this are ignorant of the simplest fundamental laws of mind and matter. Men who assert publicly that they need no amusements, and “want to die in the harness,” will have the opportunity of dying in the harness some years earlier than would be demanded in the ordinary course of nature. Nature will not suffer even zealous Christian men to violate this law with impunity. She forbids man to labor continuously, and if he persists in disregarding her prohibition, she will revenge herself by imbecility, uselessness, or death.