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 Christ. His word and example are conclusive, and we may safely preach what we find there. Do we find any such principle of repression as the church has preached for years past? No; we find abuse condemned, and use allowed and approved. The Savior is at the hilarious merry-making of the marriage, contributing to the festivity. His own parable is on record, bidding men put the gospel into all the forms and developments of life, to refine and fit them for human enjoyment. The long list of exceptions with which men are forbidden to bring the gospel leaven into contact has been added by men, not by Christ. He was condemned for the very same reason for which hundreds condemn a so called liberal Christian to-day; because he used the world which other men used, and thought it not necessary to abstain from use because others abused. These teachings are there if anything is there. They are for all time. The conditions of no age can justify Christians in refusing to preach and to apply them just as they stand. Nine-tenths of the really sinful indulgence over which the church is mourning to-day, is simply because of the failure to do this faithfully. Because good men have been startled by the magnitude and power of evil, and have been too timid to meet it with methods which seemed so slow, and which even gave room for the charge of compromise.