Recreation, therefore, is not to be regarded as an evil in itself--Men at different times have so regarded it. (_a_) Those who have been termed ascetics in the Church of Rome looked upon every form of amusement as sinful. Even to smile or laugh was a fault needing severe penance. They were "cruel to themselves," denied themselves all earthly joy, and placed vice and pleasure in the same category. (_b_) The Puritans also, in the time of the Stuarts, set their faces strongly against games and recreation of every kind. They denounced all public amusements, as Macaulay tells us, "from masques, which were exhibited at the mansions of the great, down to the wrestling matches and quoiting matches on the village green." (_c_) In all ages there have been good men animated by the same feeling. Life has seemed to them so serious as to have no place in it for mirth. Even one so saintly as Archbishop Leighton said that "pleasures are like mushrooms--it is so difficult to distinguish those that are wholesome from those that are poisonous, that it is better to abstain from them altogether." Those views have something noble in them. They spring from hatred of sin and from realizing intensely that Recreation is liable to abuse.--It often leads to evil. It was the unbridled gaiety of the age, with its selfishness and sensuality, that made the Puritans denounce amusement, though the austerity they enforced led to dreadful consequences. Repression passed into excess. "It was as if the pent-up sewerage of a mud volcano had been suddenly let loose. The unclean spirit forcibly driven out by the Puritans returned with seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and the last state of Stuart England was worst than the first." The history of that period shows us the mistake religion makes by frowning down all amusements as sinful. But that some may be so is equally clear. They are so (_a_) when they are contrary to the express commands of the Word of God. There are pleasures which are in themselves unlawful, and which are condemned by the divine law. These, God's children will shun. They are forms of wickedness which they will ever hold in abhorrence. "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," with all that the words mean, though the world may regard them as pleasures, and engage in them as amusements, are evil before God. But not to dwell on this, which is evident, amusements are evil (_b_) when they unfit for work. "The end of labor," said the Greek philosopher Aristotle, "is to rest." It is equally true that "the end of rest is to labor." Pleasures that tempt us from daily duty, that leave us listless and weary, are pernicious. Outdoor games, for instance, ought to strengthen the physical frame, they ought to make us healthy and strong and ready for work. But when carried to excess they often produce the opposite result, and become positively hurtful. If