The church aims directly to teach and to impress, to persuade and to command. The theatre aims directly to entertain, indirectly to teach, persuade, and impress. It often accomplishes the last three aims so much the better because of the surrendered, genial, and pleased condition of soul induced by the success of the first one. Another advantage the theatre has had over the church, in attempting to educate or exert influence, is that it does it without the perfunctory air or the dogmatic animus or repulsive severity of those who claim the tasks of moral guidance and authority as their supernatural professional office. The teachings of the theatre have also a freshness and attraction in their inexhaustible range of natural variety which are wanting to the monotonous verbal and ritualistic routine of the set themes and unchanging forms in the ecclesiastical scheme of Sunday drill. And then, finally, all natural competition of the dry, bleak pulpit with the stage becomes hopeless when the priest sees the intense sensational pleasure and impression secured for the lessons of the player by the convergent action of the fourteen-fold charm of the theatre,—namely, the charm of a happy and sympathetic crowd; the charm of ornate architectural spaciousness and brilliancy; the charm of artistic views of natural scenery; the charm of music; the charm of light and shade and color in costumes and jewelry and on figures and landscapes now illuminated and now darkened; the charm of rhythmic motion in marches and processions and dances; the charm of poetry; the charm of eloquence in word and tone and look and gesture; the charm of receiving beautiful lessons exquisitely taught; the charm of following an intricate and thickening plot to its satisfactory explication; the charm of beholding in varied exercise human forms which are trained models of strength, beauty, and grace; the charm of seeing the varieties of human characters act and react on one another; the charm of sympathy with the fortunes and feelings of others under exciting conditions rising to a climax; the charm of a temporary release from the grinding mill of business and habit to disport the faculties of the soul freely in an ideal world. Is it not obvious that such a power as this should be utilized by the most cultivated minds in the community for the highest ends?