"I will take my boys to the theatre, because I do not want them to go anywhere without me."-- Real sayings, of real mothers, church members both. Which sayings, in everyday English, read thus, "Since I want my children to keep out of the world, I will bring the world to them at home."--"Since my boys will do what I do not approve, I will guard them by doing it too." Far different from the strong stern-words of Scripture: "Come out of her, my people." "Touch not the unclean thing." And then the wonderful sayings of Psalm i. 1. If anybody thinks I have given an unfair instance, or that I characterize it unfairly, let them take other testimony where no prejudice can be supposed. Read Mrs. Kemble's "Journal" of her stage life. Read the opinion she gives of it all in her later "Recollections." Yet from childhood some of her nearest and dearest she had known as actors. I have spoken first as to people bound by the Golden Rule, and forbidden therefore to help anybody even to get a living in an evil way. For the work the theatre does upon yourselves, you know it, if you will be honest. People answer: "O if it hurt me, of course I would give it up." Be honest with yourself, and you will come out of that delusion. You _know_ it does not make love to Christ warmer, or thoughts of heaven sweeter; or the atmosphere of your everyday life more wholesome and sound. You know it leaves a restless craving for excitement,--you know it exalts the world before your eyes; and if you think a little you will find that, like my poor young friend in her dancing, you are not edified, not built up, but pulled down. Let me tell you of one case where the mother was a Church member, and had prayers regularly every morning with her family, But the command to _watch_ as well (_i.e._, "keep awake") she had forgotten. And the desire seized her to see--I will not write the name down here, but it was one of those foreign importations which have beguiled thousands. She did not want her son to know of her going, and so went with her young daughter for escort! But she found her son already there, and for twenty-eight nights running he was there again. Why not?--if his mother went once? And as might be expected, the daughter has become (as people say) "wild for the theatre." Among the people who loved Mr. Lincoln best, and could best understand the semi-official way in which he went to the theatre that fatal night, there was not one, I fancy, who did not feel an added shock at learning where he was when the messenger came, and who did not wish that he had been almost anywhere else. Yet why? If the theatre is a proper place for Christians to enter, it is as good a place as any other to be "Waiting--waiting--when the Lord shall come."