The only thing I think of mentioned in the Bible that is much like modern performances on the boards, is the dancing of the daughter of Herodias before Herod. She worked for hire, she beguiled her audience. "She pleased the king," and got from him all she asked for. It sounds very dreadful to you, no doubt, that the prophet's head should have been danced off by a pair of whirling feet?--but that is a slight matter. If dancing and theatre going did only take off the heads of protesting saints, like an old-time persecution, they at least would but exchange the prison for the palace, and so not lose much. But this stealing away the heart and service once vowed to Christ, is another matter. You think it does not do this. You think your eye is as clear for heaven in the boxes as elsewhere. You think you can dress and go and look on and listen, keeping close to this command: "Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." _Do_ you think so? "I have never been to hear him," said Dr. Skinner, speaking then, only of a false prophet in a false Church, "because I could not expect to meet my Master there; and I will go nowhere for pleasure where he is not." What about the theatre, tried by that test? How surely the world marks every Christian who is seen at such places; how certainly the children know that the parents have not yet forsaken all for Christ. And how constantly ungodly men fence off your warning, with the words: "Look at ---- and ----, I am as good as they. I do this and that, and they do it too. I don't see the difference." But "nobody knows." O yes, everybody knows. No matter if you are across the sea,--"A bird of the air shall carry the matter." But especially, the Lord knows. He setteth "a print on the heels of my feet" [1]--and step you never so lightly, the mark will be there, and the Lord will know. And where your feet go, there others will follow. "Is Miss Hope going to such and such a performance?" inquired a young man of me. I said no. He stood gravely thinking, and the talk drifted on. Then suddenly I heard him say--to himself as it were:--"Then I will not go either!"-- Persuasions, entreaties, ridicule, are nothing, _mean_ nothing, if only you stand firm. And I have known gentlemen spend their strength in entreaties, and then when the lady held out in her quiet refusal, they said afterwards to other people that they liked to see any one true to his principles. Staying once with some friends of rather free opinions and practice, Priscilla was beset to go with them on a certain evening to the theatre. So eager were the words, so well-loved the friends, that at last she grew desperate. Turning round upon the head of the house, she said: "Do you really want me to go?"--He looked at her, sat back in his chair in silence, then answered soberly: "Well, I guess I'd just as lieve you didn't!"