A SCOTCH CLERGYMAN’S OPINION OF THE STAGE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4539, 7 October 1875, Page 3

A SCOTCH CLERGYMAN’S OPINION OF THE STAGE.

A lecture on tho above subject was delivered recently at St. Mark’s Chapel, Edinburgh, by the Bev. Robert B. Drummond, 8.A., and the liberal views therein expressed stand out in marked contrast to the twaddle which has recently fallen from the lips of a certain Dr. Beck and a bigoted clique, whose ravings in the Scotch capital have been made public. After tracing the modern drama to its source in a clever and interesting way, Mr. Drummond proceeds to make the following remarks, which will bo read with pleasure and profit ; “ The stage is undoubtedly one of tho most powerful of those agencies by which religion is to be humanised, and the humanities which all men may love and cultivate for themselves elevated above the dogmas and ceremonies of priests and ministers. Let us not forget that it is in connection with tho stage that the noblest literature in the world has been produced. It is not to be supposed that if there had been no theatre plays would still have been written, for the best of plays, at all events, were composed only to be acted. And in that case, what an immense loss the world would have sustained ! What an immense loss would be sustained even by those who never enter a theatre, but who can read and enjoy in their own closets the immortal works of the great dramatists. What lessons of wisdom and virtue, what profound thoughts, what elevated sentiments, expressed in the most exquisitely perfect form, what a broad, humane, and I will add, truly religious spirit, will you not find in the great dramatists of all ages ! When I think of zEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides in Greece ; of Terence and Plautus, in Romo ; in modem times, Racine and Corneille ; in Germany, of Goethe and Schiller; in England, of Shakspere, and beside him we will place no other, though there are many names only less than his; lam astonished that anyone however he might lament the faults and imperfections from which no one pretends that the stage is free, should put himself in the position of condemning an institution which is thus identified with much that is grandest and best in the literature of the world. ... I remember being once asked whether I should choose to die in a theatre—that being with many the crucial test of the goodness or badness of any action —should you feel yourself prepared to meet your God while engaged in witnessing a theatrical performance ? I don’t think it a tost at all. There are many actions innocent enough in themselves which are not peculiarly suitable to such a solemn matter as dying must be, wherever it is possible to make death a distinct object of contemplation. But this I will say, that if it pleased God that I should part from this life elsewhere than in my home, then I do not know any frame of mind in which I would rather be when called to quit the world than that produced by many a passage of Shakspere. So long as his dramas live—and they are immortal if anything is in this world—it will be the fault of a depraved taste, and perhaps to no small extent of the culpable indifference of those whose duty it is to give the tone in these matters, if the stage is not made a great power for good, an elevating, and, in every true sense, a religious influence.

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