THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER ON THE THEATRE.

Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 118, 1 February 1879, Page 3

THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER ON THE THEATRE.

St. Par, l tells ns “ All things are ours, ilrngs present as will as things tn come, life as well as death, heaven and the world.” And we are now living in the world. Although T ston’d bo the last to recommend that Christianity shon’d take for its standard t' e stard-’id of the word, still Chvis iarify and the Church must rec> guise the phenmir na and the actual instincts and -appetites of the human be’ngs with w!mm it has to deal Though I should be the hast to deny nar, in faithfulness to my own Church, I could not deny—the ptiivipU of the depravity of human nature, still, to prevent me from sinking wl oily into despair, ami letting my hands go down by my side, I , still rejoice to believe—and T do not 1 recognise that either my BiMe or my i artie'es require m« to modify that belief—i that the mark of that Divine image in | which I was made, and' in which man was 1 mada, is still more'deeply impressed upon ! human nature than thehnark of (he be s% and that human nature dries m t naturally and iustin lively pr-Tbr what is gross and viciops to what is pure and good. 1 confess that for the moment, my breath was almost taken fro a.- me bv that somewhat tremendous utterance whi h fell Horn one of the speakers, who to d ns that he felt that either the theatre must be abandoned or Christ must be lost. But Mr Brownlow Maitland added the necessary exegesis to that sentence, and when he told us that every man most look at this question from his own pmnt of view, and answer for his own spiritual life as it were, I f-lt relieved again. I know and r-ognise gladly the truth that we are not to judge one another, and though no doubt there was a danger to us all of adopting and acting upon tho-c standards of living, particularly in our relations to societv, and though we—all of us. I am afraid—tire guilty of _ lamentah’e inconsist mey, and are sometimes verv different in our pulnPs and platforms to wh.it we are in drawingrooms, and bil iard - rooms, and other places of social resort ; still I could not quite endorse the seitim-nt that the theatre must he abandoned or Christ must be lost.—(Cheers.)