PROF. BLACKIE ON THE DRAMA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 119, 27 March 1879, Page 2

PROF. BLACKIE ON THE DRAMA.

Prof. Blackie, in proposing The Drama," at a dinner given to Mr B. H. Wyndham, in Edinburgh, said:—"ls it not a most strange thing that in modern times, with our high-strung religion, we have made a divorce between the stage and morality and religion, whereas, in ancient times, growing out of mere joviality, out of the harvest home, as it were—thcro came up a Greek tragedy, which became a pulpit from which you liavo sermons upon conscience, which go to move the inner strings of the heart as much as any sermon that was ever preached by Dr Guthrie or Dr Butler, or the most sanctimonious of Free Church clergymen in the north-west of Rosshire. (Laughter and applause.) Read you the opening chorus of Agamsmnon, or read the choruses of Eumenidcs or the Furies, and tell me if it is not a most monstrous thing for men preaching the Gospel to say that there is anything in these tending to an eternal divorce betwean the' Church and the Theatre, (Applause.) There are in these works great elovating'ideas, and yet the modern preacher says of the drama," Depart from me, for lam holier than thou," What is the consequence 1 You leave tlio theatre to drift, and depend upon it, that if they who aro God's servants who do not know how to use it, the devil is far too clever a fellow not to use it for his own business. (Applause.) If there is anything wrong in the theatre, it is the fault of tho public, and especially of the clergy—(applause) —who have mado a most unnatural mid monstrous divorce between the holy, -and the beautiful. They, aro fighting, however, against good and against God; and I will only say, therefore, with old Homer, 'He fightß merely to be beaten who fights against gods.' (Applause.) I beg topropose' Success to the Modern Drama,' and especially in its union with the Christian Gospel,"