ments: "Thou art not far," says our Lord, "from the kingdom of heaven."-Mark, xii. 34. Imitate the mildness and conduct of the blessed Jesus. It is a very great and fatal mistake in persons who attempt to convince and reconcile others to their party, when they make the difference appear as wide as possible; this is shocking to any person who is to be convinced; he will rather choose to keep and maintain his own opinions if he cannot come into yours without renouncing and abandoning every thing that he believed before. Human nature must be flattered a little as well as reasoned with, that so the argument may be able to come at the understanding, which otherwise will be thrust off at a distance. If you charge a man with nonsense and absurdities, with heresy and self-contradiction, you take a very wrong step towards convincing him. Always remember that error is not to be rooted out of the mind of man by reproaches and railing, by flashes of wit and biting jests, by loud exclamations or sharp ridicule; long declamations and triumph over our neighbour's mistake will not prove the way to convince him; these are signs either of a bad cause, or a want of argument, or capacity for the defence of a good one."*

If our opponents would deal with us on this principle of Christian toleration, we should listen to their objections with respect, and would endeavour

* Dr. Watts, "On the Improvement of the Mind." Part ii. c. 3.

to remove them; but their cry is "you are inveterate sinners, and we hold no communion with you." They hunt us down as the first followers of Mahomet did their adversaries, with their doctrines in one hand, and the sword in the other, shouting aloud "receive or die." The Stage, as it is now regulated, taken with a reasonable allowance, does, as Shakspeare says is its object, "hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. "" The general tendency of plays, as now acted, is to promote the cause of religion, to recommend virtue and morality, and to discountenance vice. Instances of bad characters are brought forward, and crimes are delineated, as no representation of human life could be perfect without them. Evil persons in plays, as in reality, speak the sentiments they feel, and recommend the actions they practise, but they are not produced as examples to be imitated, but rather as exceptions to be shunned. Depravity and wickedness, are no where more frequently pourtrayed in all the disgusting colours of their nature, than in the Sacred Volume. These cases, with their concomitant punishments, are our lessons, teaching us what we are to avoid; and the Drama depicts them with the same moral purpose. Yet some reasoners against the Theatre extend their objections to the extreme of saying, that it is a pernicious school, because vicious characters are repre

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sented. According to the poet, "the proper study of mankind is man."* But we exhibit only the least profitable part of the lesson, if we show him in his beauty alone, and withhold the deformities by which he is too often disfigured. It is by the contrast of vice, that the excellence of virtue is made apparent, as by the skilful management of light and shade, the painter produces his most striking effects. Plutarch says, in his life of Demetrius, "we shall behold and imitate the virtuous, with greater attention, if we be not entirely unacquainted with the characters of the vicious, and infamous." When some one blamed Euripides, for bringing such a flagitious villain as Ixion on the Stage, he is reported to have given this answer, "but yet I brought him not off till I had fastened him to a burning wheel."+ But even if wickedness were sometimes represented as triumphant, in what purports to be a correct picture of human life, there would be no deviation from truth, nor would the moral be the less important. We know that in this world vice and virtue are not always treated according to their deserts. "Whatever pleasure there may be," says Dr. Johnson in his Life of Addison, in seeing crimes punished, and virtue rewarded, yet since wickedness often prospers in real life, the poet is certainly at liberty to give it prosperity upon the Stage. For if poetry has an imi

* Pope.

† Plut. De Audiend. Poetis.

tation of reality, how are its laws broken by exhibiting the world in its true form? The Stage must sometimes gratify our wishes, but if it be truly the "mirror of life," it ought to show us sometimes what we are to expect."

The heaviest of all Dr. Bennett's charges is couched in the following terms. "So far are plays in general from inculcating the spirit of Gospel morality, that for any internal evidence to the contrary, they might have been composed by men who never heard of the Christian revelation; or who having heard of it, are bent upon opposing its instruction, undermining its authority, and establishing a system of motives and conduct not only incompatible with, but subversive of its sway. I design this censure to be sweeping and universal." This is even a harsher judgment than that pronounced against the condemned city, which would have been spared at the intercession of Abraham, had ten righteous men been found within its walls.* Our answer to this is contained in the direct evidence we have tendered as to the true Christian feeling of Shakspeare, and the list we have given of learned divines and eminent moralists, who have written for the Stage. If that list, and those productions, be not sufficient to set aside this universal censure, any further argument on the subject is

* Genesis, xviii. 32.

worse than useless. We must rely on those testimonies or our cause is gone.

Dr. Bennett follows up the last remark by adding, "While I cannot, of course, say from my own knowledge that the modern Drama presents no exception to it, [this censure,] I can truly say that I am not acquainted with such an exception; I do not know one acted play in which there are not serious moral faults, the Bible being the standard of appeal." If we are to understand by this that his acquaintance with the modern Drama is limited and not general, it will be difficult to reconcile wholesale condemnation with such confined knowledge of the subject. The Bible is a trying standard by which to estimate the gravest avocations of this life; how much more difficult, then, must it be to keep parallel to that exalted model in our lighter recreations? This may be almost called judging the creature by the attributes of the Creator; but the Bible being given to us as our guide, it is our duty to come as near to it as our imperfect nature will allow. The nearest approach can be no more than an approximation; weighed in this all perfect balance, the purest of human hearts, and the most blameless of human productions, must still be found lamentably wanting. To require then that any plays, when rigidly judged by an appeal to the Bible, should be found entirely free from fault, is to demand an evident absurdity, and to elevate the Drama beyond the excellence of