Sufficient means of enjoying healthful exereise, the pleasures of social intercourse, and improv ing conversation, exist independently of Theat rical representation. For the acquisition of knowledge in arts, in science, in polite literature, and in morality you have no need of the stage. All the aids of christian erudition and practical godliness dwell, far, far, from its tabernacles. Nor is there an instance on record among the many thousand votaries of the drama, of a man or woman converted from sin unto God and built up in holiness and comfort by the exhibitions of the play house.

Is it by frequenting the Theatre, that the tradesman learns industry, that the merchant acquires his practical skill, that the civilian is fitted for the government of empires, that the learned professions are studied with success, that mothers and daughters become qualified to act their important part in society, or any one whatever becomes wiser or better? Wherefore, then, the vast expenditure both of time and treasure lavished upon this establishment:* and what the loss to society, were it utterly unknown?

*Time is money, for the industrious improvement of it promotes wealth, and idleness hastens to poverty. Independently however of the sacrifice of time in preparing

4. Theatrical representations necessarily tend to demoralize every society in which they are supported.

While tragedy purposes. by an exhibition of great and heroic character to cultivate a dignified morality, and comedy promises to laugh out of countenance every kind of folly and vice, both are false to their promise, and the unwary is grossly deceived. The idle and the profligate still continue to weep over tragical distress, and continue to laugh immoderately at the buffoonery of comedy, without ever undergoing a reform. It must be so. Infidelity and licentiousness are intro

for the Theatre, in attending upon it, and in conversing about its amusements, there is a vast expenditure of money.

The Theatre in this city is the property of two gentlemen, who rent it to the present managers Messrs. Cooper and Price for the sum of six thousand dollars per annum. The expenses of the managers every play-night is averaged at four hundred and fifty dollars. Supposing the Theatre to be open three nights in each week, during eight anonths in the year, the annual expense of the managers will amount to fifty thousand dollars. But these managers for such an expenditure must calculate on suitable compensation. Messrs. Cooper and Price must expect not only to live by their trade; but also to make money. It is probably not above the truth if we allow, ten thousand dollars to satisfy their expectations and to defray incidental expenses. The Theatrical establishment will at this rate cost the city of New-York, annually the sum of sixty thousand dollars. And can you christians contemplate this spectacle without horror? A city enjoying the law and the gospel of God, bestowing 60,000 dollars per annum, on an immoral association of play actors, whose trade consists in demoralizing the habits and corrupting the taste of your sons and your daughters.

duced, under every form, which would diminish disgust, or becalculated to render them agreeable to the audience.

Familiarity is accordingly cultivated with the worst characters without necessity or impatience, and often even with delight.

The affections which are exercised and strengthened at the play-house, are always those of mere fallen nature, generally, those which harmonise with open profanity, and, never, those which are exclusively religious.

The sensibility, which is here excited and interested, is the creature of romance, which never occurs or acts in real life. In a city where real misery still calls for compassion and relief; there is no benevolence in contributing to the support of the stage for the purpose of exercising synpathy with ideal sorrow.

The moral sentiment, inculcated from the stage with all the graces of composition and delivery, is uniformly separated from the motives and principles of christianity, is never tested by the precepts of the divine law, and is, of course, both delusory and impious.

Revealed religion is never exhibited in its native purity. It is adulterated by an intermixture with fashionable maxims, and so reduced to the

standard of unsanctified taste.

Therefore the wicked return from the play house highly gratified with his entertainment. But, if a good man ever retire from it, without disgust, it is because his taste has been corrupted by evil communications.

Human Pride and passion are fed by the productions of the Theatre. Desires and appetites are strengthened. The whole is a faithful ministry to the flesh lusting against the spirit, and directly counteracts the grand design of the gospel of Christ. So sensible must all the disciples of the drama be of this tendency that, none of them will ask in going to the play-house, the blessing of God on the exhibition which he is about to witness; nor, upon his return home at an untimely hour, will he bow the knee and give thanks to Jehovah, for the play and the farce which constituted the entertainment of the evening.

Precious time is, profusely, squandered upon this fashionable folly. Great expense is incurred by it. In life it tends to eradicate all inclination for divine things; it renders meditation and prayer both wearisome and painful, and at death it yields no support or comfort.

The full effect of the corrupt tendency of the stage is known only in the lives of the actors, or

in those haunts of dissipation into which profligates betake themselves from this chapel of devotion. The poisonous leaven, however, spreads, with rapid but imperceptible gradations, through all the circles of gay life, and, from them, to surrounding society. It is more destructive to the interests of true religion, than is the canker worm to the blossoms of the spring. The amateur of the Theatre values not the Bible but for its fancied resemblance of style to his favourite play; and if he enters the place where the christian minister delivers the message of his God to miserable man, he values the discourse only by the degree of stage effect which accompanies its delivery. Whenever a rage for Theatrical representations prevails, the religious taste is itself affected; and under the illusory idea of superior refinement, the enticing words of man's wisdom are apt to be preferred to the demonstration of the spirit.

The picture, brethren, which we have here given you of the Theatre, will, we are confident be found, though rapidly sketched, a correct outline. You may satisfy yourselves, by a perusal of other publications in which the argument is given in detail. We affectionately recommend to your attention, and republish for your perusal, an Essay, in which the subject has received