Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/123

 plays. Adultery is an amusing situation, theft is the odd humour of a comic servant, the debauchery of young men is the theme of endless merriment, drunkenness will set the whole house in a roar, the dishonest debtor is a charming and entertaining hero, slander and lies and calumny make a capital scene, and finally, the only person in the play in question whose sentiments approach the verge of decency and good behaviour is held up to execration as the villain of the piece.

Is it any wonder that amongst earnest Christians such terms as "art" and "classic" are at least terms of suspicion? Is it any wonder that when we hear people singing the praises of the "exquisite art" of this or that volume, when play or poem or picture is awarded the palm of "classic merit," is it wonderful, I say, that we simple Puritans are apt to take alarm, to imagine, and not, as you will confess, without reason, that "classics" are mostly museums of indecency, and that "art" means either Popery or immorality, or both?

I am told, and I am afraid it is true,