Men ought exercise the right of private judgement in forming their religious sentiments, because 1. "God has made them capable of judging for themselves" in these matters; 2. He has given them "the proper means of forming their own religious sentiments ;" and 3. he "has appointed none to judge for them."

"It is true, God has appointed teachers, but not judges. The preachers of the Gospel are to explain and inculcate the doctrines of it, and place them in as clear, plain and convincing a light as they can. But after all they have done to exhibit and support the truth, the hearers are to judge for themselves, whether those things they have heard be the truth. They have the same sure word of inspiration, to assist them in determining what is truth, that their teachers have; and they are obliged to consult it. Teachers, indeed, have often been disposed to assume the power and authority of dictating. And the Christian Church has suffered great injury, for ages, from the bigotry and usurpation of those, who have sustained the office of sacred guides. But it was not so from the beginning. The apostles and primitive preachers of the Gospel disclaimed all dominion over men's faith, and professed to be only helpers in promoting their knowledge and holiness. And none, who sustain the office of the ministry, have any right to impose their own opinions upon their hearers, by virtue of their sacred office. The Pope and all his hierarchy are usurpers, whose pretensions to supreme power and infallibility in the church are to be treated with disdain, as vile impositions. The people are their own proper judges of religious truth and error, and of ecclesiastical power. Christian churches have a right to form their own creeds and exercise their own discipline, independently of any superior ecclesiastical power on earth. As God has appointed none to judge and dictate for them in these serious concerns, so they are under indispensable obligations to exercise their own private judgement."

Dr. E. urges farther, in support of his position, that "God has forbidden men to take their religious sentiments from others, upon trust ;" and that "every man must feel the effects of his own religious opinions, and consequently ought to exercise his own judgement in forming them."

"True religious sentiments are essential to true religion. Men cannot have true religion, without having the true knowledge of God, and of the essential doctrines of the Gospel. Accordingly, every man's religion will be effected by the religious sentiments which he cordially embraces. It is, therefore, of as much importance to form our own religious sentiments, and to form them according to truth, as to have true religion; and it is of as much importance to have true religion, as it is to secure the salvation of our souls. If we suffer others to form our religious sentiments for us, yet God will not suffer us to escape the effects of our folly and guilt. We must feel the effects of our own principles, as well as of our own practice. We must give an account of our faith, as well as of our conduct. Not only our temporal, but our eternal interests, arc concerned in forming our religious sentiments. Let us remember that we must all stand before the

judgement seat of Christ, who has told us, "Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.""

We feel a pleasure in publishing the foregoing extracts, because they express entirely our own sentiments, and we believe those of our brethren generally. Notwithstanding the accusations fulminated against us from certain high places in this vicinity, the truth is, there are no more strenuous advocates of religious freedom, and of the right of private judgement in matters of religion, than the Orthodox of New England. We think for ourselves, and we wish others to think for themselves. We endeavor to call things by their right We profess to be willing to be names, and we wish others to do the saine. swayed by reason and argument drawn from facts and the word of God, and this is the only influence which we desire to exert in forming the opinions and characters of others. We wish not to be persecuted or punished for our opinions, and (unless our hearts greatly deceive us) we should be just as unwilling to see the most strenuous of our opposers persecuted or punished for theirs. In the language of the venerable author from whom we have quoted, Let every one see with his own eyes' hear with his own ears, and exercise his own faculties in forming his religious opinions, remembering at the same time, that he is responsible to the Judge of all for the principles he embraces, and that if he abuses the freedom granted him, he must feel the effects of his own folly and guilt.

THE THEATRE.

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HITHERTO our pages have been silent in relation to the theatre, partly because would we have not had time to take up the subject in the manner and to the extent we wished, and partly because we presumed that anything we should not be likely to do much good. It is well understood, and has been for a long time, that the religious commenity to which we are attached are decidedly opposed to the theatre-opposed to it on principle-opposed to it in every form it has assumed, or likely to assume, in this wicked world. We do not patronise this amusement ourselves, nor is it patronised, to any extent, by those of our families, our religious connexions, or friends, over whom we can exert a con. trolling influence. We consider the time passed at the theatre as wasted; and the prodigious sums there expended as worse than thrown away. We regard the theatre, not only as a scene of dissipation, where serious subjects are forgotten, and the soul is unfitted for communion with its God, but as a school of profligacy, a fountain of corruption, from which the tide of ruin flows out in broad and desolating streams. Entertaining, in common with our Christian brethren generally, views such as these respecting the theatre, and presuming it to be well understood that such were our views, we have felt as though a formal expression of them was not necessary.

We are induced at this time to change our course, and offer a few remarks on the subject in question, chiefly for the purpose of congratulating our readers on the manifest change in public sentiment in regard to the theatre, which has been showing itself for a considerable time past. This change is apparent in the diminished attention now paid to the theatre. The time has been, when Boston was cursed with two or three of these haunts of wickedness, regularly open, and often thronged; but for the last year, there has been but one in operation, and this, we are told, not numerously attended, and with difficulty

supported. The time has been, when some of the most respectable people in Boston were accustomed to attend the theatre with their families; but latterly not a few of this description, and these, too, not in our sense of the word decidedly religious, have withdrawn from it, we trust forever. The time has also been, when, to speak of the theatre as a nursery of vice, or even as of an immoral tendency, could hardly be tolerated in some professedly religious circles; but in these same circles it is now denounced in no measured terms of reprobation. Whether the theatre has actually deteriorated, or whether the enormities of it are coming to be better understood and more deeply felt, we shall not take upon ourselves to determine; but that it is regarded and spoken of by many in a manner very different from what it once was, is indubitable.-The Christian Examiner, in May last, used the following language respecting it :

"It (the theatre) is indeed abused, and so abused, it is a fountain of so much ruin, it is the receptacle of such infamy-there is, as it seems to us, such a needless catering for the grossest appetites, there is such an unseemly and shocking vicinity of innocence with the most shameless corruption, that we can speak of the theatre, in its present state, only in terms of utter reprobation. We seriously think that good men ought to do something to purify this amusement, or to forsake it entirely."

In the course of the last summer, a memorial, signed by many of the principal citizens of Boston, was presented to the Mayor and Aldermen, in which the following statements occur.

"It has been known for a considerable time, that the third row in our theatres has become a disgusting scene of intemperance, profaneness, and licentiousness of manners; and no doubt is entertained, that the sale of intoxicating liquors within the theatres, and especially in the third row, does much to aggravate, if it does not produce, the evils complained of.

"Surely it cannot be generally known, what misery has been thence diffused through families, and how cruelly the honorable hopes of parents have been blasted, and forever, from that cause. What a place must that be, gentlemen, in which ten thousand dollars are annually expended, chiefly for intoxicating draughts; and where a greater part of this sum is expended by minors, in the society of wanton and abandoned women! What a reproach is it, in this Christian land, and in this city of Boston, that the permission to nourish prostitutes, and to corrupt and ruin the young, should proceed indirectly, from the sanction of public authority!"

On the last Sabbath in September, the Rev. Mr. Palfrey introduced the subject into a sermon, and brought it before his people, in a manner, we think, much to his credit.

"I am safe in saying, that, when it has been asserted in respectable quarters, that the income of the many places of refreshment, so called, beneath that roof, (the theatre) is such as, along with other indications, proves that it could be furnished only by a vast amount of expensive sin;-and that part of the building, moreover, has been the scene of the most odious practices,-that it appears to have been not merely an introduction to the brothel, but a

brothel itself,—it is safe to say, that it is time for the guardians of the young, and for all good citizens, to take the alarm, and ask if these things are so. And if they are so, or have been, or are in danger of being, I do not say that the time, for the magistrate to interpose, is this week, or this month, or this year, but I am sure that it is well for us to have the magistrate understand, that when the time does come, a virtuous community will sustain him in laying a strong hand on such abominations ;-that, when he shall interfere, on an emergency so pressing, for the public safety, he will not be left to do it at any hazard or disadvantage."

In reference to the passage above given, representing the theatre "to have been not merely an introduction to the brothel, but a brothel itself," Mr. Palfrey remarks in a communication to the Daily Advertiser,

"Whoever is disposed, may find, on inquiry, that there have been arrangements of a room attached to a part of the theatre in question, which, considered together with the society customarily resorting to it, prostitutes, pimps, liquor venders, rakes, and minors, may seem to him, as they have seemed to others, to authorize a presumption of the use intended, stronger than most presumptions which the law enforces."

In a letter to Mr. Palfrey, dated Oct. 4, the Hon. William Sullivan, speaking in the name of a Committee of which he was a member, in relation to the Tremont theatre, observes,

They (the committee) were unwilling to be silent, when they supposed it even possible, that their sons, apprentices, and wards, hitherto unoffending and innocent, might be seduced to become, first spectators of iniquity, then partakers in it, and finally victims in a course of folly, leading to felonies, and to irretrievable ruin. If it is forbidden to parents, masters, guardians, and citizens, to take such peaceable and lawful measures, as they think proper, to save the young from folly, vice, and crime, it is time to shut up our school houses, and places of public worship, and leave the care and duty of moral instruction, to theatres."

An anonymous writer in the Daily Advertiser, speaking on the same subject,

says,

"During the last winter, the things that were done in a particular part of the theatre, and the agents by whom they were done, demanded an interference no less than a pestilence would." -This is "a house which moral people will not much longer permit themselves to be seen in, unless some satisfactory changes

occur."

The testimony here furnished respecting the character of the theatre in Boston is full and explicit. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing, we presume, need be taken from it. We feel much obliged to the gentlemen by whom it is given, and can most cordially respond to the sentiments they have uttered, except, perhaps, in a single point. It appears on the face of most of these communications, that theatrical representations are not wrong in themselves, but only in their abuse; and that, if they could but be improved and reformed, they VOL. III.NO. XI.

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might be a very commendable source of amusement. This plan of reforming the theatre has been a favorite one, with many people, for more than two thousand years. Still the theatre is not reformned; and the time, we think, has fully come, for the friends of morality to take the higher ground of saying that it never can be. It does not admit of being reformed, and still exiss as a place of public resort and amusement. We might as well talk of reforming the fierce lion, or the ranging bear, and rendering the beast of prey a beast of burden: or of making a covenant with leviathan, to play with him as with a bird, and bind him for our maidens.' How are the nature and properties of an institution ever to be known, but by its invariable results? And where, from the first establishment of the theatre to the present hour, have not the results of it been uniformly unfavorable to the cause of virtue? Plato denounced it, in his day, as "dangerous to morality." Aristotle lays it down as a rule, “that the seeing of comedies ought to be forbidden to young people." Ovid advises Augustus to suppress this amusement, "as being a grand source of corruption." In the primitive Christian church, " both the players, and those who attended the theatre, were debarred from the sacraments." Archbishop Tillotson pronounces the playhouse to be "the devil's chapel," a nursery of licentiousness and vice." Bishop Collier declares that "nothing had done more to debauch the age in which he lived, than the stage-poets and the playhouse." And even tho infidel Rousseau, when it was proposed to establish a theatre in Geneva, wrote against it with much zeal and force, affirming that "every friend of morals ought to oppose it."'

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That the theatre does not admit of being reformed and purified, so as to exert a favorable influence on the morals of a community, is evident from the nature of the case. The virtuous part of society, in general, do not want this amusement for their pleasure or profit, other places of resort being more agreeable to them; and consequently they will not be at the expense of supporting it. The theatre, then, must depend for support, chiefly, on the vicious and unprincipled. And as it depends on these, it must be made agreeable to them; it must be adapted to their tastes and wishes. In other words, it must be made a wicked place. It ever has been so, and from the nature of the case, it ever must be. An advocate of the Tremont theatre admits, by implication, that if" the refreshment rooms" are taken away, it cannot probably be supported. We fully believe him. Take away from the theatre all the stimulants of the passions, all the incentives to vice and sin, and you take away most of the attractions of the place. With these removed, you take away nineteen twentieths, if not ninety-nine hundredths, of all those who at present frequent it. And when these have withdrawn, the doors are at once closed, and the institution dies. If there was the least prospect that those whose hearts are so much set on reforming the theatre could accomplish anything, we would "bid them God speed," as we should think this might be the most effectual method of stopping the whole concern. But we do not believe there is the least prospect of this. Occasional restraints may be imposed, and occasional outrages upon sobriety and decency may be suppressed; but they will soon make their appearance in other ways, till at length the moral sense of the community becomes hardened to them, the friends of order are discouraged, and they are suffered to remain and increase.

There obviously is but one course for those who wish well to the cause of religion to take in relation to tho theatre, and that is, to desert it, and to lift their united voice against it. No peace nor truce should be made with it. These receptacles of infamy, these haunts of debauchery and crime, have been tolerated