“In this great London which we inhabit we are come upon evil day’s.  The rage of the blasphemer, the laugh at the scoffer, the heartless lip-service of the worldling, and the light dalliance of the daughters of music, are offered every hour upon a thousand Baal-altars within this very parish.  I would ask some of you who spend your evenings in the playhouses which multiply around us like weeds sown in the rank soil of human frailty, what justification you make to yourselves when you are alone in the watches of the night, and your conscience saith, ’What went ye out for to see?’ You will then complain of the bitterness of life, and prate of the refining influences of music; of the help to spiritual-mindedness given by the exhibition on the public stage of mockeries of God’s world, wherein some pitiful temporal triumph of simulated virtue in the last act is the apology for the vicious trifling that has gone before.  And in whom do you there see typified that virtue which you should shield in your hearts from the contamination of the theatre?  Is it not in some woman whose private life is the scandalous matter of your whispered conversations, and whose shameless face smirks at you from the windows of those picture-shops which are a disgrace to our national morality?  Is it from such as she that you will learn to be spiritual-minded?  Does she appear before your carnal crowds repentant, her forehead covered with ashes, her limbs covered with sackcloth?  No!  Her brow is glowing with unquenchable fire to kindle the fuel that the devil has hidden in your hearts.  Her raiment is cloth of gold; and she is not covered with it.  Naked and unashamed, she smiles and weeps in mockery of the virtue which you would persuade yourselves that she represents to you.  Will you learn spiritual-mindedness from the sight of her eyes, from the sound of her mouth, from the measure of her steps, or from the music and the dancing that cease not within the doors of her temple?  How can Satan cast out Satan?  Whom think ye to deceive by whitening the sepulchre?  Is it yourselves?  The devil has blinded you already.  Is it God?  Who shall hide anything from Him?  I tell you that he who makes the pursuit of virtue a luxury, and takes refuge from sin, not before the altar, but in the playhouse, is casting out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.

“As I look about me in this church; I see many things intended to give pleasure to the carnal eye.  Were the cost of all these dainty robes, this delicate headgear, these clouds of silk, of satin, of lace, and of sparkling jewels, were the price of these things brought into the Church’s treasury, how loudly might the Gospel resound in lands between whose torrid shores and the tropical sun the holy shade of Calvary has not yet fallen!  But, you will say, it is a good thing to be comely in the house of the Lord.  The sight of what is beautiful elevates the mind.  Uncleanness is a vice.  This, then, is how you