Excerpt from Rev. Dr. Porteous on the Pulpit and Stage, or Churches and Theatres, and Players and Preachers: An Anticipated Reply to Rev. Dr. Talmage’s Tirade Against Theatres
It is one of the busy and pressing questions of our day, and one which has not been answered with much fairness or wisdom, viz whether the Stage is not more real and more useful than the Pulpit. For a considerable time past - certainly during the last twenty years - there has been a growing disrelish for preachments and a thoroughly vital reaction in favor of plays, so that it has reached this crisis of query, Is not the function of the dramatic artist superior to that of the preacher 2 If exclusive preference were made to the ordinary style and staple of preachments, the question would virtually be settled in favor of the dramatist and actor. Of course, no serious or pious person would answer thus, nor indeed any moderate man of orthodox education and religious tastes, but the popular voice would reply, The Stage is superior to the Pulpit. That the Stage has an enormous power over popular passion and the common mould of minds, is admitted; and this power, whether for good or evil, is increasing and extending. Contrasted with the current fashion, and, we might add, circumstantials of preaching, the acting of the Stage has, in many ways, an obvious and superficial superiority.
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