Z699/166a

Comments on the evil of dancing

c.1838

From: 1838 To: 1838

When, says the celebrated Adam Clark, I was about 12 or 13 years of age I learned to dance - I long resisted all solicitations to this employment but at last I suffered myself to be overcome, and learned & profited beyond most of my fellows. I grew passionately fond of it, would scarcely walk but in measured time, & was constantly tripping moving & shuffling in all times & places - I began now to value myself, which as far as I can recollect I had never thought of before. I grew impatient of control, was fond of company, wished to mingle more than I had ever done with young people - I got also a passion for better clothing than that which fell to my lot in life, & was very discontented when I found a neighbour's son dressed better than myself. I lost the spirit of subordination, did not love work, imbibed a spirit of idleness, & in short drank in all the brain sickening effluvia of pleasure; dancing & company took the place of reading & study; & the authority of my parents was feared indeed but not respected, & few serious impressions could prevail in a mind imbued now with frivolity & love of pleasure; yet I entered now into no disreputable assembly, & in no one case ever kept any improper company; I formed no illegal connexion, nor associated with any whose character was bad or suspicious. Nevertheless dancing was to me a perverting influence an unmixed moral evil; for although by the mercy of God it led me not to depravity of manners, it greatly weakened the moral principle, drowned the voice of a well instructed conscience, & was the first cause of impelling me to seek my happiness in this life; every thing yielded to the disposition it had produced & everything was absorbed by it. I have it justly in abhorrence for the moral injury it did me; & can testify (as far as my observations have extended, & they have a pretty wide range) I have known it produce the same evil in others that it produced in me. I consider it therefore as a branch of that worldly education which leads from Heaven to Earth, from things spiritual to things Sensual & from God to Satan. Let them plead for it who will, I knew it to be Evil, & that only.- They who bring up their children in this way or send them to those schools where Dancing is taught, are consecrating them to the service of Moloch & cultivating the passions so as to cause them to bring forth the weeds of a fallen nature with an additional rankness deep rooted inveteracy & inexhaustible fertility. No man in his senses will dance, said Cicero, shame on those Christians who advocate a cause, by which many souls have become profligate & many daughters ruined.

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dancing, religious writings