Evil is using every means to make crime and debasing vice popular. We cannot walk the streets of our cities without encountering flaring notices of crime presented in some novel or to be acted at some theater, film, or television series. The mind is educated to familiarity with transgression. The course pursued by the base and vile is kept before the people in the periodicals of the day, and everything that can excite passion is brought before them in exciting stories. They hear and read so much of debasing crime that the once tender conscience, which would have recoiled with horror from such scenes, becomes hardened, and they dwell upon these things with greedy interest.
Many of the amusements popular in the world today, even with those who claim to be believers, tend to the same end as did those of the unbelievers. There are indeed few among them that evil one does not turn to account in destroying souls. Through the drama, he has worked for ages to excite passion and glorify vice. The unhealthy music, with its fascinating display and bewildering music, the masquerade, the dance, the card table, the evil one employs to break down the barriers of principle and open the door to sensual indulgence. In every gathering for pleasure where pride is fostered or appetite indulged, where one is led to forget G-d and lose sight of eternal interests, there the evil one is binding his chains about the soul.
Our only safety is to be shielded by the grace of G-d every moment, and not put out our own spiritual eyesight so that we will call evil, good, and good, evil. Without hesitation or argument, we must close and guard the avenues of the soul against evil.