CHURCH AND SPORT

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 133, 2 December 1929, Page 12

CHURCH AND SPORT

THE NEGLECTED SERVICE

MINISTER SPEAKS OUT

(By Telegraph.)

(Special to "The Evening Post.")

AUCKLAND, This Day.

"We arc-not going to build either national greatness or the kingdom of Christ around a church into which men in sporting flannels drop for a little while on Sundays on their way to the playing fields," said the Rev. D. C. Herron in the course- of a vigorous sermon particularly addressed to young people at St. David's Presbyterian Church last evening.

Tho remarks of Mr. Herron were based on a pasasge in which Isaiah depicts an idol worshipper who, after taking sufficient wood to meet his needs for warmth and cooking, made himself a God out of a piece lef* over. "Of the residue he maketh a God."

Mr. Herrou said he had taken this text because of a recent announcement that an Anglican minister in Wellington proposed to have an early morning service on Sunday to which those who intended to spend the day in sport could go in flannels. The 'idea seemed to be that religion could be disposed of in that way and the rest of the day could then be devoted to pleasure. If religion, eouia be fitted in without interfering with their purely worldly and selfish or utilitarian aims, then strictly on those terms some people were willing to be religious. To live a Christian life was just tho very antithesis of the spirit suggested by dropping into church in sporting attire on the way to the tennis courts or the golf links. Giving his reading of life at the present moment, Mr. Herron said that there was really an urgent call for young men and women who would fling themselves deliberately down to stop the break-away toward materialism and pleasure, but it was only genuine devotion to Christ that would give them courage to do it. Were they prepared to pay their debt of love by dedication of their whole lives to His service, or were they prepared to in- ; suit Him by offering only that which I was left over after their own selfish I interests had been satisfied?