CYCLING AND CHRISTIANITY

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 812, 29 January 1903, Page 4

CYCLING AND CHRISTIANITY

A Sydney paper makes the following comments anent Major Taylor

There doesn’t seem to lie any reason why a racing bicyclist shouldn’t be religious any more than why a person, engaged in the numerous other boats of the race of life shouldn’t lie. Evidently the conjunction of cycling arid Christianity strikes some people ns a kind of miracle, however, and in

.Sydney the fact that a champion at the. pedalling game now visiting Ibis country also belongs to a church has been Hie subject of gaspingly admiring comment. The cyclist, himself has announced his spiritual convictions wiih an eloquence ns ingeniously simple as that of Ralph Rackstraw, and has incidentally remarked —“ I always have, a Friend with me; a Friend who looks after me This implication that the Most High is prelecting nil American cyclist, while all others nave to employ human friends, and even I hen sometimes come to grief, recalls iho story of the Scottish woman win) reduced Hie truly elect to such a very few that iier hearer questioned whether any were safe for hereafter but herself and her husband. “ Aweel,” said the dame, “ A’m no sa sure aboot John !” Also the story of the cocky man who remarked that if he wasn’t saved, by , he’d like to know who was. However, the cyclist with a Friend and his astonished eulogisers are not without precedent. It Shakespeare is any authority, the English were “ in God’s hands ” on one very memorable occasion. Cromwell always believed that he was a Divinely chosen and Divinely guided instrument. Louis Napoleon considered himself Hie man of destiny. The Boe s invoked the Supreme Being so often and (like the cyclist) so confidently. that a cynical American remarked that they had “ even commandeered the Almighty.” Public history and every man’s private experience are full of examples of this sort of tiling. All that is new about it in Hie present case, therefore, is tile astonished joy that is being expressed over the fact that a participant in a healthy sport belongs to a religious denomination. Which is a line testimonial to Australian cricketers and golfers.