YOUNG NEW ZEALANDERS

Hokitika Guardian, 23 February 1928, Page 4

YOUNG NEW ZEALANDERS

M ETHODIST’S WARNING. “The typical New Zealander is a splendid animal,” said the Rev. W. J. Elliott in his presidential address to the 1628 .session of the New Zealand Methodist Conference, “but he lies to lie trained to superb manhood, and it cannot be done while he is obsessed with pleasure by day and by night. “After 50 years’ fervent sympathy with all forms of recreation.” said Mr Elliott, “one is compelled to say that to-day the cult of the body is being overdone at the expense of the cult of the mind and the heart. Pleasure is a preservative against the corroding power that tabes away the zest of life, but wo must discourage that extreme devotion to sport as sport which is operating against the real business of life. In the silent watches of the night many a parent must secretly regret the tendency of modern scholasticism to pander to that passion for sport that runs so naturally in the blood of the nation. There is danger in the ominous tendency to overlook the scholar and to consider only the ‘sport.’ “To-day. with us. when a person dies in this Dominion the first personal reference often is ‘Deceased was a good sportsman.’ “The Grecian love of athletics did rot give an inferior place to the historian and the poet, but we are in danger of reversing the classic order. “England is great because of Shakespeare and Watt rather than because of Wellington and Dr Grace. No nation has ever yet remained supreme by force of arms or feats of physical agililv. Faith is of incomparably greater importance tliai.i football, and Biblercading than boxing, though there is no reason why they should not blend in useful proportion. Thierefore moderation in the appetite for sport is as necessary as a moderation in the appetite for anything else.”