THE RECENT PRIZE-FIGHT

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5308, 3 August 1928, Page 2

THE RECENT PRIZE-FIGHT

PULPIT CONDEMNATION. In the Vivian Baptist Church, Wellington, last Sunday, in the course, of a sermon on “Y’e Are: An Epistle Christ,” the Rev. F. E. Hari'y made reference to the .recent fight. He said:— “I- should feel recreant to my trust as a Minister of the Lord Jesus Christ if I did not express publicly the sorrow that, many of us feel at the present recrudescence op barbarism. .1 rubbed my,, eyes when I opened the ‘Dominion’ j'esterday morning " and found live columns devoted to disgusting details of the prize.-fight which had taken place in America on Friday. No could' describe the affair as ‘Sport.’ for it was nothing else than commercialised brutality. On Friday crowds gaithered wherever possible, to hear broadcast reports of the brutal contest, a sifrej and. sorry sign of national'deterioration. It is not indignation, however, which 1 wish to express, but sorrow. The human body is the Creator’s noblest physical product, and to hear of it being battered (for money) into a saapiiess and bleeding mass before- thousands of applauding onlookers shocks all decent people. The Wild of God t f -Hs us that the body was meant to be ‘the temple of the Holy Glioot.’ and, as such, it. should be sacred to (-very man. In the sigiu ot this popu'-a.” exhibition of a revived paganism it behoves every lover of mankind and all who believe in God to pray earnestly that He visit us not with some dire chastisement for our sin-, but, rather, tihat He rend forth His mighty Spirit through all cut’ churihcs, rekindling love and devotion in the hearts of His people, and arousing the whole nation to a consciousness of its sins. Apart from Christ'ahity civilisation is doomed, and nothing but a breath from Heaven can save New Zealand from degeneration and decay and make it what it is far from being, ‘God’s Own Country. ”