SPORT AND RELIGION

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 281, 17 February 1928, Page 9

SPORT AND RELIGION

BODY CULT OVERDONE DANGER TO DOMINION (Special to THE SUN.) CHRISTCHURCH, To-day. “After 50 years of fervent sympathy with all forms of recreation one is compelled to say that today 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 coroding power that takes away the zest of life, but we must discourage that extreme devotion to sport as sport, which is operating against the real business of life.” In an eloquent address to the Methodist Conference, the president, the Rev. W. J. Elliott, deplored the sacrifice of mind and heart culture for sport in the Domonion. He said: “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. ThVe 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 typical New Zealander is a splendid animal, but he has to be trained to superb manhood, and it cannot be done while he is obsessed with pleasure by day and by night. The Grecian love of athletics did not give an inferior place to the historian and the poet, but we are in danger of reversing the classic order. BRAINS AND BRAWN “It is the man of brains who advances his country rather than the man of brawn. That superiority is the comr. H n experience of all climes and countries. Agamemnon dies, but Homer lives for ever—‘the swords of Caesars, they are less than rust; the poet doth remain.’ England is great because of Shakespeare and Watt rather than because of Wellington and Dr. Grace. No nation has ever yet remained supreme by focce of arms or feats of physical agility. “Faith is of incomparably greater importance than football, and Bible-reading than boxing, though there is no reason why they should not blend In useful proportion.” Air. Elliott estimates that a moderate cost of religion to New Zealand is £1,410,000, which is less than £1 a head of population. Sport, excluding racing, costs £1,270,000, but with racing and liquor the bill comes up to £21,270,000 a year.