MISCELLANEOUS

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 272, 13 June 1888, Page 6

MISCELLANEOUS

l)v .Sargent, of Hun aid University, U. 8., has oflered 51, 600 in prue.- to persons of either sex, who will approach nenre.it to perfect physical development. The oiler remains open till June 1, 1890. Mi Clarke, (he "Christian Athlete, and E\ angelical lectuier, ha-, been speaking to the point in Melbourne, and would desire to g trip athletics of .»ume of the surroundings which make manly sports less j)opular. He said that some of the best Christians he knew were the beet athletes ; and he would name several they would leiuomber. There were the Studds, two of the finest bats who had ever played. Charley Studd wa.s now a missionary in China. >L E. K. Studd was. for jears captain of the Cambridge eleven ; and while he prided himself on that, he wa» proud far more that he was a Christian. There was. A. G. Steel, -who conducted one of the largest Sunday schools in Li\ erpool ; Leslie, the best long field; Webbe, another fine lul ; T\lecote and the Lytielton-j — all Christian men. Jn the last international footballinafch between ! England and Scotland not a few of the thirty men were noted for their Christian characters. In the last Unhersity boat race, four of Cambridge and tin cc of Oxford were all Christian-?. The Studds and some others had set themselves the task of puri- j fying the cricket Held ; and he hoped that the young men of Austialia would follow j their example, so that they might take their wives and sifters, and the ladies they hoped to make their wives, to the matches, without the fear that- their cais would be polluted with foul oaths and vile sayings The Bishop of St. Andrew's^ Dr. Words ! worth), had lately in the "National Review" a very interesting article on the " Pindar | and Athletics," in which he dieiciwed the relation between athletics und intellectual culture. The Bishop of St. Andrew 'swa&himself when a young man an ardent follower of the games cultivated at our great schools and Universities ; and he said in this paper that he had never been as great a man, or perhaps as happy a man, as when he was captain of the eleven at Harrow. Dr. Wordsworth referred to the position which the cultivation of athletics occupied in ancienb (Greece, and to the interest which they inspired among the most intellectual men of the country. The Odes of Pindar were written to celebrate the victories in the Olympian games ; and in ancient Greece racing, whether on foot or in chariots, and wrestling wereeultivntcdbecauscthey helped to complete Ihe full dcvelopmentof man, and to bring his intellectual, no less than his physical, qualities into the highest prominence, tie gave a striking picture of the assembly at Olympia, and seemed inclined j to think that devotion to athletics was I becoming somewhat excessive. He strongly denounced the introduction of gambling and betting into public sports and games. He pointed out that in Greece superiority in the physical contests was associated with moral excellence ; and he asked how Pindar would have held up to the contempt and scorn of all future generations conduct/ such as hud been recently brought to light in connection with the turf. Dr. Wordsworth anticipated that the time would come when there would be an Olympian gathering of the Anglo-Saxon race. All the members of the Greek family gathered at the athlotic festivals : and Or Wordsworth believed that in some no distant future there would bo a gathering together from all quarters of the globe on the banks of the Thames of a more glorious Olympia than even Greece beheld, and in which, as he somewhat naively remarked, Evangelical Associations and Pan- Anglican and Pan-Preabyterian conferences should be merged in one.