SUNDAY CRICKET AT UPPER HUTT

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 300, 19 September 1928, Page 8

SUNDAY CRICKET AT UPPER HUTT

CHURCHES PROTEST TO COUNCIL. Upper Hutt Borough Councillors were some time ago faced with the necessity of deciding whether Sunday cricket should be allowed on a ground leased by the council at Maidstone Bark. In view of the fact that Upper Hutt had nyt a population to support Saturday cricket only, and that the ground would lie used extensively on the holiday, the proposal was carried, Councillor J. O. Duff dissenting. Regarding this, tlie council received at Monday’s meeting the following motion passed at a meeting of the four churches of Upper Hutt, (the Church of England, Presbyterian. Methodist, and Salvation Army) : “We recognise that Sunday is a Christian religious festival, constituted for the double purpose of rest and of public worship of God in Jesus Christ. We, therefore, regret to see the increased disregard for these uses, and we ask those who control public life in New Zealand, and especially in our own borough, to protect the sanctity of Sunday, and to discourage all that tends to the excitement and the neglect of worship. “We do so on the following grounds: (1) We feel that this disregard is not in the highest interests of the community; it means an ever-increasing number

of people are employed in providing facilities for others, and are deprived of the recognised day of rest. (2) The effect of this growing tendency to secularise the Lord's Day upon the growing minds of our youth is calculated to lessen a reverence for, and a due observance of. the one day in seven as one divinely ordained for rest and worship; we pledge ourselves to set the example of using Sunday as it ought to be used.” The letter was received without any comment.