Tennis on Sunday

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 15, 12 October 1933, Page 11

Tennis on Sunday

. Sir,—ln endeavouring to show that tennis on Sunday desecrates that day, what a pity that "Straight Shot” depends on mere assertions, just as he charged against the members of the Education Board who were in favour of it. How much better to have taken his cue irotn the Author of Christianity, who, in dealing with like controversy, used the "sword of the spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. vi, 17). The "Bible of the Race” is evidently a very different thing. Iu your correspondent’s first letter, in endorsing the stand of those members of the Education Board who disapproved of Sunday tennis, he suggested that the policy of the. board should be such that “its laws . will not only exhibit a Christian conscience, but tend to create one,” i.e., to promote morality or religion. But one of the functions o f the board under the Education Act is to provide for a

system of secular education, and therefore as a civil body it can, of right, have nothing to do with the promotion of morality or religion. When church members seek through a civil body to enforce upon men religious institutions and observances, they ignore the responsibility of the individual to God and make men accountable to them, thus presuming to legislate and rule for Him or in His stead. And how often has this been done? The pages of history are black and bloodstained with the logical result of this high crime. The powers that be, though ordained of God, were not ordained to coerce men’s consciences by such , acts as the prohibition of tennis on Sunday, else what is the lesson to be gained from Heaven’s defence of the three Hebrew worthies in Nebuchadnezzar’s Jiery furnace and the defence of Daniel when under the restraint of the powers that be for disobeying the decree of the king of the Medes and Persians?—l am. etc., TILDEN N.Z. Wellington, October 10.