SUNDAY SPORTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1929, Page 6

SUNDAY SPORTS

A PRESBYTERIAN VIEWf -— i 1 (Special to “Star.”) ; AUCKLAND, December 2. “We are not going to build either national greatness or the Kingdom of Christ around a church into which men in sporting flannels drop for a little while on Sundays on their’ way to the playing fields,” said the Rev. D. C. Herron, in the course of a-vigor-ous sermon, particularly addressed to young people, at St. David’s Presbyterian Church last evening. The remarks of Mr Herron were based on the passage in which Isaiah, with cutting satire, depicts the idol worshipper, who, after taking sufficient wood to meet his needs for warmth and cooking, made himself a god out of the piece left over. “Of the residue he maketh h 6 a god.” Mr Herron said that he had taken this text because of the recent announcement that an Anglican minister in Wellington proposed to have an early morning service on Sunday, to which those who intended to spend the day in sport, could go in flannels. The idea seemed to be that religion could be disposed of in that way, and tfie rest of the day could then be devoted to pleasure. If religion could be fitted in without interfering with their purely worldly and selfish or utilitarian- aims, then, strictly on those terms, some people were willing to be religious. To live a Christian life was just the very antithesis of the spirit suggested by dropping into church in sporting attire on the way to the tennis courts or the golf links. Giving his reading of life at the present moment, Mr Herron said that there was .a really urgent' call, for young men and women who would fling themselves 'deliberately down to stop the breakaway toward materialism and pleasure, but it was only genuine devotion to Christ that would give them the courage to do it. Were they prepared to pay their debt of love by the dedication of their whole lives to His service, or were they prepared to insult Him by offering only that which was left over after their own selfish interests had been satisfied?