DANCING AND PARSONS. Sin and the Collection Plate.

Free Lance, Volume VII, Issue 331, 3 November 1906, Page 6

DANCING AND PARSONS. Sin and the Collection Plate.

THE Anglican Synod, sitting at Nelson, is thankful for the help of church members, but it discountenances dancing as a means for raising church funds It is supposed that it is the dancing and not the funds that the Synod objects to. If dancing is sinful for church members it is also sinful for everyone else. Therefore, legislate against it. Dancing is almost the only social pleasure m the backblocks of New Zealand m which the people indulge. It is too cheerful Throw a deep, religious, gloom over it. • • • Dancing has always been indulged m. Therefore people have always been sinful. Dancing is sinful to church members because the two sexes dance together. Therefore, the sexes should not be brought together. The two sexes shouldn't play ping-pong or hockey together. Euchre parties are, of course, not sinful if the sexes play at different tables. All social pleasures are pleasures merely because the sexes meet Because the sexes meet, therefore, social pleasures are sinful. It is unanswerable logic. • • • Dancing would die out if men cavoited around singly and women did likewise. Therefore, legislate for such a reform. Dancing is a healthful exercise. It stirs the blood, lights the eye and sets the pulses throbbing. That is why it is sinful. The eye should be dull, the pulses slow and the liver sluggish. This is holiness. People dance less than formerly because they are too. luxurious and lazy. Only the far-back people, who have few social pleasures, ride journeys of fifty miles to dance. They getgenuine pleasure out of it. Hence it is very wrong indeed. • • • If church members continued to dance to augment church funds, couldn't the parsons attend the dance rooms and see that no sm entered ? Couldn't the parsons, in fact, cease preaching so much and enter into the social pleasures of their flocks more? Couldn't they find out b- practice what were sins and what were not and cease theorising? Can the dear good parsons supply figures showing the awful consequences of dancing and the mixing of the sexes generally? Couldn't they pen off a part of the churches for women and another for men? Couldn't they do something to spoil this unnatural fascination one sex has for another? • • • Is it right for men and women to live on the same earth and is there a man or woman on the whole earth fit to live in the same atmosphere as a parson? Our own opinion is that a great many par-

sons would be a deal better in health, and consequently more tolerant if they danced three nights a fortnight for a year or two, and they would have the satisfaction of knowing. that their presence might prevent the alleged evils which are the reason of their protests.