DANGEROUS PEOPLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18711, 17 May 1924, Page 20 (Supplement)

DANGEROUS PEOPLE.

BISHOP'S VIEW OF PURITANS.

" Puritans ' have done a very great work in their way, but on the whole they are dangerous people.'* The Bishop of Lichfield used these words lately in Liverpool—where he was formerly rector—in an address in which he attacked the rigidly puritanical view of amusements and recreation.■>

Christian people, the Bishop said, were too apt to tread with heavy, footsteps in dealing'/with the subject of recreation. A high-born and superior attitude was to be deprecated. : To be a good sports-' man, and to i play ; ; the game, did not represent the complete picture of what a Christian ought to be. Something more was .-needed., . Touching on indoor amusements, games of ? skill (with' or without an element of chance), dancing, the drama, picture palaces, and wireless broadcasting, the Bishop said a certain class of puritan would class all ' these things as worldly, and hold that a Christian had no business to have anything to do with them. - Remarking, as quoted above, that puritans were ; dangerous ' people, the Bishop continued: —"One could not define the 'world' as easily as they - suggested. 'I have known actors and actresses who were J most unworldly people, and I have known dull pietistic people who never went within a mile of a theatre, but whose whole life was corroded with the world, principally because they had forgotten I our Lord's warnings against covetous j ness." ■ ■ : Y-.i ••!