The Club Smoking Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 10, 2 September 1908, Page 4

The Club Smoking Room

By

HAVANA

"People,” began the journalist, "are most awfully touchy about little things. I see one of the M.r.'s kicked up the deuce of a shindy in the House the other day because someone called him a nonconformist. He wasn’t a holy Roman, and he wasn't a Church of England man, and he wasn't an agnostic. He would object to being called a dissenter, and he resented being called a nonconformist. How the dickens would you describe him? He may have been a Baptist or an Anabaptist, or a sixpoint Baptist, or a hard-shell Baptist, or a Congregationalist, or a Methodist, or a Shinotist, or a Dowieite. Goodness knows what he was! The point is, that when you don’t know what particular variety of religion a man affects, what are you to call him?” © © © “I always thought.” replied the cynic, "that one of your profession was never stuck for a phrase? When you wish to say that a man kicked off at football, you say he ‘set the sphere rotating. A ball never clean bowls a man, it makes ‘trouble in his timber yard.’ I remember an account of a billiard match, in which I was told about ‘the spot-stroke phenomenon,’ ‘the doughty Brixtonian,’ ‘the Brixtonian wonder,’ ‘the amator of the top pocket,’ the holer of the red,’ and ‘the troubler of the scorer.’ All these people were one and the same, and stood for real!. Surely you can think of a few variations on the time honoured words, nonconformist and dissenter? As the Anglicans, Romans, and Greeks arrogate to themselves the title of Catholic, how would the non-Catholic churches fill the bill ?’’ © © © “I am afraid,” remarked the padre, “that your suggestion would hardly meet with approval. The word catholic means (universal, and the others would claim that they had a greater right to the title than anyone else. You cannot call them the evangelical churches, because many Anglicans are evangelicals. I think the "Free Churches” is as good as anything. They are those who are opposed to establishment, and believe in being free to manage their own affairs apart from dictation by the State. Still the title is not altogether satisfactory.” © © © "What’s in a name?” quoted the sporting youth. ‘‘The great question to my mind is why you people can't agree among yourselves, and pull together better than you do. I can understand that you differ on many points, but why not agree to differ, and try and find out more points in which you can agree. 1 know’, padre, that you are a broad-minded sort of person, and you probably think a great deal more than you care to say about most things. We are none of us irreligious chaps, though we don’t often go to church. We believe in doing a fellow a good turn if we can, and we wouldn’t do him a bad turn if we couldn't do him a good one. But some of you parson Johnnies talk a lot of jargon about all sorts of things we never heard of, and you arch your backs and spit at each Other like a lot of Kilkenny cats, and all Over less than nothing, us it seems tq us.

You slang bookmakers and hotel-keepers, tuid men who take a whisky or two. Yet I have known those chaps help a man who is down, when the religious folk would have let him go to hell his own way. I know you are not like that yourself. Why can’t you fellows work together more? You.can say what you liko here. We won’t give you away or denounce you as a heretic. We’re not that sort.” © © © Thus appealed to, the padre coughed in a cautious non-committal way. “This is not a clerical meeting,” he replied, ‘‘so I need not fear being branded as a heretic. My clerical brethren already regard me as ‘ unsound,’ to use their favourite phrase, and! I often doubt myself if I am strictly orthodox. But what I sometimes feel is this. We waste our time over what is non-essential. We quarrel about externals and care too little for the real t hing. Religion is not a matter of either dogma or church government or ceremonial. Gwatkin Bays: ‘Every work which is done on the face of the whole earth for love or duty is as truly communion witli God as the Supper of the Lord itself can be, from the Three Hundred in the pass to the child in the slums who gives his last penny to one who needs it more than he does. We put many things in the place of religion, from prohibition to Puseyism. We still worship idols, though these idols are not always of wood and stone. Perhaps many of us do not always realise how trivial are the things we dispute over. Some may feci more broadly than they say. We cannot all be like Professor Gwatkin. A man who has taken a first-class in classics, mathematics, moral science and theology, and has the unbounded respect of all scholars, is not likely to be jumped on by his brother clergy. Gwatkin's sarcastic irony has already caused more than one opponent to feel sorry he spoke. If you really want to know what one of our greatest scholars thinks on these matters, read the last chapter of his ‘Knowledge of God.’ It is one of the finest things I have seen. ‘But I fear I am beginning to preach.’ © © © "Not at all, my dear fellow,” answered the previous speaker. “We like you to talk to us a bit sometimes about these things. You don’t talk a lot of canting humbug like some of your cloth. They sicken me with their twaddle. I suppose it’s much the same with you as with us football chaps. There are half-a-dozen different forms of the game, and we can’t agree on a set of rules to bring them into line. The Northern Union game is much better to watch than Rugby. The kicking into touch is overdone nowadays. It spoils the game from a spectator’s point of view. But a fellow must be in tip-top form. It is a jolly sight faster than Rugby. I know I should soon get knocked out at it. After all, I suppose it doesn’t matter what rules we play under as long as we play the game. But I hate the idea of turning sport into a mere pot-hunting business. Fancy fellows selling a game before they start to play, or selling

themselves to the club with most cash. The thing is sickening.” © © © "Professional athletes,,” put in the cynic, “are not the only people who run to suit a book. The politician can often do a bit of in and out running when it suits him. Sometimes he sells himself, sometimes he sells his constituents. We want men who play the game in more walks of life than the field of sport. To the true athlete it is not the value of the prize that counts. The crown of wild olive is as much worth striving for as the goblet of gold.”