CHRISTIAN ATHLETICS by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 10, 1904

CHRISTIAN ATHLETICS.

By Editor

It seems that new qualifications for Christian work are being put to the front. The popular colleges and universities are doing it, and if it keeps on, the M.A., the A.B., the Ph.D., the B.S., and kindred titles indicative of intellectual attainment, will be relegated to the rear of athletic accomplishments. The following announcements in the Examiner (Baptist) marks the tendency, especially the words that we have italicized:—

Mr. John R. Mott, senior college secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, has recently announced that several prominent college and university men are ready to sail for the Orient to become secretaries of the Young Men's Christian Association in Shanghai, Hongkong, and Nagasaki. Gailey, the big Princeton half-back, is now in Tientsin, where he has been conducting an association among the sons of the mandarins. Carter, of Harvard, who was on the winning hockey team, is traveling secretary for all the associations in the Indian Empire. Robertson, the Purdue athlete, who was instructed in engineering, is now at Nanking, the head center of the Chinese examination system. C. C. Rutledge, of Philadelphia, who was one of the crack baseball and football men of the Ohio Wesleyan University, will sail this month for Hongkong. For two years he was in the Naval Academy. He was a volunteer in the Spanish War, and rose from private to first lieutenant. . . . The great association of over a thousand members in the foreign concession in Shanghai will have reinforcements this year from America. It has separate departments for Chinese and Europeans. Plans are on foot for a building on the American model for each of these branches. Notable achievements in cricket and track athletics have made this association respected even among the numerous nationalities of the foreign settlement. Arthur Rugh, a former college baseball captain, will go to Shanghai.

Inspiration sets forth a knowledge of the Scriptures as a thorough furnishing "unto all good works" (2 Tim. 3:16, 17), together with an abiding in Christ as an essential to fruit-bearing (John 15:4). The knowledge necessary to the acquirement of collegiate titles is not to be ignored, neither is healthfulness of body; but the association of modern athletic games as auxiliary to the work of Christ is an unwarranted commingling of common and sacred things. Christian athletics consists in being "strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might." Of the apostle Paul it was said that his "bodily presence is weak;" but where is the man, since the ascension of Christ, that has accomplished as much for the furtherance of the Gospel work as he did?