What Shall We Play?
381
The Useful Place of the Gymnasium—Gymnastic exercises fill
a useful place in many schools, but without careful supervision they
are often carried to excess. In the gymnasium many youth, by their
attempted feats of strength, have done themselves lifelong injury.
Exercise in a gymnasium, however well conducted, cannot supply
the place of recreation in the open air, and for this our schools should
afford better opportunity
Games With a Ball—Basic Guiding Principles—I do not con-
demn the simple exercise of playing ball; but this, even in its simplicity,
may be overdone.
I shrink always from the almost sure result which follows in the
wake of these amusements. It leads to an outlay of means that should be
expended in bringing the light of truth to souls that are perishing out of
Christ. The amusements and expenditures of means for self-pleasing,
which lead on step by step to self-glorifying, and the educating in these
games for pleasure produce a love and passion for such things that is
not favorable to the perfection of Christian character.
The way that they have been conducted at the college does not
bear the impress of heaven. It does not strengthen the intellect. It
does not refine and purify the character. There are threads leading
out through the habits and customs and worldly practices, and the
actors become so engrossed and infatuated that they are pronounced
in heaven lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. In the place of
the intellect becoming strengthened to do better work as students, to
[500]
be better qualified as Christians to perform the Christian duties, the
exercise in these games is filling their brains with thoughts that distract
the mind from their studies....
Is the eye single to the glory of God in these games? I know
that this is not so. There is a losing sight of God’s way and His
purpose. The employment of intelligent beings, in probationary time, is
superseding God’s revealed will and substituting for it the speculations
and inventions of the human agent, with Satan by his side to imbue
with his spirit.... The Lord God of heaven protests against the burning
passion cultivated for supremacy in the games that are so engrossing
5
Education, 210
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6
Notebook Leaflets from the Elmshaven Library, Vol. 1 (1945)
.