Note 26 — SPORTSMEN’S FALLACIES

Both these lines of argument were followed by Dr. Lang, Archbishop of York, when on a recent occasion (November 16, 1913) he pronounced what may be called the Foxology at the dedication of a stained window to the memory of an aged blood-sportsman who was killed in the hunting-field. That a Christian minister should have been “launched into eternity,” as the phrase is, while engaged in hunting a fox, might have been expected to cause a sense of very deep pain, and even of shame, to his co-religionists. What actually happened was that an Archbishop was found willing to eulogise, in a consecrated place of worship, not only the reverend gentleman whose life was thus thrown away, but the sport of fox-hunting itself!