IV
THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE MAN
The leading notes in the religious life of a student will naturally be intellectual and ethical. The mind is feeling its way out among the immensities which have come into view as childhood is left behind. It is seeking to know things as they are, learning how to bear itself in thought toward the natural and the supernatural, the earthly and the heavenly, the present and the future. It is no longer content with a child’s faith received on the word of another; it has not yet found the repose of tried and mature conviction. It is in process of shaping its beliefs about God, about the world, about the Bible, about prayer, about a future life. The college man is taken out-of-doors intellectually where the walls are all down, and his religious life, like the other sections of his nature, will naturally show signs of restlessness. “The religion of youth is commonly a religion of rationalism—the intellectual life is just starting on its long journey in all the exhilaration and freshness of the morning.”
The ethical note in the college man’s religion will also be clear and strong. Young people in sound health are commonly rigorous and even merciless in their moral judgments. They are oftentimes unduly critical touching the shortcomings of others. They are confused as to many of the moral sanctions and uncertain as to what distinctions are essential and what are merely conventional. They have a desire to know what is right and why it is right, and they wish to discover the motive and stimulus which will render them strong in doing the right. The best results are always attained by taking into account lines of interest already established, rather than by cutting squarely across the grain, and the most effective approach to the heart of the student can be made by observing these two leading notes in his religious life.
I am confirmed in this view by this bit of personal experience. For six years I lectured every Monday during the second semester at Stanford University, giving courses on “The Ethics of Christ,” a study in the four Gospels, on “The Life and Literature of the Early Hebrews,” a study in the Old Testament, on “Social Ethics,” a study of moral values in the various relationships of modern life. These courses were offered as any courses would be. A full syllabus was used and much collateral reading suggested; a monthly written quiz and a final examination were held; credit was given for work done as in any other department. The courses were popular though the requirements brought a sufficient number of failures each year to keep the thought of a day of judgment before the mind of the class. There was evident throughout a strong, healthy interest in the intellectual problems of faith, in the interpretation of scripture, in the ethical questions discussed, and in the intelligent application of moral principles to modern life. The sight of those young faces and the reading of the papers offered have helped to confirm me in the view that the two characteristic qualities of the college man’s religion are those already indicated.
The expression of that religious interest will take many forms. It will utter itself in rational worship. The clear-headed student will not continue to do things which seem to him meaningless or useless. There are church services in which he will refuse to participate, but sincere, reverent, and rational worship will commend itself to him as a suitable expression of that deeper something growing within his heart. The upward look, the outward reach of a higher aspiration, the need of a hand-clasp which is not of earth, all these appeal to him! Let the music, the lessons, the prayers, and the atmosphere of the church be made a true, good, and beautiful expression of intelligent worship and the thoughtful student will rejoice in the aid it gives him in working out his problems.
The words of Thomas Carlyle addressed to the students in the University of Edinburgh are in point: “No nation that did not contemplate this wonderful universe with an awe-stricken and reverential feeling that there is an omnipotent, all-wise, and all-virtuous Being superintending all men and all the interests in it—no such nation has ever done much nor has any man who has forgotten God.” In much blunter fashion the Bible says, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” The word “hell” can be spelled with four letters, but to spell that for which it stands, the moral failure, the personal disappointment, the pain, and the distress of spiritual defeat, the bitter regret and remorse over years wasted by turning away from the Highest, would require all the letters of the alphabet and the sum total of human experience. In order to do justly and to love mercy, we need to stand humbly before God as the one entitled to our supreme and final allegiance. Where all this is made plain in a provision for worship which is rational, beautiful, and helpful, the college man will find in it a natural expression for his religious life.
The religious interest will also express itself in the study of religious truth. Courses in ethics, and in philosophy where it relates to life and is not all clouds and mist; courses in the Hebrew and other sacred literatures; courses in the history of religion and in comparative religion, may all be made genuinely spiritual exercises. The students are aided by such work in knowing that truth which sets mind and heart free from whatever hinders growth and usefulness.
Still more directly, the courses of Bible study offered through the Christian associations in our universities become wholesome expressions of religious interest. The history and literature of the Hebrews, the life of Christ, the story of the early Church, studied with the system, the thoroughness, and the fearlessness found in other lines of investigation, afford a genuine ministry to the spiritual life. Many students who lose their Christian faith in the colleges suffer this loss because the mind has gone ahead in science, in philosophy, and in history, but has lagged back in religion. It has been belated in the childish conceptions gained in early life. Such students sometimes throw away their Christian faith and habits, and then wonder that the rest of us are so stupid and credulous. As a matter of fact they have simply failed to make the advance and readjustment which serious and growing minds habitually make on their way from childhood to maturity. The thorough study of religious truth, then, as an aid to a rational restatement of one’s personal faith, becomes another worthy expression of religious life and a useful source of culture for the spiritual nature.
The religious life of the student will also utter itself in a personal quest for righteousness. No life ever comes to have that which the world really trusts and values until it can say in its whole purpose, “I do these certain things not because they are easy or common or funny or politic; I do them because they are right.” If religion is to enter into its own in any educational institution it will be necessary to have a great deal more downright honesty in college life than there is in many institutions of learning at this time. The sneer that “in college and in the custom house” it is all right to lie and to cheat if one can do it without being caught, has had much to justify it. The student who asks to be excused from a college engagement because he is too sick to work, but who will go to a ball and dance every number on the program, or to a football game and yell until his throat is raw, is simply a liar! The student who copies from another’s examination paper and signs his name to it as though it were his own, is a cheat and a forger. The man who steals spoons from some hotel or restaurant in the town for his fraternity table is not funny; he is simply a thief and an outlaw! The student who spends on vice or dissipation, money furnished by his father for term bills, entering them up in his financial statement as “sundries” or what not, is a whelp and a cad, no matter how good looking he is or how well his dress suit fits him! Dirt is dirt no matter how we may adorn it with lace; a lie is a lie, and theft is theft, no matter how they are smoothed over with fine words! There ought to be in all college life rigid, unsympathetic honesty, like that of the bank or the counting-room. The perpetual effort after personal righteousness should stand as an abiding expression of the religious life.
The genuinely religious spirit will show itself in mutual helpfulness. The Christian service rendered by students can best be rendered in terms of student life. The readiness to lend a hand to some fellow working his way through; the thoughtfulness and unselfishness shown to a student who is sick; the organized usefulness of the Christian Associations in meeting first-year students and aiding them in those strange first days on the campus; the ability to exert steadily a wholesome influence on the side of what is right and wise, without self-consciousness or ostentation—all these are forms of Christian helpfulness natural and appropriate to student life.
During an epidemic of typhoid fever at Stanford University some years ago the students stood together and insisted that every patient unable to provide himself with a trained nurse should have, through their cooperation, the best care which medical science could afford. They gladly gave up the senior dance and other social entertainments and receptions, in order to devote the money to this unselfish purpose. They raised in various ways among themselves more than five thousand dollars for this practical form of helpfulness. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” This was the original test of Christian discipleship proposed by Christ himself, and none better has been found.
The nurture of the college man’s religion will come mainly in two ways: first, through fellowship with a larger group of Christian people. “Gather two or three together in my name,” Christ said, “and there am I in the midst.” He thus indicated the social character of the religion he taught and suggested the help to be found in wholesome fellowship. The actual experience of mankind has strongly endorsed his claim.
The best fellowship will naturally be found in some one of the churches of the community. The student will find there friends as well as worship and instruction; he may find also his place in some concrete activity for the progress of the kingdom. Oliver Wendell Holmes used to say in explanation of his habit of church attendance, “There is a little plant within me called reverence which needs watering at least once a week.” He might also have added that it needed the warm southern exposure of meeting in spiritual fellowship those who were similarly bent on noble living, and that it found wholesome expression through some useful participation in the activities of a parish church.
Each student needs the church even more than the church needs him. He will learn by its aid to more wisely and more conscientiously use the opportunities which Sunday offers. The day of the Lord ought to be a day of turning aside to see the bushes that burn with divine fire. The habit of Sunday study is a mistake, physically, mentally, and morally. The pioneers who crossed the plains in ’49, driving six days in the week and resting one, reached California ahead of those who drove straight along day in and day out, week in and week out; and the cattle of the men who observed the method of a regularly recurring rest day, arrived in better condition. The one who said, “Labor six days and do all thy work,” holding the seventh apart for rest and spiritual opportunity, knew something about the muscles and the nerves as well as about the souls of men. Sunday held apart from the ordinary grind of college life and used as a time of privilege for the higher nature to have its undisputed chance to grow, becomes a useful factor in normal development.
The religious life of the student will be deepened and strengthened most of all through personal fellowship with Jesus Christ. To know him who stands revealed in brief on the pages of the four gospels and revealed at large in the splendid history into which he has built himself during the last nineteen hundred years, is to gain the utmost help for character-building that the world has thus far found.
We know Jesus Christ, not only by the study of his life and teachings, but by sharing in his purpose for the race and by participation in his spirit. It is this that enables us to see life whole, and to put ourselves in the way of gaining a fuller measure of that life complete. Through our fellowship with him we come to the point where we see life in its deeper, hidden attitudes, as well as on its surface; we see its upper, unseen relations as well as those upon its own level; we see its ultimate future, beyond the event we call death, as well as the pressing claims of the immediate present. We see life whole through Christ and by our personal fellowship with him we are increasingly enabled to possess that rounded life for ourselves.
There is one supreme reason why every college man should be a Christian—the final Christianity is not yet here. It is waiting for the contribution of thought, of spiritual experience and of useful activity, which the generation to which you belong is in a position to make. Jesus had, and still has, many things to say, which the world even yet is not able to bear. It is for each man, by personal consecration and individual effort, to so weave his activities into the unfinished story of the world’s redemption as to aid in bringing about the true attitude toward those unseen things which are eternal.
College men are eager to make personal experiment of other unseen forces. They love to lay bare hidden secrets by the use of the Roentgen ray; they rejoice in sending and receiving messages by wireless telegraphy; they cluster around an experiment which displays the mysterious attributes of that strange substance called radium; they show themselves eager to witness the wonders of liquid air. They should be no less eager to know by genuine personal experience the efficacy of prayer, the power of faith, the joy of spiritual renewal through divine grace. They should be no less eager to send and receive those messages which come and go between God and man, when the heavens are open and the angels are ascending and descending upon the sons of men. You have, each one of you, a clear responsibility and obligation in this matter. Gain for yourself an intelligent faith; show to the world one more consistent Christian life; render to his cause your own personal quota of competent service, and in doing this you will not only be spiritually enriched yourself, you will aid in bringing in that greater Christianity which is yet to be.