Cyr sits ‘Harris, ne CY aay The religion of . undergraduates yt if i) i ety, Bh | : es) 4 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES are. oe Ort , alire AY ¢ BNL OP PNAC Sp is "Tg. NOV 141925 THE RELIGION“O& ww” UNDERGRADUATES By CYRIL HARRIS Sometime University Pastor for the Episcopal Church Cornell University NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1945 Corrricut, 1925, Br CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Printed in the United States of America TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER “Tf there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.” R. W. EMERSON, “‘THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.”’ FOREWORD In these pages you shall read of ships at sea—‘‘ some- thing escaped from the anchorage and driving free’’— of voyages over uncharted seas, of widening horizons, of possible shipwreck. You are to find here no labored ar- guments, nor hear the creaking shoes of professional method. We neither point with pride nor view with alarm. And we shall seek to avoid those apparent certi- tudes with which this sort of writing often abounds. With a determined effort to avoid the tug of accustomed thinking, we shall try to understand our young people as we find them, and to survey “‘this wide free scene” through their eyes. In Part I is offered a brief review of the undergradu- ate mind to-day as it considers the great untiring ques- tions. Evidence for the statements made in this sum- mary may be found, at least in part, in the two com- posite essays which constitute Chapter III, made from themes lately written by undergraduates in one of the Eastern universities. With this as a background we pass to Part II, where the main business of the book is trans- acted. Our intention is there to discuss the five major questions for religion in our day as they relate to youth in college. The discussion is not, however, limited to the campus mind nor to strictly campus problems. The five questions are: (t) Can religion be taught? (Chapter IV.) (2) Can religion bring science to the service of the soul? (Chapter V.) vu Viil FOREWORD (3) Has Christianity anything important to say to modern youth about sin? (Chapter VI.) (4) What part can the Christian religion play in a modern industrial state? (Chapter VII.) (s) Can the Church give our young people their God back again? (Chapter VIII.) No definition of an undergraduate’s religion has been attempted here, except to suggest that it begins with the pronoun I, and ends with a question-mark. However, religion is not only a question but an answer to ques- tions; not only a voyage but a destination and an ar- rival. In Part III an attempt is made to present, in all its concreteness and simplicity, the answer, the proposal, of that Young Man out of Galilee who clearly knew what life is all about. He understands—better than we do— these sons and daughters of a new day, as he lifts up his eyes and sees them as ships having no rudder. Acknowledgment is here gratefully made to all those who generously gave time and thought to criticising the manuscript of this book. The writer wishes also to ex- press his indebtedness to his chief instructors, the under- graduates in two universities. Cyrit Harris. TIVERTON, RHODE ISLAND, May sth, 1925. CONTENTS RR EAVOMD Adel Pe ety ged an dita Cah grat yk ta eeeu hore Vii PART I CHAPTER PRR PALEMAT ES SUV UN nel ape ai late at aN Ung ae II. A Summary OF UNDERGRADUATE RELIGION . 8 III. A Sympostum oF UNDERGRADUATE OPINION ON PS ELAGION ON UOTE i bre te rate | Ce tne une es 16 PART II PPT OAV ALLE SITY) 4 Ka gavin tia 4h as Meith ate 29 V. WanteD: A New HEAVEN For A NEW EARTH 38 ee ER LIL UIDE UD OR ai os hee gil a ia ve Ul ol Sue teenlps 46 VII. Mustarp-Gas oR MUSTARD-SEED ..... 60 Mit emcee ITVe ORNCIOD 40 atte te be Gl cieitetemes 67 PART III Pe LAE OR ASLORUGOIS Wig ts Ae) Wh ce) We ketaod an aay pte 79 1h! , -) rye) 3 Oh. } he + ib r tf Py PART OF “Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.” WALT WHITMAN, “POEMS OF JoY’’ THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES CHAPTER I STALEMATE We are standing, let us say, at an angle of a campus walk. It is the interval between class-hours. At the stroke of the bell the silent quadrangle is suddenly filled with color and purposeful movement resembling some sedate folk-dance of processional figures on the green. It is a varied picture; no single type prevails. Our glance turns first to the high lights; one readily recog- nizes that nationally advertised product, the American college type. (Any collar advertisement or magazine cover or cigarette poster will furnish an exact likeness.) One is apt to miss, in the presence of these more bril- liant figures, those who are perhaps the more genuinely typical of the American university to-day: those who come from the plainer homes, who are more plainly dressed and less used to play. They have not yet quite arrived at the easy sophistication and aplomb of the others; they speak among themselves of social errors and breaks; they take one “culture course” a year. A great deal of their talk is about making good. Now we must sketch in the shadows. Certain im- perfect fruit of our many-sided civilization are here at college, the fruit of a generation that is nervously over- driven and spiritually underfed. “‘Too much material- ism on an empty stomach.” The hang of their lips tells 3 4. THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES us that they have never said no to anything. Any effort they may make is spent seeking soft courses, dodging the professor’s eye, and scheming for the all-forgiving diploma. Human silk-worms these, wrapped in a bright web of their own spinning, made prisoner by themselves and their inheritance. “Here come another sort—though these are comparatively few—whose nature and train- ing have unfitted them for participation; the unattrac- tive, the shy, the solitary, and now and then a cripple. Some of these will go out for that catch-all activity, campus religion. Others will grow sour and hate it all. Observe, too, these alert boys whose darker faces in- dicate other racial stocks, some of them the sons of the newer immigration, some Hebrews, and now and then an Asiatic. They are already setting a pace that shall one day make our fat Anglo-Saxondom look to its training. The great bell rings again, and they are gone. One is tempted to muse a bit on the picture. What Is going on beneath those interesting faces and those dull faces? Where have they come from, and whither are they WOUND PtH) 03 Where do they come from? One first calls to mind all the Sunday-schools up and down the land which, week by week, have laid their gentle hands upon them. Rather persistent inquiries among undergraduates on this score reveal that in all but a very few cases Sunday- school gave them nothing that they can tell about or put to conscious use in college. When one recollects all the piles and piles of leaflets, lesson-forms, the aids to attention and attendance, one wonders whether any of those dry husks had seeds in them. The salt has some- STALEMATE 5 how lost its savor; or perhaps the sugar has been used by mistake. And what of the family church back at home ?— “When I weekly knew An ancient pew, And murmured there The forms of prayer.” Much indeed, as many will attest. Though they may not talk about it, nevertheless it plays its part. Indeed, those early associations are the only religion that many boys and girls possess. But pastors would be dismayed if they knew of the profound ignorances, the yawning gaps, which they had never touched. Here is a boy who remarks that the only memorable thing to him is the minister’s long prayer on a certain summer morning, in which he gave thanks in great detail for the flora and fauna of the season—and ended -by thanking the Lord for “every blooming thing.’’ That uncanonical levity, spreading from choir to pews, tells a story. If only min- isters could see themselves sometimes as their young people see them! One hears more frequently than any other this judgment on the pastor back home—that he was “out of touch.” Not only in little things, but in big. In a spiritually illiterate age he discourses of liter- ary criticism. He is concerned with syntax, structure, and style, while his hearers are still at their A B C’s. Result, a congregation of empty pews, interrupted here and there by an elderly human form. What have they got from their parents? Again the answer is wintry. Yet what did parents expect, when they handed over their children, body, mind, and soul, 6 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES to experts? They saved themselves trouble, no doubt, but that immunity was dearly bought. | The conclusion from all this is familiar enough—that spiritual contact between the generations has been lost. This fact lies at the base of any discussion of the sort in which we are engaged, and needs to be stated here, even at the risk of seeming to deal in truisms. Nine out of ten of these parents ‘‘accepted as read”’ the whole body of religious thinking current when they were young; it was as familiar as the minutes of the previous meeting. But to their children it is all entirely open to debate, or utterly wearisome. When their elders speak of religion, most young people think they mean a daily dozen of don’ts. Some think that the God of their par- ents is a stern and forbidding elderly schoolmaster, ex- treme to mark what is done amiss; others, that he has grown slack and easy-going in his old age. And when they are “‘spoken to” about Christ, some suppose one means an oriental dreamer, mild and pale; and others, the tyrannical Son of an imperious Father, sent to im- pose his rule on conquered territory. And they under- stand that by conversion is meant a rising up in a place of public worship and suddenly experiencing, to order, the ecstasies of the beatific vision; and by salvation, a collection on a spiritual insurance policy, plus a snob- bish disdain for the uninsured ninety-and-nine. Current thinking on every campus views all this, and all that goes with it, with active distaste or passive coldness. The opinion is fixed among undergraduates everywhere that what the older generation means by its religion is frankly neither useful nor intelligible. Our present conclusion must therefore be, that religion is STALEMATE 7 generally being presented to youth in a dead language, and youth wonders what it is all about. Stalemate. There is no next move. The present game is off. How- ever, this is not such bad news as it sounds, for the rea- son that while they seem to have rejected the Christian faith, what they really have refused is this or that par- tial version, some dull caricature, some provincial piety, which must needs pass with the age which once it seemed to satisfy. They have not rejected the Christian faith because they have never really known that faith. The following sentences, taken from undergraduate themes in the present writer’s possession, are typical: “T for one do not see how the blood of Christ has saved me, or can save me, from any sin.” “The more a man learns the harder it is for him to believe the miracles of the Bible.” “The average undergraduate thinks of religion in a manner to bring pain to the hearts of heaven- ward-looking clergymen.” “Old ideas are broken up and discarded, and re- placed by new ones formed after contact with minds that represent the ideas of the age.” “After learning in the university courses that the old ideas about heaven and hell are no longer con- sidered literally true, one is apt to discount all re- ligion as he knows it.” CHAPTER II A SUMMARY OF UNDERGRADUATE RELIGION The average American undergraduate occupies him- self with technically formulated religious beliefs about as much as the average healthy adult is interested in materia medica, or a garage hand in differential calculus. It is life that matters; what it is all about, and what one is to do about it. The best place to find out what undergraduates really think concerning religion is in those nightly ‘‘bull- sessions” (as they call them) in dormitories and frater- nities and rooming-houses. They are wholly unsched- uled; there is no leader; no one is there but the fellows. They may start with anything and end anywhere. Many a boy sets his compass by them, for there one hears discussed the real things—the sins and dilemmas that one never talks about to an older person. And while, of course, “‘the highest cannot be spoken,” it can now and then be felt; indeed, these sessions may be the only place where a boy feels it actually near him in all his college course. What do they talk about? Everything: the last game and the next one; sex; what profession to enter; which is the best show; and more often than not, re- ligion. On those occasions it branches out from such questions as these: ‘‘What do you mean by God? What is he like? Can one know him? Did he create the world after the Genesis fashion or the geological?” 8 SUMMARY OF UNDERGRADUATE RELIGION 9g Or, “Which is it—broadmindedness or dishonesty, to ~ say a creed you don’t believe? Do you believe in mir- acles, especially the virgin birth and the resurrection? Do you believe in an immortality of the golden-harps type? What is immortality?” ‘‘Was Christ sinless? Did he make any mistakes in his teaching? Did he know everything?” ‘‘How good do you have to be, to be good?” “Which is the best church? Why is there no demand for their product? Why don’t they get to- gether?”? Much of it is argument for argument’s sake. None of it is particularly new or striking. Generally speaking, an undergraduate’s reason for having a religion at all is not for rewards or for fear of punishment in a hereafter, but for better understanding of the purpose and meaning of life, in order to be more useful. The young men still come running unto Jesus, saying: What shall I do to be saved? In the previous generation the accent was on the last half of that ques- tion, ‘‘to be saved’; in this, it is on “‘ what shall I do?” The old conceptions of heaven and hell are gone; heaven is as empty and silent as a roof garden in winter; and hell is burnt out, an extinct volcano. Their going has carried with them the sense of the permanence of all moral values and sanctions. Most undergraduates would agree, if they stopped to think about it, that there is some difference between the dying of a good and of an evil man; but they are not in the least sure what the difference is, or which is the good man and which the evil. There is a general feeling that one’s final rating can be left to the Eternal Decency; and in the meanwhile one plays the game as squarely as neces- sary, according to the rules of the biological contest. ize) THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES Under these terms human nature is back again on the ancient familiar ethical ground, we are fittest—we sur- vive. ‘The I’s have it.” Undergraduates are, like the rest of us, mass think- ers. They “think by infection, catch opinions like a cold.” All but the more thoughtful are borne along by the tide of custom and opinion, and take things as they come. It is considered a mark of respectability not to take anything for granted that pertains to the accepted religion, and to think that what goes on in churches is only a side issue. Some undergraduates think of re- ligion as a body of accepted beliefs set forth by this or that church. Others have extended the definitive fence to include the search for God. Others mean simply the formation of a good character and its use in the world. Many use it loosely as the equivalent of churchgoing. Beyond this they become nebulous and uncertain. Only rarely will one allow himself to be pinned down to a definition of what he would call real religion. The fol- lowing, from one of the themes, while it is a trifle over- written, shows which way the tide is running: “‘Most of us have a private religion of our own, which places honor, generosity, and truth above dogmatic conformity to commandments. We regard as sins such things as cowardice, meanness, and dis- honesty of thought, instead of the traditional ones of profanity, drunkenness, and petty excess. Gen- erosity and charity mean to us not just giving money into the collection-plate, but sympathy and under- standing in judging men and their actions among themselves.” SUMMARY OF UNDERGRADUATE RELIGION tr One sees here the common substitution of an ethical code for religion; the once-born, healthy-minded code of sheltered lives—a bright and shining “religion” for bright and shining hours. It would be unfair, however, to seem to summarize the religion of a whole generation thus, in a sentence or two. This is only one lad’s way of putting it. There is more, lying beneath the stratum of words. The following summary paragraphs are an attempt at a more complete statement. ‘They will be found to correspond respectively with the five chapters of Part II, where these topics will be treated at greater length. (1) During his four college years, the university occu- pies the undergraduate’s whole horizon, and is the one thing that really matters. It is at once an object of de- votion and a means of self-expression. Through it he gains access to the only rebirth of mind and soul that he is likely to know. He therefore permits it to satisfy whatever need for religion he may feel. Thomas Carlyle says: ‘“The thing a man does practically lay to heart and know for certain concerning his vital relations to this mysterious universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is the primary thing for him, and creatively deter- mines the rest. That is his religion.”’ For nine out of ten undergraduates to-day, the university (without seek- ing or desiring that office) occupies the position of priest and prophet, the quickener of souls and the interpreter of God. Of this fact, however, neither university nor undergraduates seem to be aware. This new secular re- ligion has yet to be translated into terms fitted to its high office. 12 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES (2) Freedom from the restraints of home and school comes unexpectedly on arrival at college; undergrad- uates are wholly unprepared for its risks and tempta- tions. The scientific outlook engendered in classrooms causes them (among other things) to abandon their in- herited beliefs, and if these are later restored in revised form, it is because they have survived the new tests to which they have been submitted. Students want to apprehend theological questions under the same logical canons as apply to scientific truth in other fields; and they ignore anything that cannot be so apprehended, thus missing the heart of religion. The current attitude toward theology is, that one must wait for more data, and for more agreement among the proponents of the data, before committing oneself. (3) Undergraduates are ignorant of the specific claims of Christian discipleship, for they are wholly ignorant of the person of Christ, and lack any explicit, first-hand experience of him. Direct reference to Jesus Christ oc- curs less than half a dozen times in the themes. The ‘“‘narrow way’? means for most an intellectually narrow way. As a consequence, on the practical side, problems of personal conduct do not appear to most students as organically related to the religion of Jesus Christ. (4) Neither do undergraduates regard problems of so- cial justice as religious in their bearing. This is a natural reflex of the customary separation of Christianity from its social implications. ‘Those implications come to most young people, when they first hear of them, as a great surprise. Undergraduates are not in the habit of looking at society, as et present organized, with a criti- cal eye; and therefore do not easily see any necessary SUMMARY OF UNDERGRADUATE RELIGION 13 and compelling connection between Christianity and the social order. (5) Undergraduates are less church-conscious than their elders. That is, they are not so keenly alive to the rival claims and distinctions of the several churches. Those who are so, show much the same spirit as when they boost their home town or the team; it is frankly competitive—we versus you. Mostly they are ignorant about and impatient with the ecclesiastical motives and groupings of previous generations. There is general in- tolerance of all perfunctory observances, and of denomi- national disputes, which they term ‘“‘stale quarrels.” In conclusion we may add that the central reasons for the prevailing coolness of undergraduates toward the religion of their fathers are not on the surface; they are not the ones they usually give. Their withdrawal is due, first, to the wide-spread contemporaneous revolt of the natural man from a moral discipline which had grown arbitrary and irksome and unreal, just at the time when opportunities for self-pleasing were daily increasing in number and in charm, and when the findings of the new knowledge seemed to lend sanction to just such a break for liberty. This process was, of course, speeded up by the war. Second, as a result of this mental revolution in our day, the tides of intellectual interest are all set- ting in the direction of knowledge through scientific in- vestigation rather than of serenity and security through belief. It is low tide in the churches; the old ships are high and dry. But it is flood tide in the laboratories; thither comes all the commerce of the new world. Third, boys and girls see that the older forms of faith 14 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES have had no particular effect, on the whole, upon their elders’ lives, which are clearly as sterile and unbeautiful as those of “‘the ungodly.”” The consequence is that their parents have had no seeds to give of the sort that will _ live in the new soil. Fourth, religion has come to mean, for many of these youngsters, little more than blame: the virtues of the fathers have been visited on the chil- dren. It all suggests to them trouble with the authori- ties for neglect of duties and formalities, apparently not worth doing for their own sake, and inducing a wholly artificial sense of guilt and moral discomfort. Being young and free, they have done the obvious thing and dropped it all; and that is about as far as they have got. As a fifth reason we must not fail to include the dis- union, the mutual contradiction and distrust, among the churches. But the youth of our day want God. They will not be satisfied without an intelligible glimpse or hint of things as they are. They are not content to take their God out of a book, or at second hand from anybody. They want to piece together for themselves, out of un- canonical sources that they are learning to trust and understand, a conception that is their own, and that works. No small part of the difficulty lies in the fact that they want more God than the current theologies are prepared to give. They are perplexed to see God thrust off into a corner and the whole of man’s world organized apart from him. This departmenting of life, this segre- gation of God, seems to them (until they grow used to it) as odd as if the same thing were to be done to so universal a commodity as the sunlight. They are in the dark, these alumni of a Christian nation’s Sunday- SUMMARY OF UNDERGRADUATE RELIGION 15 schools, about the few things that really matter. But it is the law of all growing organisms to push in an orderly fashion toward light. Light and growth, youth and God, these belong by their nature to one another, and each is forever restless until the other is found. CHAPTER III A SYMPOSIUM OF UNDERGRADUATE OPINION ON RELIGION Use is here made of nearly two hundred themes, written by undergraduates in the winter of 1923-1924 on the subject of religion. These themes were not written for publication, but as a basis for classroom discussion. Misleading, self-conscious utterances obviously meant for the public eye have thus been avoided. Many diverse points of view, many church connec- tions, are represented in these themes, but there are notable agreements, and a fairly definite set in the tide of opinion. It has therefore been possible to select cer- tain papers as representative of undergraduate religious thinking, and to construct with them two composite themes, one on religion in general, and the other on the church. We may suppose these exhibits to have been written by almost any one of the hundreds on any cam- pus; a member of the junior class, perhaps; a thought- ful, likable fellow; runs the half-mile rather well but has not yet made his letter. We shall call him Young Smith. Or it might have been his sister, Young Miss Smith, for some of the quotations are from themes by women students, and I defy any one to tell which they are. The quotations have not been artificially colored or flavored, or doctored up in any way. Here and there, however, slight verbal changes have been made for the sake of unity. Quotation-marks have not been used 16 UNDERGRADUATE OPINION ON RELIGION 17 except at the beginnings of paragraphs, though each paragraph contains quotations from several themes. Needless to say, the writer of this book is not to be held responsible for what undergraduates have written here, except as to his judgment in the choice of what is indeed typical undergraduate thinking. The purpose of this selection is not to indicate any especially significant thought, or to suggest that he necessarily agrees with what is said. I. YOUNG SMITH ON RELIGION “Undergraduates in any university may be thought of in three distinct groups with regard to our attitude toward religion. The first are for it; the second are dead against it; the third are indifferent to it. The majority of us are in group three, and do not at present see any reason for changing to either the first or second. In the first are the natural conformists and the institutionalists, who identify religious faith with external moral prac- tices; and the young ‘mixer,’ who is a past master at planning a missionary campaign, engineering committee meetings, and promoting a Bible class. He knows how to swing it right. In the second section are the intellec- tual radicals, who wave the Bible aside as infantile non- sense. Prayer is to them a series of mumbles; and faith, through which man rises above his temporal pains, be- comes a psychological mind-color, which will some day be subject to chemical analysis. They are convinced that their lives are controlled both internally and ex- ternally by themselves, and not by a supreme Deity. Their numbers are few but their words bear real weight with new experimenters in culture. 18 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES “Now we come to the third lot—those who form ma- jorities in campus elections, who crowd the campus walks, and who make the movie-houses pay. When questioned about what they think of religion they can never give an intelligent answer, and the sooner the dis- cussion is changed to something else the better they will be pleased. Church religion is not a live issue with them. Arguing about it seems a waste of time. They say, ‘Differences in religion have caused trouble the world over from the start, and so far as we can see, have never settled the question, and never can. Rather than converting one another, we should spend our time prac- tising the religion we believe, and should let the other fellow do the same with his.’ ‘Everybody likes to argue, that is, to win an argu- ment. And religion is so easy to argue about. That is one reason why religion gets so much talked about in the bull sessions. Some one may start by asking about the origin of Christmas, and it may go clear up to the throne of God before it is done. The stories in Genesis come in for a lot of hammering from the scientists present, with indeterminate results. The miracles come in for a good share. Or we may find a discussion of the various churches, and whether there will be a merger. Or whether the fundamentals of the different faiths are the same. ‘“‘Some time ago there was held at our house a bull session on religion. It did not start on that subject, but soon the question came up: ‘What benefit does religion give to mankind?’ As I remember it, the conclusion was that it is human nature to look up to something or some one. Religion unifies this universal trait by turn- UNDERGRADUATE OPINION ON RELIGION 19 ing the thoughts of all to one person, and by playing on this weakness to set up a code which is called morals. By thus developing standards of conduct, religion has advanced civilization. Another point that came up was whether non-attendance at church denoted disbelief. It was agreed that it did not. Several held that tennis, hikes, etc., in the place of church, were not admissible; others disagreed, saying that one might do anything on the Sabbath and hold God in his heart all the time, and these scoffed at the other opinion as being the cause of the ‘Blue Laws.’ The argument was dropped after we had gone over a question that one of the fellows asked: in Revelation 22 : 18 are the words, ‘For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.’ The question was whether this referred to Reve- lation alone, or to the New Testament, or to the whole Bible. The discussion of this point was longer than that on any of the others, but we came to no definite conclu- sion, and the meeting broke up, each maintaining his own opinion. We had another session last night. Be- longing to a certain church we did not think mattered as long as we are all out for the same thing, which is to deal with our fellows as we would have them deal with us. It is true to a certain extent, we agreed, that you must look out for yourself, because if you do not, no- body will look out for you. Just how to fit these two facts into each other was not made clear. “When we came to college we had correct hut hazy notions of a heaven for good people, and a hell for bad ones, and were satisfied that the race extends back to 20 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES Adam and his glorified rib, Eve. Then we learned that man is evolved from protozoa, and that the Bible is in- teresting chiefly as a piece of literature, and we heard of the mechanistic theory. Our former notions were rudely pushed into the background, and a period of stark unbelief began. Having been trapped once, we de- cided not to commit ourselves again. And that scepti- cism usually lasts through college as the attitude toward religion. The usual thing is to doubt everything that smells of church. It would be agreed that God is a cre- ator, instituting laws of nature that reflect his supreme intelligence, but that he is no longer to be thought of as concerned with individual men. That Jesus was a good man and a great teacher, but that Socrates and Buddha were likewise good men and great teachers. One comes to regard Man as wholly material, with no possibilities of a future life. One remains ethical only because he believes good ethics have been found by experience to be best for the race, and because one has the habit. Since the theology of the day is so open to question one does the easy thing and keeps out of it. It is no longer an active or controlling factor in one’s life. ‘Perhaps for the first few nights after our arrival at college we went to the Strand. Whenever the picture or vaudeville approached the favorite old sentimental topics of mother and God, the older students ridiculed the scene or acted bored. As time went on we imitated them. It became delicious to us to cease fearing God and living in awe of all things touching him. So that now, as we enter the familiar evening sessions in some one’s room, we find that every ninth word of the older men is a ‘Jesus Christ,’ or other swear word, and are UNDERGRADUATE OPINION ON RELIGION a1 . not in the least bothered about it, and have ourselves enlarged our vocabulary. “Tn classes, especially in physics, we seem to have the impossible proved to us often. We begin to discard all our former credulity and to accept only things that can be proved, and to prove logically everything we say. We now pick up a Bible with a mind that looks for proof. Immediately the creation story in Genesis looks absurd, and the miracles with which the pages of the New Testament are covered seem to us the inventions of the child-like minds of primitive people. And so we toss Bibles aside and join as full-fledged members of the anti-Christer league. At every turn we find new proof that God is absolutely unnecessary. One professor proves that the’ creation of the world is entirely due to its own physical forces; another experiments with the creation of life itself. If man is so omnipotent, why bother with a.God? And yet in spite of this—and rather illogically—the training of our early years is not easily cast aside. There remains a little hope inside of us that there may really be some truth in the more attractive parts of our old-time creed. I am sure that some of us cling to what we can save through loyalty to our par- ents and desire to spare them pain. “The question what constitutes any one’s religion is no longer a simple one. When I speak of religion I do not refer to a church creed; one’s religion is not the creed of his church, but the belief he himself forms. In the effort to find what is true and lasting, an undergraduate will adopt any new thought at all. By trial-and-error methods he comes to a belief of his own, not perfect, not complete, but his own. This belief is his start in 22 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES making his religion. He tries to lead a fairly good life fashioned after a code of ideals which he has set up for himself. Few fellows refrain from this or that only be- cause it is forbidden in the Ten Commandments. It is not on account of being held responsible hereafter that we restrain ourselves. “Before we graduate most of us come to a time when we feel that our courses are not giving us all there is to it, and that something important is being missed. By then, too, the real struggle with self has begun; and because self is so close to God, here begins too our real contact with religion. Struggle brings self-judgment, and we find a need for a religion that satisfies at a time like that, while still satisfying the reason. If it could give us a sort of mystical view of God, and at the same time help us to realize the full powers of our self, it would be the real thing. It would have little to do with ‘Thou shalt,’ and less to do with ‘Thou shalt not,’ and would save its strength for saying in loud tones, ‘Thou canst.’”’ II. YOUNG SMITH ON THE CHURCH “““Why do we have churches?’ is a question often heard about the campus, when the fellows happen to be on this subject. Why do we pay out thousands, even millions, of dollars for church property? We certainly do not gain any material profit from the land or build- ings, which might be used for business purposes at great advantage. Would it not be just as well to pray if you want to in your own house, without going to all this expense? Why should we feel bound to sit in a hot, ugly church, buzzing with flies, and listen to some UNDERGRADUATE OPINION ON RELIGION 23 one who, in many cases, is not fit for his job? Just what is back of this statement in the Bible saying that we must go to church? “T often wonder why we do not speak out our minds more often on this church question. No one really is interested in the sort of thing they get from the pulpit; you can see it to watch them. If we are disappointed in the churches, why do we continue’ to deceive ourselves about it, and talk as if they were still a going concern? *‘ An educated man feels that he really must be abit cynical about churches. So many people only use them as a show place for clothes; and the girls to meet the fellows—and vice versa. Speaking for myself, I cannot accept the religion of about ninety per cent of church- goers. Rather than take that, I would get on without any. There seems to be something lacking. Religion consists, to those of whom I speak, of going to church on Sunday, listening to a sermon on how they should live, and perhaps having a slight attack of inner con- sciousness that they are not living quite up to par, and then passing out of church as out of a bath, and forget- ting all about it. “T think my own case is typical of most. I was brought up in a home where every member of my fam- ily attended the —— Church. Until the time I came to college I used to go with them as a matter of course. For the first couple of weeks here I went to the down- town church. From then on I went once in a long while, for I had said I would. In the second year I did not go at all. Now I usually spend my Sundays doing nothing, or catching up on back work, or taking a hike. I sup- pose it is because I am too lazy and satisfied with my- 24. THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES self, but I think the church is to blame too, because I can usually get more to think about out of a good movie than from the sermon. Religion in the form of churchgoing no longer seems necessary, or even helpful. “One trouble with our idea of religion is that it is made to appear socially compulsory. One is not con- sidered a good man unless he is affiliated with a church. Consequently most people are members simply because it is the proper and respectable thing. Few have any real faith in Christ. What they profess and what they believe are two different things. So it is possible for some to continue in good standing even though they only go to elevate themselves in their own eyes and in the eyes of their social equals, with the idea of making friends of the ‘right sort.’ If Christians were to come in for a little persecution now and then, they would fall off like blackberries. , “T don’t know any one here that thinks it matters whether you belong to the Methodists, Catholics, or anything else, as long as they have some religion and live up to it. I myself do not feel bound to any set form of church-membership, though I was brought up in the —— Church. When I go to church now, I have no particular choice, if only the sermon is not too long. Being a Methodist, let us say, just because your par- ents were, is like wearing a second-hand hat that does not fit, and you do not look well in it. Every man whose wits are alive in college is building for himself those ideas in religion that will fit him. He feels himself a student of religion just as he is a student of any other subject. “For our failure to go to church we come in for a lot UNDERGRADUATE OPINION ON RELIGION 25 of censure, most of which comes from those who know nothing of the conditions of student life. They do not realize the freedom into which we are suddenly thrust, or the change in reasoning and point of view. The rea- sons are obvious. Most of us believe we can be just as good Christians as those that do attend. Besides, we have no concrete idea of God, and the churches cannot supply us with one. We figure that to-morrow will come just the same whether we go to church or not. Then there is the difficulty due to a change of scene. Often a freshman will not go to his church the first Sunday because he is hazy as to its location; it is bound to be a strange place full of strangers; he has no one to go with him and does not want to go alone. His bashful- ness is the first element in a train of circumstances that grows bigger and bigger. If you feel bashful that first Sunday, and stay home to unpack your trunk and hang your pictures, the chances are against your ever getting the habit in college. You watch to see who else goes, and when you count them up and look them over, you decide to be damned with the great majority. As the months pass and no one takes you up for not going, the thing becomes a habit. The week has been long and full, and sleep is good on the day of rest. Sometimes, that day of consecutive quiet (the only one till next Sunday !) is indispensable in getting out long reports. At home, church was one of the big, if not the big, so- cial events. It was your club. But at college, fraternities and the activities fill this need, and more than fill it. The church thus has its biggest function cut from under it at college. For those who for one reason or another do not get into the life of the campus, I suppose that 26 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES the church plays the same part that it did at home; it is their club. Then, as a last reason, look at the church as it exists In this workaday world and you will see that it is in the hands of people without any special spiritual or even intellectual gift. They oppose science, especially the theory of evolution. They censor the literature of their day till it is to their liking. They oppose what is usually the best artistic expression in the theatre. They send to damnation the cynic, the sceptic, the agnostic —every one who does not see things in just their way. Students therefore content themselves with believing what they themselves can find out, not what these peo- ple tell them to believe. They have found something better. They will not accept the dictates of a God who speaks only in doggerel hymns and poorer sermons, and thunders against ‘the so-called higher critics,’ ‘the im- morality of the theatre,’ ‘the profligacy of the younger generation.” They would like to hear something about a possible heaven, and not so much about a certain hell.” PART I “Tf gold ruste, what shal iren doo?” CHAUCER, ‘‘THE CANTERBURY TALES” CHAPTER IV THE WALLED CITY That enchanted city, the Campus, is completely forti- fied and moated round against the invasion of the every- day world. Birth and death, ‘‘those divine anarchists,” seldom enter here. Vastly remote and unreal seem all who must work and sweat for bread, and buy and sell, on whom the sun shines less benignly. The undergradu- ates, its population, are immersed in its ways as fish are in the sea. They breathe it, eat and drink it, dream of it by night and work for it by day. Every energy is called up in its service. There is a unanimity of devo- tion to Alma Mater, the Fostering Mother, that suggests something mystical, medizval, in its colorful intensity. But to-day over those sheltering walls chill winds are blowing. About our colleges and universities of the twentieth century play forces that, whether they will it or not, shall usher in still another all-compelling mass movement of the soul of humankind. At their gates we may listen to the heave and surge of the tides of the world, going one knows not surely whither. Now when the cosmic map suffers some radical change, or when the destinies of peoples emerge into sight of new objectives, man always resorts to the august language of religion. Only the highest categories will express all that he feels; only in a religious mood, and by religious terms, can it all be evaluated. And they who deal in ‘“‘futures” have in such times always been 29 30 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES looked upon as prophets of the Highest, witnesses to the things of God. Once more humanity is at pause in the presence of new worlds and new destinies, and we look again to our “best minds” for the all-clarifying word. Prophets they are; not by any disavowal of theirs can they evade it. We see them as possible successors to those daring seers in other times whose faith swept man out of old worlds into new—the pilgrim fathers seeking a city whose foundation is God; Columbus faring westward in Christ’s name, and on Christ’s errand; Paul in the midst of Mars hill declaring the God who can be known. We as a people value instruction and information at a higher value than any other modern nation. But there begins to break upon us a fear that instruction and in- formation are not enough, that there is something more which has been left out, something ‘‘ generally necessary to salvation.”? Can knowledge alone shape our destiny ? Are souls reborn in classrooms? Can religion be taught? Universities are Alma Mater to more than the mind. These who come to their gates are human beings ready and capable of taking almost any standard for themselves, but with no least idea.of their own which of several standards to choose. Inside each one of them, inextricably mingled, are tenderness and cruelty, no- bility and baseness, great dreams and petty desires, re- nunciation and lust, the animal and the divine. A judg- ment is upon our universities that they are sending students forth uncertain still whether they are merely thinking machines, merely possessive animals, or living souls capable of the heights, citizens of a kingdom not alone of the world that is seen. As a condition of their THE WALLED CITY 31 leading our sons and daughters into a new world, the universities of this land must come to a decision regard- ing what they mean to make of them. They can no longer avoid taking sides in this matter. They can no longer put off presenting, with fine emotion, a convinc- ing picture of the character of the good man and the good nation for our day. They must more definitely aid in the rehabilitation of righteousness. They must help us answer questions such as these, which are being de- bated (in deeds if not words) up and down the land: What is Man? What constitutes The Good Life within the soul and abroad among one’s fellows? Does civili- zation consist in the conjugation of the verb to ge? or to give? In our preoccupation with other diverting things, we in America have lost a concerted sense of direction in spiritual things. We have lost our former ardor for right and wrong. Outlines are blurred; the road is dark. This nation is in doubt, as between several rival gods, which god to worship. We have lost the con- viction that there is any such thing as what our fathers called ‘‘the One True God.” And since we have no longer any God to worship, we have no permanent and compelling concept of what Man is meant to be, or what sort of a world this really is. And so we do not know what knowledge is for. We would have from our company of educated men certain liberating words which shall reshape our national life and give us back our God again. The universities have already responded to new de- mands upon them, and have long since gone beyond their original function of instruction only. They have entered the private and social life of their students as ae THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES landlord, as caterer, as doctor, as athletic and musical director. And all this because the needs of their natural growth have fastened these new functions upon them. It now seems no less imperative that they appear be- fore their students as guides and witnesses to the things of God. There are, of course, plenty of reasons for let- ting it alone. One is well aware of the long history of sectarian control and the bitter fight which these very universities have only just ceased to wage for religious freedom and comprehensiveness. Indeed, it is the re- action from the bitterness of that fight that has with- drawn them from active connection with the religious function. I do not by any means suggest that univer- sities should be under church, or interchurch, control, or that they should officially attempt to “win youth back to the church,” or that they should issue dicta on the Incarnation or whether one must be baptized with much water or with little to be a Christian. No. There is an inner compulsion here, a logic of facts, which places the whole question beyond the range of any par- ticular interest or church, and makes it the immediate concern of every man and woman of good-will. These are the facts to which, we refer: On the one hand, our professionalized churches, hopelessly divided, immersed in partial and passing orthodoxies, have be- come hardly more than standing committees to wait upon God with the due formalities. They are no longer guides; one cannot be sure that they are reliable even as guide-posts. And, on the other hand, Science, un- accompanied by an enthusiasm for righteousness, turns _ out to be a blind guide, leading back into the ditch. We find ourselves at a time when radically new cos- THE WALLED CITY 33 mologies of the mind and soul are being born, and we cannot tell whither we shall be led in search of the whole truth about ourselves. Our need is not for more orthodoxies based on learning and logic, but for faith, free and unafraid in the face of new facts—a venture- some spirit in a world whose intellectual boundaries have suddenly widened in every direction. Man cannot live by words alone. We must have a renewal of religious insights from any source that can supply them, to set our souls, our wills, on fire. Wanted at once: one Prophet, one Poet, and one Saint. Can the universities teach religion ? Certainly they have the equipment (if equipment be the prime need, as some think). Wealth, lands, build- ings for every purpose, books, scientific instruments, trained specialists in every field, the confidence of the bulk of the public—everything that money can buy, or effort establish, or ingenuity devise, is there. And the students are not less well provided. They are notice- ably better dressed, shod, housed, and fed than their contemporaries in this or any other part of the world. (An evening in one or other of their more deeply up- holstered fraternity houses makes one hanker after the bracing simplicity of that ancient prophet’s chamber— “fa bed and a table and a stool and a candle.’”’) They sit in scientifically ventilated and heated classrooms. The least defect in eyesight is corrected with the proper lenses. Text and reference books that scholars of yester- day scarcely dreamed of; note-books bound in leather and filled with the very best blank paper; self-sharpening pencils; fountain-pens ‘“‘tipped with iridium” (fairy word that—iridium—such stuff, surely, as dreams are 34 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES made with!). Is all this external bounty being trans- lated into internal plenty? Does there drop from those efficient, nimble pens any language, any idea, any dream, more profound and more useful to the race than those that once flowed, in chilly attics, over the points of iron or goose-quill pens?. Do more goods. result in more good? That is the major question not only for our universities but for the whole land. These boys and_girls are hungry for nothing but what they have. There is little or no self-imposed austerity. There is no indignation or revolt; no daring to spring to the defense of lost causes. One observes a willingness to work hard enough in harness for marks and credits, but along with it goes a distinct uneasiness and distrust in the presence of any suggestion of high spiritual enterprise involving the imagination. This is the sickness that de- stroyeth in the noon day. There is no room for religion here. The untoward question keeps forcing itself in: Have these young people been given too much? It is the question of questions; and the answer is disquieting. No one yet sees his way through to the other side. It troubles presidents and deans and professors as well as unofficial critics; hardly a faculty meeting fails to touch one or another of its phases. Not only have they too much; there are also too many. The universities are being asked to do an im- possible thing: to turn out a hand-wrought product with machines; to deliver a quality product by quantity methods. Machine production, the specialty of our age, has penetrated even here. The more obvious results are familiar: an almost, universal tyranny of marks and credits, wide-spread slaving and parroting for standing THE WALLED CITY 35 with the professor in feverish concern to “get by,” a mental lock-step, a standardization of every student’s effort and thought and product. Its consequences have even invaded the faculty, for in that vast machine, any but the most dauntlessly alive of men must perforce be- come machines too. One sees it in that unfailing formula of an undergraduate at the beginning of an official in- terview: “I don’t want to take your time’’; for his pro- fessor must receive him during rigid office hours in a barren, formal office, seated behind a desk (symbol of vast work now being interrupted). What possibility is there of anything being transacted here but the ordi- nary routine between any machinist and any piece- work? This speeding-up is disastrous to the religious mood and impulse in so far as it breaks down the sense of identity, and cramps the more serene and spacious motions under the monstrous dominance of a machine. The soul is bound to the wheels and can only go round and round and round. Perhaps, then, we shall find our medium for the teaching of religion in the recognized and established re- ligious agencies on the campus. Let us see. The recog-” nized religion of any representative university is gen- erally that of modern successful America. It worships material success, and tacitly admits that man’s true nature is to get, not to give. It evidently believes that man can be saved by words alone. It is a religion chiefly for Sundays and good clothes, and finds expression through ‘‘religious exercises,” which keep one fit— though it is not specified for what one is kept fit. It leaves one conveniently alone between Sundays. It is, urbanely sceptical of any but a “white, Protestant, 36 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES native-born” God. In a university chapel that I know, the central figure in a mosaic frieze is that of a tall youth in academic robes, seated, gazing into the depths of a crystal sphere that he holds in his hand.» Is not this-a rather striking symbol. of the university. religion of to-day? For the figure is solitary and self-absorbed, intent on what the eyes can see and the hands handle; he is so very serious-minded, so obviously thinking up new crises (one recollects the phrases of the knitted- brow school of campus religionists—“‘this weighty mo- ment,” “this unprecedented task,” ‘“‘this unparalleled opportunity’’). And he is sedentary, inactive; and last of all, he is cold to the touch. If the universities are ever to grow up to the high spiritual demands of these times, they must get a radi- cally new conception of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which, when it is true to itself, sweeps through all shut places like a mighty wind. It has never wholly ceased turning the world upside down and breaking up the crust of old habits and motives and perennially opening every closed question. Not for long can it leave us in peace, try as we may—and we do try—to escape it. Such a faith is fit companion for all who are young of heart in this day or any day, catching up their every ardor, eagerly scanning new and wider horizons, urging each one of them on, with an energy greater than his own. What new light might not shine forth from these walled cities set upon their hills, if such a Gospel ever took possession of them! What new madness might not break forth there if youth ever were to take Jesus Christ at his word! Religion of this sort cannot be taught; it can only be THE WALLED CITY 37 caught. ‘‘The intellect is not a flame, but a wick, and must be enkindled.” The function of universities is to provide fuel, so that when the fire descends from heaven it may neither consume the wick nor be extinguished for lack of sustenance, but may give forth light, radiant and clear, to guide the feet of many in the way. CHAPTER V WANTED: A NEW HEAVEN FOR A NEW EARTH In whatever age it may find itself, and under what- ever circumstances, religion will be observed to exer- cise two distinct functions. Under one aspect it is a road to travel; under the other it is a city to dwell in. The former function is ever in process of change, some- times orderly and gradual, sometimes with earthquake shocks, keeping pace the while with the restless, voy- aging mind and soul of man. ‘Truth is without habi- tation or name; like the Son of Man, it hath not where to lay its head.”’ The mystics, prophets, and reformers, the Godward-minded philosophers, scientists, and crit- ics, all find their place here, each contemplating the Eternal Mystery, each seeking by his own path the hidden way of unification. The second function lags behind its fellow; there is always somewhat of a gap between the two. It would remain stationary but for the impulse, sometimes impatient and harsh, from the other wing. It perpetuates the stabilities and moralities of the group, and guards the deposit of faith. It does not criticise things as they are; it simply reveals them as means of grace. (Perhaps this is, after all, the ulti- mate criticism.) It comes to people with that which helps. It is a kindly fold for the harried sheep, and keeps them from being utterly roofless in the winter wind. In the present chapter we shall confine our atten- tion to the first of these two functions as it relates to 38 A NEW HEAVEN FOR A NEW EARTH 39 certain current problems of the mind. Consideration of both functions is renewed under another aspect in Chapter VIII, on the Church. _ Itis a favorite pastime of ours to endue the recent college graduate with the aura of his august surround- ings, to take it on faith that by virtue of his college course he really belongs in the company of educated men, and ranks among the best minds. No disappoint- ments seem to rid us of this vested illusion. However, something certainly does happen at college to a boy’s or girl’s mind that should, theoretically if not in fact, make that mind a superior sort of instrument. For un- dergraduates are daily being trained in classrooms and laboratories to discover and recognize facts by scien- tific methods, and to judge them by realistic standards. They are taught to doubt appearances, to apply tests, to suspend judgment until all the facts are in. If the stu- dent be alert and responsive, he recognizes himself as ‘“‘a candidate for truth.” The realism of his intercourse with nature, never pretending a knowledge of it that he does not himself possess, never endowing it with fanciful or poetic attributes;—all this immersion in a purely factual and objective world, is doing something to the minds of the college youth of our day which, while it neglects certain other aspects no less important, yet does produce serviceable instruments for the pur- suit of facts. Some parents fail, I think, to see the implications of all this. They are unwilling to take responsibility and make allowances for such changes as are the natural product of the environment in which they have wittingly placed their children. They understand in a general way 40 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES that college is ‘‘a place of the mind, a time for thinking and an opportunity for knowing,’ but they have not yet quite got the picture of what is bound to happen there. And they wonder why “the modern mind” has so completely lost its ardor for the things they care for. One often hears, too, the complaint that young people show signs of a loss of faith and of a weakening apprehension of spiritual things. But it is not so much a loss of faith as the discovery that they never really had one. It is not a weakening apprehension, but the be- ginnings of translation into a new tongue, the spiritual meanings of which the youngsters have not yet mastered. For six days of the week they breathe the atmosphere of the laboratory, their minds moving without external hindrance in orderly fashion, where that which is not yet known is regarded as the raw material of future knowledge. But on the Sunday when they go to church, they are likely to meet quite the opposite attitude toward truth. There, all is already known. The vital facts were ‘‘once delivered”—a deposit of faith to last for all time. “All the great mutations are enacted.” They find this other world unbelievably different, and already alien and unfamiliar. And they go back where they feel they belong, and stay there. Here then is a task for exponents of religion: to hew out new and more daring concepts for the old truths; to bring a new Pentecost to pass, where every one shall recognize the language of the Spirit for his own. Let fearful saints fresh courage take, and reassure them- selves that the facts of the soul, while perhaps not so evident to the modern perception, are certainly not less well evidenced than are physical facts; and that the A NEW HEAVEN FOR A NEW EARTH 41 Spirit, the breath of God, is still creative of that which is most worth creating. It is necessary that its defenders break away from exceptions and reservations and all temporizing, and place religion on grounds that can never be taken away from it. While utilizing the au- thentic findings of science in the world of physical facts, they must insist on the validity of that interpretation of those same facts which reveals their ultimate value to the soul, and which gives life a meaning and a pur- pose and a goal. The head must no longer say to the heart, I have no need of thee. If spiritual guides can construct a case and a claim for the facts of the soul that shall be as clearly worthy of reasonable attention as is the claim which is made for physical facts; and if they can convince the youthful inquirer that religiously apprehended values are not hostile to facts scientifically known, they will find him ready to take them as seri- ously as they take themselves. Under these terms God would be recognized as being not a God for Sundays only, or one who is shut up in- side of churches, not a God withdrawn from the com- mon affairs of life or to be sought in unfamiliar ways. They would come upon him at every turn. Students of chemistry would learn to see him at work in their test- tubes in orderly fashion rearranging the elements of his universe under their very hands. Engineering students would reach out and touch him when they caused iron and rock and waterfalls to work for them. Agricultural students would perceive him in seeds and soils and sea- sons. Any one might at any minute catch a glimpse of him in fragrant enduring friendships, in sunsets, in great books, or in some great suffering or defeat. They 4.2 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES would worship him in spirit and in truth by learning and obeying his laws and thinking his thoughts after him; by sharing in the divine work of creation. There would then no longer be that contradiction between the men- tal and the spiritual habits of a young person’s mind. Both elements would concur in demanding of him cer- tain ‘“‘fruits of the spirit’: to see both sides of every question, to be strict and sincere with oneself, constantly to bring theory to the test of action. To think beyond race and prejudice and interest. To accept this present world as the best we are likely to have until man sets his intelligence to making it better. To see beauty in the common things of daily use. In short, “‘to be re- ligious with the consent of all his faculties,” not with the ultimate object of gaining some reward, but with the determination to make the will of God prevail. When that good day arrives, we can begin to look for a new (yet once well-known) thing to happen. For then religion, the poor relation, will come bringing gifts to her rich sister on the hill—gifts of new import and price- less worth, which none other can supply. Gifts of true originality, without which learning is a taskmaster; of insight, without which information is blind. In the uni- versities we may then look for the passing of all that slavery to marks and standing, of that distracted life governed by good form, of that willingness to live at second hand and to seek knowledge for personal gain. That eventful day will witness another result: noth- ing less than a renewal of confidence and mutuality be- tween theology and the other sciences, such a shifting of scenes as shall change the whole intellectual outlook of our times. Minor and distracting disputes then being A NEW HEAVEN FOR A NEW EARTH 43 put aside, the true alignment will emerge. The issue will be seen to lie between those who conceive the uni- verse to be of a sort whose ultimate values can be dis- cerned and reckoned by mechanical devices and labora- tory methods—and those who are convinced that a strictly mechanistic account will always be inadequate, and therefore false, and that there is more there than can be thus described. The former we shall designate as the machine-minded, and the latter as the Godward- minded. | To the machine-minded, God is an unnecessary hy- pothesis. Underneath are the everlasting wheels. They say in effect: “Here you have it; ¢izs works, this precise, unalterable gearing of wheels into wheels which we have discovered. Nothing else is needed for a complete the- ory.” It is evident to an unbiassed view that these are in the somewhat precarious position of worshipping their own minds. It is evident too that machine-minded- ness is to be discovered both inside and outside the churches. It is natural that they should invade the in- most recesses of the soul and dissect it out of its proper environment, and handle its shrinking tissues by methods better suited to the laboratory study of bacteria. They know accurately the anatomy of the tear-glands and tear-ducts, but cannot comprehend Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. They have no hymns. True, they have opened a new physical world before our eyes, and powers undreamed for the human mind to use. One would not seem to minimize the profound services they render to the material well-being of the race. But mate- rialist dogmatism has built up its orthodoxies about its own revered names and phrases and a new intolerance 44. THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES is here, not to be hidden under brilliant programmes and brilliant results. They have laid the axe to every remotest covert on the hills of the hidden self; those denuded slopes no longer give water to the valleys. The higher springs of human action are visibly drying up. All wild things in that pleasant hinterland have fled before them into the deeper fastnesses; the hides of the victims are nailed up to dry in the sun. But, like all aliens, their day is short. At their going the little furry beasts and the bright wings of birds and the high- antlered deer will return again, along with the per- sistent trees. Their opponents, whom we have termed the Godward- minded, insist that the x in the equation can best be resolved by the term God. These too can be found both inside and outside the churches. To them all true sci- ence is theology, and all true theology is science. They have therefore no haunting fear of the material, of which religious people are often justly accused; they enter gladly upon all this entanglement with the material which is life, and find it good. They, no less than the others, are explorers of the hidden places of the soul. But these latter are come to build a home there in the highlands, to grow crops bearing seed after their kind, close beside the stream of life, very near its Source. And they drink of the living waters higher up than the others have yet explored. The world and all that is in it belongs to one or Other of these rival claimants. The former have given us a new and vastly wider material home, full of wonders, for our bodies and. minds to dwell in. Can the latter clothe it with beauty and radiance that shall speak a A NEW HEAVEN FOR A NEW EARTH 45 language for the soul’s comfort? Can the God-seekers, the saints and prophets and poets and wise men, raise our eyes to a new and equally enthralling heaven that shall enfranchise the soul of man, invaded and van- quished? Can they show us the Holy City, perpetually coming down to dwell among men, like a bride adorned for her husband; a heaven not for dead people, but for people who are intensely and increasingly alive; a heaven that shall recreate the gift of reverence and wonder for our sons and daughters once again, and keep them from ever growing old? CHAPTER VI THE DIVIDED SELF This chapter is not a treatise on experimental psy- chology. It is rather a very practical attempt to bring into discussion certain facts that our religious contem- poraries frequently ignore. As we noted in Chapter IV, an undergraduate’s care-free exterior does not neces- sarily indicate a serene inner man. Parents, ministers, and others are often, and quite naturally, deceived into thinking that all is well, except perhaps for a few intel- lectual doubts. But the fact is that in the most unex- pected cases, and masquerading under the most diverse dress, one continually finds an inner conflict, “‘two deadly hostile selves, one actual, the other ideal,’* waging almost unremitting war for possession of the soul. Here are portions of four letters to the author, written by undergraduates within the past few years: “The term is over. ... I feel a sort of cheer- less pity for myself and my ideals; they are all gone. This is my regular summer mood. I find it impos- sible to carry out decisions made beside the fire in the long winter months. I am an animal, not a brain or a soul. And the trouble is that I go through just this reversal of values every year, so that I begin to lose confidence in my own deliberate judg- ment, and in all abstractions and principles of any * William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1914 edition) , p. 171. (Longmans, Green & Co. By permission.) 46 THE DIVIDED SELF 47 sort. I want to live just from day to day, following each desire as it comes. I know theoretically, of course, that the better forces of the universe are permanent; I simply drop out of touch with them. . . . Self will not bear the responsibility of keeping in touch. The philosophy of putting faith in one’s self is wholly false and hopeless, I suppose, but I can’t carry my faith across to the outside spiritual God, or feel that doing so could make any par- ticular difference. I don’t know how to get into touch with God in the sense of feeling that he is my stronghold.” “What is the matter with me? Is my experience different from other people’s? I am learning with some success to handle iron and electricity, and can create new combinations of matter by chemical formule, but I can’t control or change myself. And there is nothing in my college courses to tell me how. I am lawless, and the slave of desires whenever they choose to come.” *“T want to follow Christ but I don’t know how. The trees and birds and animals seem more in har- mony with God than I; and I feel that God despises me for my failure to find him.” “T seem to be at war with myself. Two forces fight for possession of me. Sometimes I take sides with one, sometimes with the other. More often I merely look on. Of all things I want peace within, in which 48 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES to go ahead with my work. But all this struggle takes too much energy. How can I prolong the in- tervals of peace?” These moving words rise from the lips of combatants fresh from the field of their inward conflict, with their wounds open. I believe they mark the common experi- ence in youth; indeed, with a shift in emphasis, all through life. Old lusts, fierce hot animosities, fears, greed for possession—all the ancestral voices call to us out of the animal past. The old tracks through the brain, worn by the steps of a thousand generations of ancestors, still tempt our feet after theirs. But ever in our ears, now louder and now fainter, sound the distant silver trumpets of the Holy City beyond the hills, the home of our spirit, whither we are bound. Thus we are continually pulled in diverse directions. Between them we cannot have peace. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has borne its pungent fruit. Try as we may we cannot return to the old animal peace that once we knew. We have seen too much: we have seen with the eyes of God. “Down what wild current of my blood Comes this desire of Perfectness, Which plants cold hunger in my mood, And an unreasoned dark distress?” Each one of us is actually a battle-field, across which to and fro surges a conflict more bitter than any of those recorded in the histories. All the waste and the bitterness and confusion are there, all the hurt and THE DIVIDED SELF 49 pain. Two wills, two desires, both seek to dominate us. They refuse to come to terms. We are like a country drained of its man-power and resources by civil war. How to conquer this enemy that dogs our footsteps and catches us unawares and throws us down and rends us, how to make him serve our ends, that is our pressing question. All we ask is that “some thaw, some release may take place, some bolt be shot back,” so that we may go about our tasks with all our effort given to the thing in hand without so much waste and distraction and contradiction. Something keeps telling us that this inward peace is the only possession worth fighting for. We shall not be content till it is found. And we would have it during youth; not when the warring country is exhausted and prostrate. Too late then: we could not use it. What we want is a victory in the field; honor- ably, not by default. Now, while it is yet the day. “How irrelevantly remote seem all our usual refined optimisms and intellectual and moral consolations in presence of a need of help like this! . . . No prophet can claim to bring a final message unless he says things that will have a sound of reality in the ears of victims such as these. But the deliverance must come in as strong a form as the complaint, if it is to take ef- fect. . . .”* No cheery dismissal, no slap on the back, nor yet any ready-made prayer of the usual sort, will do. The diagnosis must take account of all the facts. For the patient is convinced that a personal blame attaches to him along with the disease. Not only is he on his back and helpless and alone; he is also covered with mud. Not only is he sick; he feels himself at fault. * William James, Varieties, p. 162. 50° THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES For all the while he knows deep in his heart that another Heart is wounded by the bitter swift arrow of his denial. Sin is the name by which Christians have always known this denial of the ideal self; a word whose rate of exchange is at present very much below par (by un- wise inflation on the part of earlier manipulators, one may guess). We cannot on that account ignore it. Here then is another wide and fruitful field in pas- toral care for those who deal with the religion of young men and women. Here, if anywhere, there is need for the sure touch of understanding and sympathy. Tech- nic is needed, of course, but more than technic one needs the gift of understanding and patience—indeed, something of the insight and comradeship of the Great Physician himself. There was that about Jesus which made people, particularly timid and sinful people, know that if they but touched the hem of his garment they would be made whole. Certain practical attempts already being made in be- half of undergraduates to bring ‘“‘personal religion”’ into _the foreground should be noticed here. They are of two sorts. One of them emphasizes the beauty of holiness, shows the wonder and beauty of the natural instincts, reminds of the joys and responsibilities of maturity which await one after the storm and stress of adolescence, and paints an appealing picture of the advantages of a stainless youth. The writer has seen large audiences of young men and women deeply touched and evidently helped by this type of approach, especially when it was done by a mature and saintly man. Yes, it does great good, but it leaves more undone. It is too sky-blue; it makes it all seem too easy; it seems to ignore all the THE DIVIDED SELF 51 sting and drive and dirt, and the fact of persistent fail- ure of the best intentions. It even increases the load for some, by reminding them of what they are missing without giving them the means of attaining it. And it is too impersonal; it lets the individual escape without any overt and personal act of will, just when he was perhaps ready to make that act of will, were it required of him. One loves this method for its candor andsym- pathy and beauty, but it leaves the worst of the casual- ties still lying on the field. Of profoundly opposite type is another movement, the outstanding features of which are its elimination of argument as a means of grace, its strong group con- sciousness, its emphasis on moral rather than intellec- tual difficulties, and its awareness of the soul’s direct guidance by the Holy Spirit (referred to as ‘“‘hunches”’). Its central purpose is the radical conversion of indi- vidual lives by relentless facing of them with the con- crete facts of sin, and the need for repentance, confes- sion, change of will, and the formation of new habits. Three definite steps are prescribed for the penitent: first, exteriorization of sin by acknowledgment of it to some trusted friend or sympathetic group; second, strengthening of determination by immediately ‘‘tack- ling” one’s friends and seeking to bring them through to a like experience; and third, deepening of the founda- tions by unfailing practice of prayer, intercession, and watchful meditation. A strongly evangelical theology colors its technic. We shall not attempt to judge as between the two methods; their divergences are deep as human nature itself. The former has a future in the universities on 52 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES condition that it takes off its coat and rolls up its sleeves and comes to grips with individuals; that it is willing to touch dirt and can remove it; that it makes explicit what it now leaves implicit. Prophecy concerning the latter is more difficult; the case is more complex. Its strength lies in its cutting edge, its surgeon’s method, which in skilful hands does often succeed in penetrating where the diseased tissues are, and in removing them. But this very fact makes it a highly dangerous method, and one involving the possible defeat of its own ends. Its future would seem conditional, first, on its not tying up with any single and narrow theological position; second, on its surviving the inevitable mistakes of over- zealous and immature adherents; third, on its not at- tempting to hold or organize its converts permanently. For at best it can touch a young man only during a brief moment in his moral career. Its function is there- fore, like John the Baptist, simply to awaken an inner impulse. Some concise, prophetic application of that impulse to the actual business of living, added while the occasion lasts, would seem to complete its task. After that the soul must fare forth on its own. And a fourth condition is that it can work out a truly scientific and truly catholic attitude toward the facts of the moral life and its pathology. It is not our purpose to offer a third method of ap- proach to this whole question of the divided self. What follows may be of guidance to persons here or there who feel it their duty to enter upon this sort of ministry. > Four suggestions are made, having to do with elements which are noticeably absent from most ministries to college students, and which need to be placed at the THE DIVIDED SELF 53 centre again. First, the patient’s whole attention must be imaginatively concentrated on what he really wants to have happen, as well as on what ails him. Second, there should be, at some time early in the process, objective confession of the fault with appropriate penance. Third, that electrolysis of the soul which we call conversion should be brought to pass. Fourth, the convert must be identified with an absorbing and morally consistent task. These four points are briefly discussed in the following paragraphs. (1) When a patient comes with his troubles heavy upon him, the good soul-surgeon will not be shocked at what he hears. He will get at all the facts, relentlessly and impersonally. Nor will he be so credulous as to accept the patient’s own diagnosis as altogether the correct one, for, like the man in the gospel, the lad is “willing to justify himself.” All of us, even the very elect, are egoists, sensualists, cowards—usually all three; and these will pose as something else, something more respectable, and must be stripped of their dis- guises. Above all, he will not scold. The whole psy- chology of blame is out of place here. This young man must be considered now not as a culprit but as a cas- ualty; a lost soul, if you will, but lost only in the sense that he has missed the road: ~ “Nor guessed the traps life gets you in, So much more puzzling than mere sin;”’ as Mr. Christopher Morley so aptly puts it. The pa- tient needs no scolding; he already knows he is pretty bad; very likely he is under the common impression that to the pure all things are rotten. His adviser’s duty 54 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES is to get outside himself and (so to speak) inside the other’s skin, and see it all through his eyes, if in turn the patient is to see it through his adviser’s eyes. Initial success in getting the interest and imagination, as well as the will, of the patient focussed and aroused to the needs of the case, and in convincing him that God’s forgiveness and his own eventual restoration are not beyond reach, thus making it clear that one is converted not only from something but to something—are the conditions of further progress. (2) Confession of sin to another person has been re- garded by Protestants for over four centuries as spiritu- ally debasing and profitless. This has become a preju- dice, and is not usually subject to debate. The question must be reopened for discussion. For the facts go to” show, and the new psychology experimentally authenti- cates the reality of those facts, that ‘‘exteriorization”’ of the conflict is the way to resolve it, and that the best method of exteriorization is by confession, which faces men and women with the grim fact, and makes them hate it vividly and objectively. If this particular form of the ‘‘ hygiene of the imagina- tion” is to take its due place in’ the ministry to college youth, it must be safeguarded in two particulars: First, the “‘confessor”’ must be of the right sort. Not every one can do it; it requires a particularly high grade of mental and spiritual energy and understanding, a genius anal- ogous in many respects with that of the better sort of physician. Along with this goes the requirement that the confessor’s own life shall have passed through some similar self-facing and God-facing, and reached at least the beginning of unification thereby. Second, the con- THE DIVIDED SELF 58 fessor must know men and women. His instinct for char- acter must be so keen that in each case he can silently anticipate to himself the gist of what is coming. He must see the particular conflict involved and get all the facts out into the open, and apply the treatment proper to that person’s need and that particular moment in his life. Incidentally, he should be able to detect whether this self-facing has been left too long, and what the effects are of the neglect. And finally, he must gauge the moral intensity and capacity of each individual, lest when penance is imposed the penitent find himself up against such high demands as would be intolerable and impossible. All this is no easy task. No man may dare to say he is sufficient for it. The only conceivable reason for undertaking it is that it must be done. (3) Conversion too is readily misunderstood, and is capable of being abused when artificially sought. And yet it is essential to the soul’s progress. Conversion might be described as a spiritual loop-the-loop, the now familiar stunt by means of which the pursued plane suddenly becomes the pursuer, and in a deadly position to harass the enemy plane’s rear. A radical change in mood follows the change of position, for with the re- sumption of the offensive, and as one’s guns begin to bear, the former confidence returns, and with it better judgment and control. Victory is in effect already won. Conversion is hard to describe except in terms of ac- tual experience. Two documents are offered in illustra- tion. One is from a young man’s letter, written in 1923: “.. . But I was wrong with Christ, wrong with myself, wrong with others. Three sins stared me in 56 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES the face; and they must go. I saw for the first time in my life the issue of complete surrender to the will of God. ... It meant the disruption of easy, self- made plans. I was afraid, yet I dared not turn back. Kneeling beside my desk, I gave my whole self to God once and for all in conscious and deliberate sur- render. I felt no emotion with the decision; I was aware of being able to pray easily and honestly for the first time in many months, that was all... . The old life is gone. A new life opens on limitless horizons.” The other is equally authentic, and no less accurately reported: “Tt was after one of our wild parties. I was sitting on the side of my bed taking my shoes off. I don’t know why, but I was suddenly filled with disgust at the whole business, and I said, ‘To hell with all that.’ I don’t claim to have grown wings since then, but my idea of a good time has changed.” (4) Any conversion, even earnestly and whole-heart- edly entered upon, must add intelligence to its emotional impulse, so that not just control of self, but control of events, control of growth, may follow. The actual re- forming of will and character must be skilfully plotted out by intelligence and foresight, “‘so that Brother Body may not be able to murmur against him,” as Saint Fran- cis handily says. Just here is where the healing ministry will come to its hardest testing. Can such a ministry THE DIVIDED SELF 57 furnish that sane practicality that shall give a young man, fresh from his invigorating experience, a series of steps, a technic, by which to translate his new impetus into daily and hourly habits? Here the adviser has to use self-restraint, for his patient will instinctively look to him for decisions which shall shape those habits. This he must not permit. For the worst habit of all is that willingness to live at second-hand which results from too great reliance on the expert’s judgment. When it invades the moral life it is more than a blemish; it is a disaster, for it makes impossible the very thing sought—spiritual maturity. A second difficulty lies in that disillusioned despair which often comes when the beginner finds that his battles are not altogether won. It is hard for him to distinguish between defeats and defeat. He must learn that one cannot “make the world safe” for anything; that each new-born habit must struggle for existence and will survive only if it can. Patients in these cases of conscience should not be encouraged to think that “the power of Christ” will waft them along on the strength of a past ex- perience and vision. Christ himself definitely refused to do this for his disciples, and made it sufficiently clear that merely to be with him was not enough. ‘Greater things than these shall ye do.” Therefore, this episode in the pilgrim’s progress toward unification involves as- tuteness and patience and courage on the part of his adviser. Allegiance must be won to some new and ab- sorbing task. Here one must combine the prophet’s with the physician’s part, and speak forth in the name of some mighty cause to which one’s whole faith is given. This identification with the tasks and problems 58 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES of his people, in the sharing of which a young man con- solidates the newly won position, is the subject of the following chapter. We must not leave this subject without direct refer- ence to the place which the treatment of sex bears in such a ministry. A significant fact is revealed by trust- worthy records, that one-half of those students who are “busted out”? or who leave without finishing the course do so because of defects of character. What those defects are is not stated in detail; nor is any indication given what proportion relate to sins of the flesh. How many of the names on that long casualty list stand against the account of their parents and the churches, who for ‘“‘nasty little self-conscious reasons” have shrouded this subject in silence? Mostly where sex is touched at all from the religious angle, the effort is wasted because of superficial or sentimental or furtive handling. As a re- sult, the vast majority of undergraduates, men or women, do not think of sex as a phase of religion. In almost none of the undergraduate themes on religion is any refer- ence made to matters of personal morality, none at all to sex. Natural reticence would not account for this if sex were normally considered as within the accepted area of religious discussion. The reader will do well, then, to reconsider in the light of the facts presented in this chapter (and which are everywhere accessible to any one who looks for them) the whole restless question of the religious uses of “that soiled robe,” the flesh. In this day of con- flicting counsels we must speak forth a clear word against the too-presumptuous claims of the body. The THE DIVIDED SELF 59 course we must steer is more than ever difficult: on the one hand we must no longer tacitly acquiesce in that plausible gospel of the body which gratifies, in- deed anticipates, its every demand; and equally we must resist the obvious temptation to “bid biology recant,” that is, the temptation to embrace a stricter puritanism resting on a fundamental denial of the body; for if we fail to reckon with those obscure inner necessities which persist out of our animal past, we do so at our peril. That most modern man, Saint Francis of Assisi, has left us his refreshing phrase, “‘our Brother the Body.” And that simple wisdom is inherent in, and inseparable from, the Gospel. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us to make it indisputably clear that “this body which does me grievous hurt” is fit also for the very highest uses—as the very medium, indeed, by which God dwells among us and we behold his glory, full of grace and truth. CHAPTER VII MUSTARD-GAS OR MUSTARD-SEED What is the function of a university in a modern na- tion? If it is merely to equip youth to earn a comfort- able living by a better use of their brains, and to train them, by exposure to certain ‘‘cultural” influences, to be thoroughly at home in their own age, then the task is being excellently done. But is an education in com- pliance, good form, and the method and habit of suc- cess, enough? There is a far more important element— the development of a critical faculty and the gift of seeing oneself and one’s people objectively, the habit of dis- interested discussion, the love of truth for its own sake, and the ability to reach independent decisions, even though unprofitable and unpopular, with courage to bring those judgments to bear on events and affairs. These are the qualities of any leadership worthy the name. And a university’s chief duty to the nation is to engender in its sons and daughters this true originality. But the young men and women in our universities are impregnably complacent. They have no sense of sin for the ills of society.* There is no indignation or defiance. For all but a very few, life is as pleasant as *Tt should be observed that there are notable exceptions; that there is a willingness among at least a small group on every campus to bring these questions into discussion. Whether or not the seeds sown at the Student Volunteer Convention at Indianapolis, in December, 1923, will permanently flourish still remains to be seen. For an account of that dynamic gathering, see its Report, Christian Students and World Prob- lems, published by the Student Volunteer Movement, New York, 1924. 60 MUSTARD-GAS OR MUSTARD-SEED 61 a sheltered and prosperous home can make it. They have simply nothing to get hot about, and rather despise those who believe they have. If they hear of some bit- ter strike that shakes the world outside, it bears no news to them that the very fabric of our sort of civiliza- tion is in question and under fire. For four years they keep their tender noses to the grindstone, but their sense of smell is none the sharper. In classes they recite their daily assignments, dutifully learned the night be- fore, and go into a panic before every examination; but with few exceptions, they see no particular connection between classroom economics and ‘‘the restless cause of the people.”” This is well enough for under-minds, as training in the clerkly virtues; they will work well under supervision and for a price. But it does not set the brain free for creative social thinking, or develop the faculty of independent judgment. “American students are strangely docile in mind. Everywhere else in the world I find the rising generation in conscious and intense re- bellion against the conventions and methods of life and thought which dominated their fathers, and which led the world to the present disaster. But I found among your students little or none of that burning passion to discover a new way for mankind, which is the real hope of the world to-day. They seem to suffer from some strange paralysis of the will. They often seem to lack the power to adopt a purpose and then follow it tena- ciously and independently. I did not find the normal percentage of clear-cut personalities among them.” * New minds are needed to comprehend the America * Doctor A. Herbert Gray, of the British Student Movement, in a letter in The Intercollegian, October, 1923. ae 62 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES which is emerging, a New Fact, out of a half-century of industrialism and a decade of war years. They must be minds that can think beyond frontiers and coasts, be- yond interest and expediency and present interest. Most of us see only the America that our particular in- terest makes us wish to see. Probably it is impossible for any single person to get the whole picture, but two facts stand out for any one to see; one, that life under the present terms is a hopeless burden for most wage- earners, and the other, that war is an inevitable by- product of the modern industrial system. Each of these two facts feeds on the other, as diseases commonly do. Consider for a moment the lot of the wage-earner un- ‘der industry. Efficiency demands that the workers live in cities. And cities, of whose populations the higher energies are never demanded, and which effectively ban- ish the soil, the trees, friendship, and laughter, the privacies of home—indeed almost all the elements proper to man—are evolving a strange new type, the city-dweller, “‘gazing out upon the universe from a crowded street, from over the shoulders or beneath the legs of his fellows.” He is the child of his times; the Motor-driven Man, driven by a force not his own, but which possesses him body and soul. His body has been taken from its true environment near the soil, and his soul has likewise been suborned from its true function, which is to serve God, and must now acknowledge its new master, the machine. Thus deprived of its ancient sanities, his whole nature protests aloud in weariness and frustration. He is geared to a stupefying routine which produces goods in which he has no interest or concern. He regards his work as a hateful necessity, MUSTARD-GAS OR MUSTARD-SEED 63 and does it perfunctorily and grudgingly, not for ser- vice but for money. He is forced to feel an artificial poverty in a particularly galling fashion, for even though he may draw high wages he must spend them all on the barren necessities, poor and ugly though they be; and at the same time he sees about him the insolent display of vast wealth. He is a man without hope, for even though a free citizen in a rich and dominant na- tion, he knows himself to be fast bound in misery and iron. When the ‘‘vast ledgers of the Eternal” are bal- anced, the account will show that much is owed him. The other fact must be faced no less relentlessly. For if an industrial nation faces a succession of world wars as the price of its admission to the wealth of the world, there is only one conclusion. It cannot survive. It is indeed bitter reading if the future history of industry contains no escape from that ever-recurring sequence— war, post-war, pre-war, war—the fruits of each episode becoming the seeds of the next. Yet what else may we look for, on the present basis? ‘‘That motive” (7. e., the acquisitive) ‘‘produces industrial warfare not as a regrettable incident but as an inevitable result. It pro- duces industrial war, because its teaching is that each individual or group has a right to what it can get.” * And, “‘the external shock of nations in military war is only the last and external phase of the internal form of the economic and social war.” The peoples of the West have not yet worked out an- swers to these questions inherent in their present way of life. We have assumed that our capacity would keep *R.H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society (Harcourt, Brace & Co.), p. 40. } Benjamin Kidd, The Science of Power (Putnams), p. 95. 64 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES pace with our inventions, and have taken it for granted that if we could invent a machine we could also control it. But this is not the case. Somewhere a vital element has been left out, with (as has just been indicated) two major consequences—the impoverishment of the human stock, and the risk of the loss by war of the very values which have been sought. Our keenest and freshest thinking, our most fearless criticism even of the suc- cessful and strong, must set themselves to work. We must have from the universities an unending stream of men and women, irained to think in terms of more than one civilization, so that they can view their own imper- sonally and critically. They must be still young enough in spirit to be hopeful of a better world, and to set about making it. When alumni gatherings become purposeful and disinterested groups of such minds, freely discussing (instead of the usual line of golf, drinks, football, and money) the ultimate objectives for this nation and the next steps to attain them, then intelligence will have its chance to become the guide of great affairs, rather than blind change on the one hand, and blind opposition to change on the other. But the strong man armed still keepeth his palace. He perceives that there is little chance of any intelligent criticism arising that he need take seriously. For, he argues, are not the interests of the intelligent and edu- cated bound up with his? There will be scattered talk, but what are words against armorplate? He is safe enough until the protest comes in the form of a gospel which will look beyond interest and expediency, and announce its cause as the Will of God. Then indeed the foot of a stronger than he will be abroad in the land. MUSTARD-GAS OR MUSTARD-SEED 65 The Gospel of Jesus Christ began as a criticism of the kingdoms of this world in the name of the Kingdom of God. Its sociology is, seek ye first God’s Kingdom as the Good, and sufficient goods will not be lacking unto you. It is not interested in new schemes or legislation; no popular free-all or mend-all gets its vote. That which the Gospel has to say goes deeper. It asserts that the daily business of life cannot be performed apart from God; it is as sacred in its way as praying and churchgoing are in theirs. ‘Heaven and hell wait by every doorstep.” Through the things of every day—the things that go on in factories and offices and homes and streets—God the Holy Spirit creates hourly occasions for every one of the virtues and every one of the vices. By means of these common things of daily use he penetrates into every heart; and by them prepares the way for the coming of the ultimate civilization, the Commonwealth of God. By the standards of that Commonwealth, war for material prizes, whether between classes or between na- tions, is nothing else than sin. The Christian Gospel is not content with denunciations of war, for war is of course only a symptom, a result. The Gospel deals with motives. Just as Jesus said that adultery is in the wish, and murder in the angry heart; so war is already waged, though not on paper yet, in the collective insanities which possess a people. Back into the recesses of souls, back into the way of life which breeds hatred, Chris- tianity carries its war to end war. It is this that constitutes the claim of Christ’s Gospel upon a nation’s serious attention in days like these—as a rival claimant, as a civilization demanding loyalties not to be reconciled with those of our present way of 66 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES life. It stands among us as a rebel, saying No in the name of a higher Yes, refusing to participate in ways that it believes lead to destruction, and offering another way, which, though not a little steep and rocky, promises to lead to open and fruitful country. The function of universities in the modern state is to give our rudderless world a creative intelligence, in- formed and alert and indignant, selfless and unafraid. It is the function of the Gospel to fire that intelligence with a passion for righteousness and a divine discontent. CHAPTER VIII THE CITY OF GOD They went astray in the wilderness out of the way, and found no city to’ dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. So they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he de- livered them from their distress. He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the City where they dwelt. PSALM 107. Our mother the Church has need to-day of all her children. Although to the world’s way of thinking she is never in the right of it, although set aside as out of date and useless, though bewildered and apprehensive, immersed in musings on a better day that is gone, open to attack from every angle—none the less she is still our mother, and therefore still rightly claims our love and our defense. The time may come again when within her borders men and women will find “that strength and support, that sense of anchorage, of being at home, of having something like themselves to cling to.” * She may yet again offer to a self-confident and knowing age certain hints and guidance to the goal of all living. Let us pass in review, briefly, what it is that young men and women in college say against the Church. Let us get it all out where we can see it. Interpreted freely, it runs something like this: * J. Neville Figgis, The Gospel and Human Needs (sixth edition), p. 74. (Longmans, London. By permission.) 67 68 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES First, that the Church impotently exhibits still the prejudices and passions of a bygone age—bishopisms versus no-bishopisms, dogged orthodoxy versus dogged orthodoxy. That reliarce is placed on the saving virtue of certain sacred words which “‘induce the anesthesia of inborn, inherited certainty.” That it worships its re- ligion instead of its God. Second, that having nothing in particular to say, it disguises its vacuity of purpose behind a formidable, highly-organized round of “‘activities,”’ to the financing of which all its energies are bent, so that its God be- comes a financier, a Grand Treasurer, with a keen eye on the collection-plate. Meanwhile there is hunger in the souls of men and women who must live. We have enough of the bread alone; now give us the Word! Third, that its message is refined and abstracted in the interests of ‘‘the prevailing intellections”’ till it has no meaning or power for the simple and the poor and the busy and the sinful. That the mills of God grind exceeding fine, so fine that all the nutriment is sifted out, and all that is left is thin and wordy argument, un- assailable perhaps, but about as nourishing as the east wind. Let him that is athirst come, and I will give him to drink of the symbol H.O. And so, while expounding Christ as God it no longer exhibits Jesus as the Way of life. He who once turned the world upside down is now become ‘‘one sweetly solemn thought,” upsetting to nobody. Fourth, that the kingdom which is not of this world has been permitted to surrender to the kingdoms which are. That the Church’s-whip is of very small cords in- deed; that the needle’s eye has accommodatingly been THE CITY OF GOD 69 enlarged; that for the sake of comfort and popularity and success an unholy silence is kept in the very pres- ence of the wounds of God’s poor, inflicted by the strong in their strength. That by this surrender it en- thrones self in the place of God, and in effect amends the first Commandment: Howbeit, if a majority of persons of repute and substance so desire, then it shall be per- mitted to have one other God besides me. And last of all, this, that the Church has seemed too knowing, too facile and assured, in explaining the Eternal Mystery, neatly proving everything by the proper argu- ments, and seeming to make “the administration of the world as simple and judicial as a police-court.” So reads the heavy charge against the Church in our day. Church people, and especially their leaders, are not unaware of these things; one hears no arrogant dis- claimers; there is everywhere among them “a certain contrite open-mindedness,” and an earnest willingness to place the Church again in its proper position as spiri- tual leader. But the way is not clear. The soul of man is astray in the wilderness out of the way, and finds no city to dwell in. One is tempted to drop the whole business and begin all over again. And yet with what irreplaceable loss if we did! What awaits the constructive energy of all persons of good-will is the regeneration of the Church from within, till it again becomes a sacred precinct where the naked spirit of man may be clothed and housed against “the cosmic chill of the vast out-of- doors of the universe.” Those to whose hands that regeneration falls will find three things to do. 70 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES First, they must take a fresh look at their sources and tell us in no uncertain terms just what Jesus’ Proposal actually is, so that it again becomes good news and a way of life to even the simplest of us. They must show us Jesus again as his first disciples saw him, and let us discover him for what he is. They must be content to withhold the question: “‘What think ye of Christ?” till he himself has asked each of us, “Whom say you that I am?” What do you make of me, out of your own experience? The Church must renew its faith that Jesus will still bring a man to Christ. We can- not accept Christ as God until we have first learned, as the disciples did of old, to follow Jesus as Master. Such a re-creation of his life must not fail to bring us to the heart of that life, where all its forces converge, and whence they radiate—that is, to the cross. The ‘‘wis- dom of Calvary” would again be made plain for all to see: how that in concrete terms, focussed into a few square feet of the earth’s surface, in the space of a few short hours, in the persons of a dozen or more people very much like ourselves, is enacted before our eyes the whole drama of sin and its consequence. Cause and effect, usually so illegible and obscure, are here fo- cussed into the same picture: sin the cause; its effect, the crucifying of God. The purpose of these “things that were wrought without is that they might be realized within.” Con- version would again become central to the Christian life, but the terms of it would be singularly piquant and exhilarating.* Conversion would consist, not as now of * See below, pp. 84 ff. THE CITY OF GOD fre an intellectual assent, or an emotional disturbance lead- ing nowhere in particular, but in the changing of the whole man by changing what he wants, or wills; it would transform his very instincts.* Within the individual would be achieved, under varying terms, the only progress that Christianity takes very seriously—that journey of the soul from the first to the second birth, that remaking of the natural man into the man he was meant to be, the man that God can use; in which pro- gression lies the seed and essence of all true progress, all true civilization. It would reveal an “‘inertia-break- ing, bond-breaking power, the mother of much explora- tive thought. . . . There you may find or recover the vision which nullifies all imposture of the Established, the Entrenched, of all the self-satisfied Toryisms, Capitalisms, Obscurantisms of the world.” f The second aspect of the renewal of the Church fol- lows almost automatically on the first. It is the reasser- tion of Christ’s Gospel of the Kingdom as an imminent reality, to be achieved upon this earth in the lives of men and women, so that the Church will again be seen as the emissary in an alien land of that civilization which awaits our daring. It will become again the sure con- viction of Christians that there is no salvation for so- ciety outside the Divine Society. Health for any State will be seen to consist in that wholeness which comes when it sees itself through the eyes of God—as a family, and its citizens as sons of a common Father, members * See W. E. Hocking, Human Nature and Its Remaking (second edition), pp. 171 and 366. (Yale University Press.) The reader’s particular at- tention is herewith invited to this valuable book. { Ibid., p. 278. v2 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES of a Brotherhood of the Common Life, in which are embodied those relationships which prevail in the Father’s family; where God’s children may practise the ways and habits of their Father’s house. They will understand that this Brotherhood must stand open always, everywhere, and to all who would learn of that life and practise it. For the Church was never meant to be “‘an aggregation of like-minded pious individuals ~ who for mutual benefit agree to worship together”; not a club for respectable people, but a house, at unity with itself, for every member of God’s family. Then the makers of the kingdoms of this world will have to take the Christians seriously again (as their forebears had to take Jesus seriously), for anything may happen when the Word goes forth and God-seeking men and women, dissatisfied with present achievement, set foot again on that road that leads out to new fron- tiers. Even States must stand aside. Security and com- fort must wait; interest and profit do not count. Like Stephen the imprudent, they will stop at nothing till they see the heavens open. The third step in the regeneration of the Church will concern itself with the disentanglement of the Gospel from purely intellectual methods of presentation (for which it was only secondarily meant), and the renewal of the distinctive challenge of faith. Religion will again be revealed in its true aspect, as an invitation and op- portunity for needy souls to draw on all the resources of the Eternal. The disastrous loss of this central and distinctive functton of the Church has meant the loss also of its chief claim on people’s lives. They have THE CITY OF GOD 73 learned to seek elsewhere for contact with the divine. Even M. Coué with his simple formula is nearer the heart of religion than many preachers. This loss has resulted in the discrediting of the ele- ment of mystery in life,—though, of course, there are other contributing causes. It is true that what was miraculous to our fathers has become commonplace to us, so that we seem to need no place for mystery in our categories. In an age of wonders there is left no room for wonder. For example, all the mystery is gone from fire, which man once worshipped as the source of life and as its chief mystery, ‘‘beautiful and joyful and ro- bust and strong’’; but to-day we clever folk carry fire around in our pockets on the end of a match-stick. And when one can buy lightning by the kilowatt, there is ne mystery left there, either. Hence we have no taste for the unexplained. Yet we cannot rid life of its mystery. “Tt is man’s own consciousness that is the abiding home of mystery; his littleness and greatness, his powers of sacrifice and joy, his need of sympathy and love.” * Religion, from its earliest to its most developed forms, is an expression of man’s sense of the mystery of his environment. If we callously deny to those early God- seers their burning bush, their angelic visitations, their miraculous healings—yes, and their risen and ascended Lord—we also deny ourselves the possibility of catch- ing any glimpse of God walking in our own gardens in the cool of day, or at our side as we journey along the road. In discarding the miraculous content of the an- _ *J. Neville Figgis, The Gospel and Human Needs, p. 45. (Longmans, London. By permission.) 74 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES cient God-story we have lost a very precious thing, the awareness of the infusion of matter with the divine— the ever-recurrent miracle. The Church must engen- der an attitude toward all of God’s creation in which knowledge does not exclude wonder, or the sense of kinship shut out veneration. Such an attitude would help break down that wholly artificial and misleading separation between the sacred and the secular: Sunday is somehow holier than Monday; church buildings are “sacred,” while department stores, subways, factories, homes, gardens are “secular’’; prayer and Bible-reading seem valuable to the soul while buying and selling do not; God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but not of Tom, Dick, and Harry. In such a world the soul will come to its own once more. Then a certain gaiety, an unbounded de- light, will for a Christian surround this scene of things and events, for everywhere he will come upon hints, clues, symbols of the Altogether Lovely. Hints that this world of ours is penetrated through and through by a world within, unseen but not unknown, where one may taste hidden riches. This is the only true other- worldliness. Eternal life is not a faint insipid endless- ness of days shrouded in mists; one can possess it now and here, in the delicious present. For eternity is the supreme quality of days spent in the company of the Eternal. To complete its achievement in such a rebirth of faith, the Church must restore to us moderns the gift of worship. It must ignore all our protestations that worship is no longer necessary or possible, that the threshold into God’s court is too high for us, that it is THE CITY OF GOD 75 only bootstrap-lifting—and all that. With a renewal of its ancient intuitions it must help us (in Professor Hocking’s phrase) “recover what children have not yet lost.” It must unite all our hearts again in the inter- cessions of the ages, ascending like thin gold chains to the throne of God. Such worship as we moderns need must have all the simple, dramatic clarity of the ele- mental human acts, for it {s itself an elemental act, the soul’s eating and drinking. It must be as obviously adapted to its purpose as breathing and eating and making love are to theirs. Theory and discourse about God, and exhortation to seek him, will never succeed in bringing the Hunger and the Thirst actually into God’s presence and filling it with his bounty. What man of you when his son asks for bread will give hin— jam? Pastoral handshakes and cordial greetings at the church door will never take the place of the divine Hospitality: “Come unto me, all ye heavy-laden and I will refresh you.” With what delight to our wearied and grimy souls, driven by the relentless calendar from one busy day to the next, should we turn aside from the crowded sidewalk into the door of some lofty sunlit church, and discover again for ourselves that within those doors other things matter. Or, perhaps even better, that there are no “other things.”” As we emerged again after our brief interval of worship, we should take along with us the awareness that life is more than the living, that God does not stop inside the great doors but comes with us to be our companion through the crowded hours. The Church must look again at her ancient task and see it with new eyes. Again its message must come to God’s children as good news: “to give knowledge of 46 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Dawning from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” PART ITI ‘“‘Passage—immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! Away, O soul, hoist instantly the anchor! Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail! Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? Have we not darkened and dazed ourselves with books long enough? Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only! Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee and thou with me; For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all! O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God?” WALT WHITMAN, “PASSAGE TO INDIA,” IN “LEAVES OF GRASS’’ (DAVID McKAY COMPANY). CHAPTER IX THE SEAS OF GOD This generation shall not pass away till all be ful- filled. Everywhere the tides are sweeping back into the stale and stuffy recesses of our souls. The ships of God, the treasure-ships of the Spirit, begin to lift free of the clinging mud. There is a stirring along their whole length, a gentle lift and swing before the rising water, a song of the crew on deck, and the Captain stands on the bridge. New voyages begin, to new continents and wider markets beyond the farther seas. They who are young at this hour need no longer play at adventures in backyard ponds with toy boats tied to a string. But like captains of old, in ill-found, unseaworthy ships, they make way against the storms and currents of un- charted seas. Their eyes strain to pierce the mists that hide half-glimpsed coast-lines; their feet are restless to press those untamed shores. “We are not yet at rest, nor can we believe we have enjoyed or seen enough to accomplish the ends of God.’ The hope of the world lies in this, that the undying energy of the human soul, its insurgent youthfulness, its insistent hunger for God, shall set sail before the free winds of his purpose, and in the company of that Captain who knows the way, press on over whatever tempestuous seas may lie be- tween to the Holy City, where dreams are actualities. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is at its best in times like these of ours. Its youth and vigor and charm reappear 79 80 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES from under the stuffy wrappings of sophisticated thought. It thrives and reaches its full stature; that pensive be- wilderment is gone; it knows its way and its work. For it was born into just this sort of spiritual climate. “The world into which Christianity first came was extraordi- narily like our own. Like ours, it was crushing men by its complexity. It was a war-weary world, baffled in its attempts at reconstruction, dazed by vast and bewil- dering transitions. Established social conditions were collapsing. Old ties and loyalties were being snapped, and the individual was left spiritually homeless and self- conscious in a cosmopolitan civilization. Noble aspira- tions there were in plenty—fine idealisms, kindness, courtesy—only there was no driving power. The dis- tinctive note was the note of disillusionment. Men longed for a fresh start which they could not get, for a deliverance they could not find, for a fellowship they could not achieve.” * Christianity, when it is true to itself, is in the world as a pilgrim and a stranger, and the world resists it stubbornly, hostile and unconverted. Only at the price of its true purpose does the Gospel ever seem to possess the whole community and become its established re- ligion; and when that happens it is time for the Word to go forth afresh. That time is now again at hand. Young men and women want to know in these days whether Christianity works. They are looking for some- thing that helps. If Christianity can give peace and guidance to a soul that is dragged this way and that, and stability and beauty to a world that seems to in- _*F.R. Barry, St. Paul and Social Psychology, p. 1. (Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1923. By permission.) THE SEAS OF GOD 81 crease in complexity and dreariness, they are for it. But they have given up expecting this sort of thing of Christ’s Gospel. Yet some there are still willing to be- lieve that Jesus was right, that he really did understand us better than we do ourselves; that he “still lives, great and unexplained.” Our sophisticated theologies have imperceptibly over- laid, through the centuries of verbal and written exposi- tion of the Gospel, the loveliness and vigor of the actual Young Man who was Jesus. If it is the divine purpose to use a Young Man as a fit and adequate means of revealing God to us, then we have indeed been misled and deprived. For Jesus is permitted to seem a fussy and bad-tempered giver of rules and prohibitions, and more concerned with sins than with the people who commit them. He is preached as an intolerant Christ, setting forth this or that set of binding opinions. Our boys and girls have come to think that the Gospel is for practical purposes no more than a tedious discipline as irksome as an outworn contract. One readily under- stands why it is that while the churches are empty of young people, the universities are packed to overflow- ing. The churches have seemed to offer nothing but restraint; the universities seem to offer light and oppor- tunity. In a day when all eyes, young and old, await the dawn, it is not good that our Lord Jesus Christ should be conceived as middle-aged and dim-eyed and short of breath, for he is first among the watchers for the morn- ing. He was, and forever is, the Young Man. About him gathered the young in years and in spirit. Follow- ing Jesus required resiliency of soul and ability to swing 82 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES free of the deepening rut of habit and expediency—the qualities of youth, of whatever age. He whom we see in the gospels has the heart as well as the years of youth. His is an exulting overflow of energy and joy in living which speaks a language that youth the world over understands. There came a young man running unto Jesus, saying, What shall I do to inherit eternal life— to live like you? Jesus meant release, voyages, discov- eries, to those young men who at his bidding sprang up from stifling tasks and followed him along a beckoning road in the morning dew, to find the “greater things” that they were to do in his company. The Gospel is young, as Jesus is young. When he returned to his Father and our Father, he took with him the soul of a Young Man. Youthfulness and all that it implies has eternally a part and function in the substance of the ever-living God, ‘‘Behold I make all things new.” If there is one question about religion which under- graduates ask more than any other, it is this: “‘ What is Christianity for? Where does it gear into the life that we must live? What is Jesus’ point? Has he any pro- posal that we can accept or reject?”? Most of their im- patience with current Christianity is because they can get no intelligible answer. Jesus came with a very definite and practicable pro- posal, which, translated into the tame prose of our day, reads something like this :—that men and women everywhere should, in their own persons, and in literal fact, set about living as well-beloved sons and daughters live in their own parents’ house in the midst of their own family. That we extend the family relationship to include every one of God’s children, and observe it in all our daily tasks and pleasures. THE SEAS OF GOD 83 Or, more familiarly: Love God, and your neighbor as yourself. Rather a trite and commonplace proposal? Vision- ary and impractical? It is we who make it so. As for him, he made it both startlingly new and original, and supremely practicable. So enticing did he make it that there were those (not unlike ourselves) who gave them- selves to the doing of it. So possible did he exhibit it to be that they believed it already on the way to accom- plishment; and his enemies feared what might come of it, so they slew him on a tree. For look you, Jesus was no idle dreamer, no abstract theorist, no word-monger. He was not content with repeating the current common- places about righteousness and justice and love among men; nor did he write a masterly and convincing book about it; nor yet invite a few choice souls to come apart with him into some inviolate valley and establish God’s commonwealth there. Like Chaucer’s parson, “he taughte, but first he folwed it hymselve.”’ His origin- ality consisted in his doing the obvious thing, the un- heard-of thing. For when his time was come this Young Man stepped forth from the door of his shop and began, without advertisement or display, yet in the full tide of the common life and in plain view, to live the life of a Son among his brethren in his Father’s house. In all that he did he acted simply and literally on that central fact that men are all brothers, sons of the Father. He preached what he practised; whole countrysides crowded to hear him. When they asked him what this meant that he was doing, he replied, ‘‘This is the way, walk ye in it.” He found one here and another there whom he needed to carry the Good News. To them he said, 84 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES “Follow me”’; and daily he put them to their testing. He did this because before his Proposal can take effect on human affairs it must first take effect inside of us. Before he can use us in the Commonwealth of God, men and women of willow must be made into oak; unstable sand must be fused into rock; those held prisoner by their own paltry selves must first be set free. In his own words, one must be “born again.” Strange language that, with a tinge of the fantastic, in the abstract. It is an experience which must remain meaningless, even absurd, until we see it happen in those who took him at his word; indeed, until we try it for ourselves. His disciples all saw themselves through Jesus’ eyes; and what they saw made them over. That was Christianity to them, though they knew no such abstract word to describe it. It was not then, nor is it now, an artificial thing, but a recognition, a renewal, an enfranchisement. What an impoverishment, that Christianity should have come to seem a sitting-down religion! And that following Jesus Christ should have become only an in- tellectual assent to certain propositions, with nothing much to be done about it! How Jesus would laugh at that! Stern laughter, like a gale from heaven. He still comes to all who are young in heart with the same Proposal. If the modern disciple, the young man who comes running, asking ‘‘What shall I do?” would fulfil Jesus’ evident intention, let him take him quite literally at his word. When he wakes up to the fact that life is binding and not freeing him, when effort seems mean- ingless, when his hands reach about for some means of THE SEAS OF GOD 85 release, for some task really worth his best, and cannot find it, then let him know himself as one to whom the Proposal aptly applies. Let him wind up all his affairs and fulfil all his engagements without unnecessary de- lay, and set forth on an apprenticeship of soul in Jesus’ company. Not just for a summer vacation but for one year at least, through all the heat and cold of the four seasons. Let him go out into the common life of his people where bread is earned, where wounds are given and received, and let him live as Jesus did, as if this world were indeed the Father’s house. Let him take that for granted, and act in all things as if others did so too, spreading an infectious good-will over every re- lationship. He will not preach any gospel, but will ex- plain, as Jesus did when occasion arose, what it means that he is doing. Talk, that depreciated currency, will be retired in favor of a more valid coinage. These jour- neymen of Christ will as a matter of course earn their own living at jobs as nearly as possible consistent with the central principle of Brotherhood. They will shortly see how much of the world’s work under present con- ditions is consistent with that principle. They will have their eyes wide open to all that goes on in the Father’s house, with a singularly fresh vision, unspoiled by the conventional acquiescences, and awake to all that con- tradicts God’s will. They will be neither for nor against any particular institution, save only “the institution of the dear love of comrades,” that new City of Friends waiting their building and that of other hardy souls touched with the same madness from beyond the bor- ders of this world. The varied and vivid adventures of these fools of 86 THE RELIGION OF UNDERGRADUATES Christ will make great telling: a new Book of Acts to stir the hearts of all who are young in a tired world. No doubt it will be a story of hard work, spare diet, poverty, failure, enemies, of stripes and imprisonments perhaps; but it will be no less the story of how on every hand they found good-will, waiting only to be invited forth, telling a thing about “‘the dim common populations” quite forgotten by us moderns, but which indicates that Jesus was right about us after all. There is something swelling in humanity now like sap in trees in the spring- time, an impatience with “‘aged fierce enigmas, strangling problems,” which tells of a ripeness for this high adven- ture. The call goes forth. Jesus stands looking for the young men and the young women to rediscover with them the open secret of all life, that the Kingdom of God is in our midst, waiting to be recognized and pos- sessed, The logic of this application of the Proposal either needs no defense, or else it is impossible of defense at all. Either one gets it or one does not. Most will call it a fool’s errand. From the point of view of the longer heads it is no doubt just that. Nevertheless, it should not be regarded as a Quixotic fancy, a romantic escapade, a dropping of the obvious tasks and duties of daily life, but as a preparation, an apprenticeship, for the better doing of those very tasks. While this suggestion does not stand or fall by the approval of the ‘“‘best minds,” it has certain practical aspects not to be ignored: (zx) It would be a discipline, self-administered and self-explan- atory. It would teach the self-reliance of a true disciple- ship (which means discipline) to youth in a ‘soft and sheltered age: no scrip, no purse, no dress-suit, no letter THE SEAS OF GOD 87 of introduction. (2) M would give a unifying objective to lives that are distracted with too many things. Much would be regained that has been denied them by the . very luxuriance of their equipment and opportunity. (3) They would see for themselves the world in which they are to live, under decidedly educative circum- stances. And they would earn their own living, which nine out of ten boys the world over must do at their age. (4) While they would lose or postpone a year of college, and might fall behind temporarily in their marks, this seems trivial in the presence of the fact that the soul of a whole generation is in danger of falling behind. On their return to college they would be far better able to appropriate those things for which edu- cation exists. | It is not beyond possibility that such a realistic in- terpretation of Jesus’ Proposal might actually meet the spiritual needs of some at least among the youth of this generation, if it were undertaken in the spirit of disciple- ship, informed by the Holy Spirit, and later followed by its true sequel of identification with daily tasks in the same Spirit. A key, a small thing in itself, can unlock mighty doors, if it fits the lock. If the young men and women of to-day, in the shut places of their souls, were once to catch a whiff of Jesus’ hardihood and divine audacity, one would hardly dare predict what might come of it. The times await that flinging open of all our doors and windows, that stepping forth to accept the only proposal that seems to offer any hope at all. 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