furnish such a volume of smoke or become perpetual jokers without
imperiling certain other interests, much more important than smoke
or jokes. And that same fraternity, genuinely attractive though it
was in its social aspects, became the banner house on the campus for
furnishing men who suddenly went home at the end of the term, because
“their fathers needed them in business,” or because “their health would
not stand the strain of college study”--those graceful explanations
which sound well and deceive nobody, either at the college end or the
home end of the line. The constant tendency in all fraternity life
is to spend upon pleasure more time and more money than the average
student can justly afford.
There is furthermore the tendency to a narrow exclusiveness which
sometimes degenerates into actual snobbishness. This is especially true
of the high-school fraternities. The spirit of narrow clannishness is
stronger then than later. Breadth of sympathy, which ought to be the
spirit of our public schools, is thus destroyed. The girl is tempted to
think that, out of hundreds of girls in high school, only the little
group of twenty in her own fraternity are fine, choice girls. When the
social interests are thus being “cribbed, cabined, and confined,” it
is not a long step to the spirit of that bigot who prayed, “O Lord,
bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more.”
The “us four and no more” attitude is apparent to thoughtful observers
in almost all of the high-school fraternities. The larger loyalty and
broader sympathy is overborne by a narrowed social interest.
It is the judgment of an ever-increasing number of men at the head
of the secondary schools that the high-school fraternities at least
are nuisances. This is their verdict in spite of the fact that many
of the best students are members of them, striving to make them
helpful, not hurtful. But when the losses and the gains are accurately
computed, the losses seem to far outrank the gains. The spirit of
social exclusiveness is opposed to the spirit of our public schools and
encourages the development of qualities that have no rightful place in
American young people.
Some high-school principals are non-committal, but more of them
frankly utter their condemnation of the fraternity as prejudicial to
the legitimate work of the school; as weakening the more inclusive
class loyalty and as offering an effective temptation to social
dissipation. They may not hope as yet to carry all high-school students
with them in this judgment, but if they could line up all parents who
believe that fraternities tend to alienate young people from their
homes, all high-school teachers who deplore the evil which results from
loyalty to a part instead of to the whole school, and all those who,
having advanced to college, look back upon those earlier fraternities
as cases of premature development, the young people would be amazed at
the verdict against the high-school fraternity!
We are constantly hearing the assertion that it is difficult for
girls to complete the high-school course without breaking down. Under
anything like normal conditions such a claim should be preposterous!
There are good reasons for believing that the nervous collapse is
due less to faithful study than to the unnecessary excitements of
fraternity rivalry and to the irregular hours and social dissipation
consequent upon fraternity life.
The right place for the fraternity is in the university where boys
and girls have become young men and young women, better able to guard
such organizations against these abuses; better able to see to it that
no barriers are built between them and those whom they ought to know;
better able to extend their generous admiration to those not of their
particular clique. In the university large numbers of students are away
from home, as is not the case in high school--and where it is wisely
controlled, the fraternity may be made a center for the deepening of
wholesome intimacies, in a way to render it a useful educational force.
It is well for every student to postpone the choice of a fraternity
until near the end of the first year. Before he joins, he will need to
look the various chapters over carefully and learn more about them than
appears in the shape of the pin or in the color of the flag at the top
of the house. He will want to ask what kind of men belong; what are
their ambitions and aims; what is their rank and standing in college;
whether their habits are clean, sound, wholesome, or enervating and
shady; what is the moral atmosphere about their house; what sort of
alumni have been sent out. He will only join one fraternity and he
wishes to make no mistake in that choice.
The habit of “rushing” men for membership has become inexpressibly
silly. The heads of weak men are turned by the social attentions thrust
upon them and the stronger men are frequently repelled by this overdone
eagerness. One would suppose the various chapters would be ashamed
to exhibit such anxiety to have men join as would seem to indicate a
sense of their own weakness. Let the fraternities make themselves worth
joining and a sufficient number of promising candidates to fill all the
lists will be forthcoming! Let any student make himself worth having
and the door will be open into a desirable house whenever he is ready
to enter it.
It would be well if each student made his fraternity experience
preparatory to the larger social status into which he will enter as a
mature man--a status where the narrow exclusiveness of the snob finds
the door shut in its face by men of sense. If he has really gained a
genuinely social spirit, he will be better able to take his place in
the business world as one ready to aid in building it upon the basis of
honor, integrity and mutual consideration. If he has rightly learned
the lessons of fraternity life he ought to be a better citizen, ready
to work in harmony with men who are bent upon making the State an
organized expression of wise and just principles. He ought to be fitted
to be a better churchman, making that institution a worthy expression
of the organized spirit of reverence toward God, of fellowship with
men, and of helpfulness for all good causes. And he will best attain
all these high aims if, in the supreme relationship of his life,
his own soul is knit with that “friend that sticketh closer than a
brother.” The Master of men came to found a fraternal kingdom of which
there shall be no end, and in that kingdom every man of fraternal
spirit should have standing.
IV
THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE MAN
The leading notes in the religious life of a student will naturally be
intellectual and ethical. The mind is feeling its way out among the
immensities which have come into view as childhood is left behind. It
is seeking to know things as they are, learning how to bear itself
in thought toward the natural and the supernatural, the earthly and
the heavenly, the present and the future. It is no longer content
with a child’s faith received on the word of another; it has not yet
found the repose of tried and mature conviction. It is in process of
shaping its beliefs about God, about the world, about the Bible, about
prayer, about a future life. The college man is taken out-of-doors
intellectually where the walls are all down, and his religious life,
like the other sections of his nature, will naturally show signs
of restlessness. “The religion of youth is commonly a religion of
rationalism--the intellectual life is just starting on its long journey
in all the exhilaration and freshness of the morning.”
The ethical note in the college man’s religion will also be clear and
strong. Young people in sound health are commonly rigorous and even
merciless in their moral judgments. They are oftentimes unduly critical
touching the shortcomings of others. They are confused as to many of
the moral sanctions and uncertain as to what distinctions are essential
and what are merely conventional. They have a desire to know what is
right and why it is right, and they wish to discover the motive and
stimulus which will render them strong in doing the right. The best
results are always attained by taking into account lines of interest
already established, rather than by cutting squarely across the grain,
and the most effective approach to the heart of the student can be made
by observing these two leading notes in his religious life.
I am confirmed in this view by this bit of personal experience.
For six years I lectured every Monday during the second semester at
Stanford University, giving courses on “The Ethics of Christ,” a study
in the four Gospels, on “The Life and Literature of the Early Hebrews,”
a study in the Old Testament, on “Social Ethics,” a study of moral
values in the various relationships of modern life. These courses
were offered as any courses would be. A full syllabus was used and
much collateral reading suggested; a monthly written quiz and a final
examination were held; credit was given for work done as in any other
department. The courses were popular though the requirements brought a
sufficient number of failures each year to keep the thought of a day of
judgment before the mind of the class. There was evident throughout a
strong, healthy interest in the intellectual problems of faith, in the
interpretation of scripture, in the ethical questions discussed, and
in the intelligent application of moral principles to modern life. The
sight of those young faces and the reading of the papers offered have
helped to confirm me in the view that the two characteristic qualities
of the college man’s religion are those already indicated.
The expression of that religious interest will take many forms. It
will utter itself in rational worship. The clear-headed student will
not continue to do things which seem to him meaningless or useless.
There are church services in which he will refuse to participate, but
sincere, reverent, and rational worship will commend itself to him as a
suitable expression of that deeper something growing within his heart.
The upward look, the outward reach of a higher aspiration, the need of
a hand-clasp which is not of earth, all these appeal to him! Let the
music, the lessons, the prayers, and the atmosphere of the church be
made a true, good, and beautiful expression of intelligent worship and
the thoughtful student will rejoice in the aid it gives him in working
out his problems.
The words of Thomas Carlyle addressed to the students in the University
of Edinburgh are in point: “No nation that did not contemplate this
wonderful universe with an awe-stricken and reverential feeling
that there is an omnipotent, all-wise, and all-virtuous Being
superintending all men and all the interests in it--no such nation has
ever done much nor has any man who has forgotten God.” In much blunter
fashion the Bible says, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all
the nations that forget God.” The word “hell” can be spelled with four
letters, but to spell that for which it stands, the moral failure,
the personal disappointment, the pain, and the distress of spiritual
defeat, the bitter regret and remorse over years wasted by turning away
from the Highest, would require all the letters of the alphabet and the
sum total of human experience. In order to do justly and to love mercy,
we need to stand humbly before God as the one entitled to our supreme
and final allegiance. Where all this is made plain in a provision for
worship which is rational, beautiful, and helpful, the college man will
find in it a natural expression for his religious life.
The religious interest will also express itself in the study of
religious truth. Courses in ethics, and in philosophy where it relates
to life and is not all clouds and mist; courses in the Hebrew and
other sacred literatures; courses in the history of religion and in
comparative religion, may all be made genuinely spiritual exercises.
The students are aided by such work in knowing that truth which sets
mind and heart free from whatever hinders growth and usefulness.
Still more directly, the courses of Bible study offered through the
Christian associations in our universities become wholesome expressions
of religious interest. The history and literature of the Hebrews,
the life of Christ, the story of the early Church, studied with the
system, the thoroughness, and the fearlessness found in other lines of
investigation, afford a genuine ministry to the spiritual life. Many
students who lose their Christian faith in the colleges suffer this
loss because the mind has gone ahead in science, in philosophy, and
in history, but has lagged back in religion. It has been belated in
the childish conceptions gained in early life. Such students sometimes
throw away their Christian faith and habits, and then wonder that the
rest of us are so stupid and credulous. As a matter of fact they have
simply failed to make the advance and readjustment which serious and
growing minds habitually make on their way from childhood to maturity.
The thorough study of religious truth, then, as an aid to a rational
restatement of one’s personal faith, becomes another worthy expression
of religious life and a useful source of culture for the spiritual
nature.
The religious life of the student will also utter itself in a personal
quest for righteousness. No life ever comes to have that which the
world really trusts and values until it can say in its whole purpose,
“I do these certain things not because they are easy or common or funny
or politic; I do them because they are right.” If religion is to enter
into its own in any educational institution it will be necessary to
have a great deal more downright honesty in college life than there
is in many institutions of learning at this time. The sneer that “in
college and in the custom house” it is all right to lie and to cheat
if one can do it without being caught, has had much to justify it. The
student who asks to be excused from a college engagement because he is
too sick to work, but who will go to a ball and dance every number on
the program, or to a football game and yell until his throat is raw,
is simply a liar! The student who copies from another’s examination
paper and signs his name to it as though it were his own, is a cheat
and a forger. The man who steals spoons from some hotel or restaurant
in the town for his fraternity table is not funny; he is simply a
thief and an outlaw! The student who spends on vice or dissipation,
money furnished by his father for term bills, entering them up in his
financial statement as “sundries” or what not, is a whelp and a cad, no
matter how good looking he is or how well his dress suit fits him! Dirt
is dirt no matter how we may adorn it with lace; a lie is a lie, and
theft is theft, no matter how they are smoothed over with fine words!
There ought to be in all college life rigid, unsympathetic honesty,
like that of the bank or the counting-room. The perpetual effort after
personal righteousness should stand as an abiding expression of the
religious life.
The genuinely religious spirit will show itself in mutual helpfulness.
The Christian service rendered by students can best be rendered in
terms of student life. The readiness to lend a hand to some fellow
working his way through; the thoughtfulness and unselfishness shown
to a student who is sick; the organized usefulness of the Christian
Associations in meeting first-year students and aiding them in those
strange first days on the campus; the ability to exert steadily a
wholesome influence on the side of what is right and wise, without
self-consciousness or ostentation--all these are forms of Christian
helpfulness natural and appropriate to student life.
During an epidemic of typhoid fever at Stanford University some years
ago the students stood together and insisted that every patient unable
to provide himself with a trained nurse should have, through their
cooperation, the best care which medical science could afford. They
gladly gave up the senior dance and other social entertainments and
receptions, in order to devote the money to this unselfish purpose.
They raised in various ways among themselves more than five thousand
dollars for this practical form of helpfulness. “By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” This
was the original test of Christian discipleship proposed by Christ
himself, and none better has been found.
The nurture of the college man’s religion will come mainly in two ways:
first, through fellowship with a larger group of Christian people.
“Gather two or three together in my name,” Christ said, “and there am I
in the midst.” He thus indicated the social character of the religion
he taught and suggested the help to be found in wholesome fellowship.
The actual experience of mankind has strongly endorsed his claim.
The best fellowship will naturally be found in some one of the churches
of the community. The student will find there friends as well as
worship and instruction; he may find also his place in some concrete
activity for the progress of the kingdom. Oliver Wendell Holmes used
to say in explanation of his habit of church attendance, “There is a
little plant within me called reverence which needs watering at least
once a week.” He might also have added that it needed the warm southern
exposure of meeting in spiritual fellowship those who were similarly
bent on noble living, and that it found wholesome expression through
some useful participation in the activities of a parish church.
Each student needs the church even more than the church needs him. He
will learn by its aid to more wisely and more conscientiously use the
opportunities which Sunday offers. The day of the Lord ought to be a
day of turning aside to see the bushes that burn with divine fire. The
habit of Sunday study is a mistake, physically, mentally, and morally.
The pioneers who crossed the plains in ’49, driving six days in the
week and resting one, reached California ahead of those who drove
straight along day in and day out, week in and week out; and the cattle
of the men who observed the method of a regularly recurring rest day,
arrived in better condition. The one who said, “Labor six days and
do all thy work,” holding the seventh apart for rest and spiritual
opportunity, knew something about the muscles and the nerves as well as
about the souls of men. Sunday held apart from the ordinary grind of
college life and used as a time of privilege for the higher nature to
have its undisputed chance to grow, becomes a useful factor in normal
development.
The religious life of the student will be deepened and strengthened
most of all through personal fellowship with Jesus Christ. To know
him who stands revealed in brief on the pages of the four gospels and
revealed at large in the splendid history into which he has built
himself during the last nineteen hundred years, is to gain the utmost
help for character-building that the world has thus far found.
We know Jesus Christ, not only by the study of his life and teachings,
but by sharing in his purpose for the race and by participation in
his spirit. It is this that enables us to see life whole, and to put
ourselves in the way of gaining a fuller measure of that life complete.
Through our fellowship with him we come to the point where we see life
in its deeper, hidden attitudes, as well as on its surface; we see its
upper, unseen relations as well as those upon its own level; we see
its ultimate future, beyond the event we call death, as well as the
pressing claims of the immediate present. We see life whole through
Christ and by our personal fellowship with him we are increasingly
enabled to possess that rounded life for ourselves.
There is one supreme reason why every college man should be a
Christian--the final Christianity is not yet here. It is waiting for
the contribution of thought, of spiritual experience and of useful
activity, which the generation to which you belong is in a position
to make. Jesus had, and still has, many things to say, which the
world even yet is not able to bear. It is for each man, by personal
consecration and individual effort, to so weave his activities into the
unfinished story of the world’s redemption as to aid in bringing about
the true attitude toward those unseen things which are eternal.
College men are eager to make personal experiment of other unseen
forces. They love to lay bare hidden secrets by the use of the Roentgen
ray; they rejoice in sending and receiving messages by wireless
telegraphy; they cluster around an experiment which displays the
mysterious attributes of that strange substance called radium; they
show themselves eager to witness the wonders of liquid air. They should
be no less eager to know by genuine personal experience the efficacy
of prayer, the power of faith, the joy of spiritual renewal through
divine grace. They should be no less eager to send and receive those
messages which come and go between God and man, when the heavens are
open and the angels are ascending and descending upon the sons of
men. You have, each one of you, a clear responsibility and obligation
in this matter. Gain for yourself an intelligent faith; show to the
world one more consistent Christian life; render to his cause your own
personal quota of competent service, and in doing this you will not
only be spiritually enriched yourself, you will aid in bringing in that
greater Christianity which is yet to be.
V
THE CHOICE OF A LIFE-WORK
The man who said, “I am doing a great work, I cannot come down,” was
laying bricks. But the bricks went into a wall, and the wall surrounded
the capital city of his country as its main defense, and the city was
Jerusalem, the headquarters of the Hebrew people! The moral history of
that people has woven itself into the story of the world’s redemption,
as has no other history on earth. Its writings furnish us the best
book we have: its Messiah, born in Bethlehem of Judea, has become the
world’s Saviour; and the high claim that “Salvation is of the Jews,” is
well sustained by the facts. Simple deeds are sometimes far-reaching
in their divine significance. Laying bricks in a wall which protected
the city out of which came the world’s Messiah, was surely a splendid
occupation. The man was well within the facts, when he cried to those
who tried to interrupt him, “I am doing a great work, I cannot come
down.”
I quote these words as indicating the sense of vocation, the honest
pride in his work, the personal appreciation of its wider meanings,
the safeguard it affords against unworthy ideals, the means of culture
it opens for moral character, which ought to be found in every one’s
attitude toward his life-work. Alas for you, if you cannot all say, by
and by, what the bricklayer said!
Some college men unfortunately allow themselves to be driven into
this or that occupation by force of circumstances. They forget that
college training ought to fit us to oppose circumstances if need be and
resolutely work out some splendid purpose in the teeth of opposition.
Some college men drift into anything that offers--they must do
something to earn their bread and they catch the nearest way. This
puts them on a level with the hungry dog looking for a bone and facing
in whatever direction he smells meat. Such men are opportunists all
their lives, taking whatever offers, even though on the face of it a
temporary makeshift, trusting that when one job is finished another may
turn up. They are like so many fleas, jumping from job to job, wherever
they see a chance for a good bite. They fail to exercise that power of
choice and determination which ought to prevail in the selection of
that which is to claim six-sevenths of one’s time and interest during
all his working years.