The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

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.