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.
There is spiritual value in any legitimate calling, and this satisfying return is open and possible to every college man bent on doing square work. “To every man his work”; his by personal fitness; his by the sense of fulfilling a divine purpose in selecting it; his in the feeling that it belongs to him! Some men are called of God to the Christian ministry and others are no less called of God to teach or to heal or to build. God’s calls announce themselves in a variety of ways. The shining vision that came to Paul on the Damascus road or the mighty spiritual impulse which visited the heart of President Finney of Oberlin as he struggled in the woods alone, are forms of the divine call, but there are other forms equally valid. The call of the world’s need for some special work and your own consciousness of power to render that service will bring you a genuine sense of vocation as you gird yourself for it. There are many intimations as to the place one should take and hold, which may have all the compelling force of a vision from on high.