The Religious Needs of College Men

T

BY THE REV. FRANCIS B. ROSEBORO.

RYING to write on this subject is much like trying to write on the "Reclamation of Drunkards" or "How to Restore Criminals"; the conditions are deplorable and the issues so very plain-and then, characteristically, we are starting in at the wrong end. If someone could write so illuminatingly and convincingly on the religious needs of boys that the rectors of all our parishes and the heads of all our church schools could at once know how to hold up the Christian religion in all its varied charm before the eyes of their boys at the time when imaginations are easily stirred by all that is heroic and young hearts warm instinctively to all that is lovely-then this paper would be quite different from what I fear it may prove to be; for then, college men would be conscious of their religious needs in the first place, and, in the second, would know where those needs can find their full satisfaction.

As it is, those who are interested in this particular and difficult problem are confronted with the fact that the Church has failed rather lamentably in training her children, and then at the critical time in their lives has neglected them as though she were a sentimental step-mother infatuated with some nearer object of her affections and quite contented to leave them to the casual care of kindly, well-meaning, but unwise friends. Why else do we find the average church boy coming to college very much spoiled, not a little self-indulgent and lazy, with very good manners, it is true, and with much that is attractive, but with all his charm and spontaneous enthusiasm directed toward almost anything except toward God and His Church? He knows something at least of the classics, except that greatest of classics, the Bible; he is not entirely ignorant of history, except the history of the Christian Church; and he is ready for almost any adventure or hazard, except that most hazardous venture -the pursuit of God. And the crying shame of it all lies in the very fineness of the type and in that capacity for idealism and for real heroism that has sent the American college men by the

thousand to lead, as they should lead, our new armies in the field. The issues were brought clearly before them and they made their decision unhesitatingly, and have gone with smiling faces that almost hid the flame that burned so brightly in their hearts, jesting and slangy even in their joust with death. The army of our God should claim an equal enthusiasm and a still greater though more silent courage. That army needs their leadership and yet the very name "a minister of Jesus Christ" is apt to awaken in their minds only the vision of a life of dreary routine and cramping monotony.

"The Religious Needs of College Men"—are they in any way different from the religious needs of other men? Is not the failure to win them to a loyal devotion to our blessed Lord merely a more acute and noticeable instance of the same failure to reach and win those other men? They are singularly keen and honest-these splendid fellows-and therefore only the less inclined to accept dull compromise and drab half-heartedness as a genuine and full manifestation of the power of the Son of God. They have but little to do with religion not because too much has been asked of them, but because too little. They could be set aflame with the burning love of S. Francis but not with the Laodicean lukewarmness of modern, respectable Episcopalianism. To use their own slang it is "punch," "pep," "straight dope," they look for-and too often they are merely fed on words and nurtured with compromise. If from their earliest years they had been surrounded in home, and parish, and school with the fresh and wholesome atmosphere of the Catholic religion, and if they had been well-grounded in the faith, and well trained in the practices, of that religion in all its fulness and variety and satisfying charm, then their present need would be only to have the opportunity to develop that faith and to continue those practices with skilled and wise priests at hand to help them. Now-well, the priest in a college town feels, and with abundant reason, that he is a missionary to the hardest class of people to reach-those who think they have made trial of the Christian religion and have found it a failure. With the exception of a small number who come under his care

well prepared for their life in college, most of those with whom he has to deal have to be won, and won by sweat of labour and toil of prayer. If he is vague and kindly and "a friend to the boys" he will be courteously ignored; if he tries to be worldly and "liberal" he will only win their amused contempt; and if he is definite and but mildly aggressive he runs counter to many preconceived ideas and prejudices and his mail is apt to contain some "sadly-grieved" letters from the home-pastor who laments that his new spiritual guide should have been so unwise as to suggest that James, who has been leading a rather fast life, would do well to come for his confession and a new start; while puzzled and angry schoolmasters "resent his over-emphasis upon the Holy Communion" and tell him in a simple, wordsof-one-syllable way that he will learn in time not to judge a boy's nearness to God by his attendance at a sectarian college chapel and his absence from God's altar. With an assumption that he is a bit of a busy-body and a misguided and unintelligent, though perhaps well-meaning, person, he will be told that boys and young men in the adolescent or post-adolescent period can not be expected to show any great interest in their religion. But he is led to hope that when families and responsibilities have accumulated and they have settled down into the rut of middlelife they may be persuaded to renew a polite speaking acquaintance with God, and if elected to the vestries they may help to discourage their over-zealous rectors and in worldly fashion direct the affairs of some of our fashionable parishes.

There are not lacking signs of a new era in the effort of the Church to reach and hold the college man and to send him out better equipped to take his place as priest or layman in God's holy Church. Men like Dr. Baker of Princeton and Mr. Robert Gardiner are no longer left alone, brave though lonely voices in the wilderness of our lack of interest. The campaign of education is progressing, though like all such movements its course is marked by the wreckage of hopes and efforts and by many abandoned side trails. General and provincial boards are tackling the work with an enthusiasm that gives promise of better things for the future: At last the Church is awakening to the

need and is overhauling her obsolete methods of religious education with some intelligent conception of child psychology. We are finding that a knowledge of "the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments" is not alone a sufficient spiritual equipment for a young Christian; and that even though children "be brought to hear sermons" with commendable regularity it will not of necessity follow that any large percentage of them will come to maturity converted Catholic Christians. We are learning that the eye is an excellent avenue of approach to the child's heart, and that even very young children are capable of a real devotion to our Lord and of a conscious personal contact with Him through the sacramental life. The generation of children growing up under a new and better order should bring joy to the hearts of those who long to see in our colleges strong centres of true religion. May we not hope to stop the leaks through which so much of the energy and enthusiasm of our young men is dissipated on futilities and lost to the Church?

But we wander a bit from our subject. We look "with longing eyes for the brighter dawn of a fairer day and dream dreams of ever better to-morrows"; but while waiting for a new generation with a fuller knowledge of the heritage that is theirs and one that will use their privileges to the full-what are the present needs, the immediate objectives? What is the special work of those priests whose work lies among college men? And what would experience show to be the best method of dealing with the matter? No two go at their work in exactly the same way, but the first step must be to get into personal contact with as many as possible of each Freshman class at an early date after their arrival. Here the head of the boy's school or the rector of his home parish can be of assistance. It is strange how few realize it. Is it too much to ask that he should acquaint himself with the religious conditions at the college, and with the Church agencies at work there, and then should see to it that the boy, for whose soul he is to be held accountable, should know something as to what he is to face? Where a sectarian college chapel is supported by a compulsory attendance

of everyone not specifically excused, each boy should bring with him a letter from his parents expressing their desire that he be allowed the privilege of a free attendance at the servics of his own Church. The coercive measures of a mediaeval papacy were mild and rather stupid in comparison with the refined and ingenious subtlety of "faculty requirements" supported by specious appeals to "college spirit and traditions." So long as the fact of being a Harvard or a Yale or a Princeton man looms larger on the boy's horizon than does his membership in the Catholic Church, just so long will it be necessary to call into play every influence that can lend emphasis to his sense of loyalty to the Church. He must realize that to Her he owes his fealty and that from Her alone can he receive those great gifts for his spiritual life. It is not necessary, indeed in many instances it is distinctly inadvisable, that the Church in the college community should in any way attempt to duplicate the social work undertaken by the Y. M. C. A. or other similar organizations. In any event no effort should be spared to bring home to the student the fact that this, important though it may be if undertaken in the right spirit, is nevertheless a by-product of Christianity and not its sole objective. With glib tongue and facile pen we urge upon our young men the glory of service of our fellow men-but we do not help them very effectively to a realization that their duty to God is the fundamental one-and that at the very roots of that duty lie love and adoring worship. Many fine manly fellows there are quite ready to take charge of a boys' club or to aid in a rescue mission, to whom the idea of regular and devout Communions as an essential rule of life is absolutely unknown. And so he who would be their guide into the realm of heavenly things must above all be their priest. All misconceptions to the contrary, the American undergraduate if he wants a clergyman at all wants him to be sacerdotal. Let it once even be known that the rector of S. Luke's hears confessions and doesn't feel it necessary to follow up a fellow with annoying personal attentions, and it is strange how the undergraduate, elaborately casual, will come drifting in with quite commendable regularity. Have a Eucharist at a convenient