p. 12 | LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN by L. P.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 17, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 41.

LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN

By L. P.

BY A YOUNG MAN

MY DEAR ROBERT,—

To-night I feel like unburdening my mind to you on the subject of culture, or the higher education, in relation to the religious life. That it is an old, worn-out topic, I am aware; yet it keeps cropping up persistently in the life of well-nigh every man, and the problems it presents are both numerous and difficult of solution. Much of the confusion arises from the fact that true culture is so often confounded with a sort of veneer that goes under the name while possessing hardly any of the qualities of the real thing. Culture is not an easy thing to define, and yet it can be readily recognized. It is in the first place always a growth from within rather than an acquisition from without. It is revealed not by a showy display of knowledge, but rather by that chastened wisdom which grows out of well-digested knowledge. Its possessor is always humble; he can not be otherwise, for he must be keenly alive to the littleness of what he knows compared with the whole sum of human knowledge, and must also realize how small is that sum when compared with the vast unknown.

The man of culture, moreover, must have heart training; he must be able to feel as well as to know. Obviously a man may have amassed vast stores of knowledge, he may have facts well classified and arranged and at his fingers' ends, without possessing one iota of true culture. There must be a blending of knowledge and of wisdom in order to have culture; and of the two, wisdom is the more important element. On the whole, Amiel's definition of wisdom seems to me about as good a setting forth of the essential character of true culture as I have seen. "Deep and grave enthusiasm," he puts it, "for the eternal beauty and the eternal order, reason touched with emotion, and a serene tenderness of heart—these surely are the foundations of wisdom."

Such a definition of culture, one might say, must preclude the possibility of any conflict between it and religion. Very true. It is only when religion or culture or both are false or one-sided that the conflict appears. Rightly conceived, the highest culture, so far from being antagonistic to piety, is a help and a stimulus thereto, while ignorance is always a drawback. The people perish, not from knowledge, but from lack of it. Ignorance is supposed to make for humility. Personally I have not so found it. The conceited men and women of my acquaintance are the ones least likely to be blamed for their much knowledge. On the other hand I have found true intellectual humility characteristic of a large proportion of the men of learning with whom I have had the privilege of associating. No doubt there was a time when the so-called laboring classes, not being able to read or write, keenly felt their own insufficiency, and were of a humble and teachable spirit; but nowadays, and especially in this our own highly favored country, the working man who is able to read the daily newspaper, feels himself quite competent to pass judgment in the most momentous questions, and his general attitude is very often that of pride and self-sufficiency.

And yet, tho all this is true, it remains a fact that a great many persons possessing a large degree at least of intellectual culture, and a good deal of that "grave enthusiasm for beauty" that Amiel speaks of, are indifferent to the claims of religion, and the young men and women who go to our great universities are not likely to find the associations there formed helpful to habits of personal piety. Needless to say, it has not always been so. All the old universities of this country, and of Europe since the introduction of Christianity, were originally founded to promote Bible religion, and most of them were intended especially to prepare ministers of the Gospel for their life-work. How comes it, then, that they have been so sadly turned aside from their original purpose that they are to-day antagonistic? The reply must be that they were then, and are now, the product of the people who maintain them. An ancient philosopher being asked why God permitted such wicked men to occupy the place of rulers, he replied that the people were bad, and God punished them by giving them bad rulers. It is not going far from the truth to say that the irreligion of the age is visited upon the people in the godlessness, or perhaps rather the refined paganism, that prevails more or less generally at many of our great institutions of learning.

What is the practical situation? Simply this: A young man grows up to university age in a family where all the outward conventions of orthodox Christianity are observed,—family prayers, perhaps hurried and formal; attendance at church and Sunday-school; and a good deal of zeal possibly in getting ready for the annual bazaar, and in other church activities of a semi-social character. Along with this the round of social gaiety is fully kept up. There are dances and balls and dinner-parties, the theater is visited regularly and with greater zest than the church, and money is spent freely on needless finery, harmful amusements, and unwholesome luxuries, while a very small amount is given to missions and to the poor. Such is the manner of life at this supposedly Christian home, where the orthodox tenets are not in the least degree disbelieved, because they evidently do not in the least interfere with the worldly life these people live. But the boy goes to the university, and what happens? —He comes home after a few years an unbeliever. In what? —Well, naturally, in the only religion that he knows anything about. His parents say he has lost his religion at the university. And this is true in so far that the poor boy lost all that he had. But the real trouble is that he hadn't much to lose. He had a kind of sham religion, and the intellectual honesty that prevails in most universities convinced him that it was a sham, and led him to give it up. The worst of it is that it did not give him a true religious experience to take its place. But in order for it to do that, the university would have to be much better than the people who support it, and that it is not.

But leaving the universities, let us return to the men. We have with us to-day men endowed with all the intellectual light and knowledge and serene wisdom of a Plato, and yet walking in the heathen darkness in which that philosopher walked, just as if Jesus of Nazareth never had appeared on the earth! Why should this be? I am afraid the chief reason is to be found in the words of Paul: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God." "The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." But as another reason, I would offer the wide prevalence in the religious world of shams which the intellectually minded are too sincere to adopt.

But what, in view of this situation, should be the attitude of Christians toward intellectual culture? Should they neglect and condemn it because some of its one-sided devotees altogether neglect and condemn religion? Should we be satisfied with low intellectual standards in our Christian schools and colleges because those of the world concern themselves with intellectual standards only?—By no means. Rather let us raise our standards even higher than the world's, so that the degree of bachelor of arts given in one of our colleges shall represent a full equivalent in intellectual effort of that given by a university. Let us, too, in all our handling of the Bible, in the exposition of prophecy, and of Christian doctrines, observe the principles of intellectual honesty, and never give the world reason for believing that we are willing to wrench texts away from their connection and pervert their meaning in order to put our own interpretation upon them. Let us gladly accept scientific facts, tho not always theories only partly supported by facts; let us welcome the searching investigations of the laboratory, and recognize most cordially the right of the man of science to study nature's lore, which is God's lore, as deeply as he possibly can; nay, let us honor him for it. But let us not deny the deepest instincts of our nature, nor orphan ourselves of that loving heavenly Father who has so graciously revealed Himself to us, just because some famous professor fails by his laboratory methods to find evidences of a God.

We want breadth, but we also want depth; intellectual culture is necessary, but also fire, inspiration, and zeal of the dead-in-earnest kind. Sharp tools are necessary, but also the living, skilful hand to use the tools. Education is of little worth without a loving, earnest, devoted heart. We can never know too much, provided only that we make our knowledge the means always of doing better work. It is easy to censure the able-bodied man who sits quietly on a flowery bank reading even the best of books while below him helpless women and children are perishing in the river. Yet that position is ours if we devote ourselves to intellectual and esthetic development to the neglect of the stern realities of life. We are in a very real sense our brother's keeper, and all that concerns the good of mankind concerns us.