8. College Days

Certainly nobody would believe that knowledge is the product of leisure if he were to risk life and limb by crossing a busy university campus today. These institutions have pitched out the refinements to make room for the techniques. What was known as culture is on the run. One youngster, taking an oral over-all exam was asked to tell all he knew about Keats. He replied, “I know nothing at all about them; I don’t even know what they are.”

For my own part, I am sorry to see the universities converted into machine shops. There was something to be said for that little quadrennium of leisure, even if many of us did take advantage of it without improving our minds very much.

But, no matter how we may deplore the disappearance of leisure and the classics, that is what has happened. Not infrequently some highly rated, ultra-conservative professor, who has won his ribbons by refusing to say either yes or no to any and all questions, comes boldly forth in one of the huge weekly pictorial magazines with an announcement that he notices signs of a turning tide; thinks that teachers and students alike are becoming less materialistic; and that the world is on its way back to an emphasis on the spiritual life.

If you want to know how many people are likely to believe this, note the publicity it achieves. The magazine boys feature the article; give it top billing on the cover, accompany it with pictures of the Prophet at his typewriter, and with his wife and with his dog, and on the golf course, and being fed nuts by the little girl who lives next door.

I devoutly wish that I could see what this good man of far vision thinks he sees. I am sure he is honest. Few are less likely than he to say these things for the sake of making a thousand dollars and some screaming headlines. Maybe it’s a mirage that he sees. For eventually this return to Religion, to Repentance, and to Faith, will come. It always does—eventually. But not until great wickedness and skepticism have beaten a few nations to their knees.

That’s the way we got the Crusades and the massive Cathedrals. Perhaps we will get a few more of these costly cathedrals.

Next time you are in New York, go with your dearest friend—or alone—to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and sit quietly for an hour: see what it does to you.

There may be more of these very expensive cathedrals built in this country. No, not soon; but later, when we have reached desperation. A few quite inspiring cathedrals could be built for less than we have paid—plus what we have yet to pay—for the Atom Bomb. Perhaps we will have to wait for the great new American cathedrals until everybody has had much more than enough of this amazing scientific discovery.

At this juncture, one of the more practical-minded members of the Committee on Rehabilitation may suggest that instead of wasting labor and treasure on cathedrals we’d do better to spend it on feeding, clothing and housing the world’s poor.

A similar protest was voiced on one occasion during the Master’s ministry in Palestine. An impulsive devotee had poured a vial of costly ointment on his feet. One of the Disciples objected to this extravagance. The perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor.

Yes, we must take care of the poor, but that job is endless. “The poor,” Jesus said, “are with you always.”

Whenever we feel greatly in need of heart’s-ease we launch another campaign to find remedies for diseases of the body. We have responded quite cheerfully to these appeals. Lately we have been made aware that this planet of ours is a dangerous place in which to live. Our Government thinks it might be safer if we gave aid to “the backward areas of the world.”

How do you mean “backward?” Perhaps you’re thinking of some areas where the farmer plows with a camel hitched to a crooked stick when what he needs is a tractor and irrigation machinery and fertilizers and better seed.

Wouldn’t it be odd of God if He considered the USA a backward nation?

I am fully aware that what I have been saying is disheartening and it is likely to tag me as a confirmed pessimist. This is not true of me. I have been throughout my lifetime an incorrigible optimist. There is a great deal of honest goodness believed in and practiced by our generation, and it gets very little praise for it. A few days ago one of the big bakeries in our town had a $100,000 fire. The bakery’s competitors, instead of capitalizing on this opportunity to take over the business which the damaged bakery could not handle, came forward immediately with the loan of their facilities so that there was no interruption at all in the service. Meantime, one hundred employees, who would have been thrown out of work by the fire, were taken over for the duration of the repairs so that there was no loss to them. Seeing how seldom good news is called to the public’s attention, I phoned the papers suggesting an editorial on this subject, but they did not get around to it.

Good deeds of this sort happen every day and pass unnoticed. But what I am talking about is a general spiritual revival, not an occasional incident of excellent sportsmanship.

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