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SAMUEL R. BETTS

1930

The College Man
in Doubt

BY

NOLAN RICE BEST
OTTERBEIN, '92
Editorial Staff, The Interior

PHILADELPHIA
THE WESTMINSTER PRESS
1902

u-S

Copyright, 1902, by The Trustees of
The Presbyterian Board of Publication and
Sabbath-School Work.

ry

54
B4^

ARGUMENT
NO person of reflection familiar with college
life can have failed to notice how com
monly Christian students, earlier or later
in their course of education, experience a period
of chaos in their thought about matters of religion.
To consider the nature, cause, and influence, of
the college man' s tendencies to doubt, and par
ticularly to speak with the student, in brotherly
way, about averting the danger and appropriating
the profit of such an epoch in his intellectual life,
may, it is trusted, seem sufficient reason for the
pages following. They have been addressed only
to young men ; the author has not assumed to
write for the young women, who so worthily rival
their brothers in the pursuit of modern learning ;
but he has no doubt that mutatis mutandis ac
cording to the differentiations of womanly char
acter, these observations would largely apply also
to the college woman in doubt.
The Author.

CHAPTER I
DOUBT INCIDENT TO GROWTH
THE young man who comes from a Christian
home into college brings with him a tradi
tionary faith. He believes regarding relig
ion what has been told him by his mother, his
father, his Sabbath-school teacher, and the family
pastor. He has been furnished with Christian
doctrine in bulk stamped with the seal of author
ity, and he has never broken the seals. Chris
tianity for him is identical with the habits of
worship, forms of expression, and prejudices of
view, that characterize his own home church. In
a word, his religious ideas have been accepted,
not acquired.
This is not written in disparagement. It is not
unnatural nor unfortunate that one's early Chris
tian beliefs should be transferred from older minds
ready-made. At the ordinary age of entering
college the new student has few elements of
knowledge or thought on any human concern that
have not come to him similarly. He has believed
in a good God and a round earth for the same
S

The College Man in Doubt
reason — because some older person whom he
trusted told him of both. No Bible school on the
Sabbath is more dogmatic with children than the
secular schools are. Teachers and text-books
talk like popes for infallibility. And there is
never an educational protestant among the pupils.
It must be so. Childhood and youth may be
instructed; they can not be educated. This is
God's law revealed by the normal unfolding of
the soul. It develops earliest the capacity to be
lieve. God causes the embryonic mind to cling
first to the world and to himself by tentacles of
faith, and drawing sustenance through them it is
evolved toward individual character and activity.
But there is in the beginning of life no mental
independence more than there is physical inde
pendence. As the young of all animal nature
require parental provision of their bodily food, so
the human intellect must in youth be fed by other
care than its own. And self -sufficiency is attained
physically much sooner than mentally. Inasmuch,
therefore, as the average student enters college
before he has outlived material dependence on
those who overwatched his infancy, it is certainly
no marvel that intellectually, too, he should still
be subsisting on the thought and belief of his
elders.

The College Man in Doubt
It is not meant hereby to question the validity
of the spiritual experiences of youth. The Father
perfects praise out of the mouths of even babes
and sucklings. The knowledge of God is not
reasoning, but perception. The infant laughs to
see the love in his mother's eyes long before he
knows the name of love. So, too, the infant soul
may interpret the message of love in the face of
Jesus while yet not knowing the Alpha of Chris
tian doctrine. The divine fellowship is condi
tioned not on understanding, but on obedience —
which the least of the little ones may fulfill. The
witness of life attests that earnest, dominating
piety may, in young and old, coexist with crude
and vague notions concerning God and his reve
lation. It is a usual thing, therefore, for a college
to receive young men of profound devoutness,
but of small thinkable knowledge in the sphere of
religion. Very surely those who have laid hold on the
Sufferer of Calvary for salvation have so pos
sessed themselves of the one thing needful. But
our Father in heaven is certainly not unconcerned
for their progress beyond that point into larger
and juster conceptions of his personality and his
providence. God has set obedience over all, but
he has appointed understanding to be its armor-
7

The College Man in Doubt
bearer. " Brethren, be not children in mind,
... but in mind be men," is the inspired exhor
tation of Paul. Neither revelation nor creation
has any voice contradictory to that lofty incite
ment. The universe is God's abiding invitation
to inquiry; his lasting rebuke to ignorance. There
are, indeed, in the infinitude of divinity mighty
reaches untrodden by thought of man, but no
arbitrary barriers forbid exploration. Only the
soul's own limitations circumscribe its excursions
into divine mysteries, and where reverence passes
solemnly on the road to a better knowledge, the
very hand of heaven reaches down to guide the
quest. And "as in water face answereth to face," the
constitution of the human intellect is the comple
ment and confirmation of God's delight in man's
understanding. The intentions of the Creator are
read in the aspirations of the creature. Except
for defect or paralysis, the young mind in time
begins to outgrow the swaddling clothes of a ques
tionless faith. Natural as bodily growth comes
the development of a questioning reason. The
gradual succession of independence to dependence
is alike the law of body and mind. As rightful as
it is for a man to win his own bread, so rightful
is it, by a true analogy, to forge out his own
8

The College Man in Doubt
thoughts. The "what," the "where," the
"why," and the "whither," are questions indige
nous to the young man's brain. Their upspring-
ing responds to the sunlight of the divine intelli
gence. They are manly and manhood-making.
They are the tokens of the soul's majority.
The era of spiritual "coming of age," how
ever, may not be fixed on a statutory day. It
arrives earlier for some and later for others — a
myriad of external and internal conditions con
spiring now to bring the momentous time down
into the confines of youth, and again to hold it
back upon the borders of middle age. To a sor
rowfully large multitude, indeed, enslaved by ig
norance or superstition, it comes never at all.
But normally, after a long transition period, the
young man attains to some realization of his iden
tity as one thinking being, separate from all
others, and individual. And usually with that
consciousness there dawns a partial sense of the
duty of a thinking being to think. It is, in sooth,
a climacteric instant for the soul when it is first
touched with any form of that conception. It is
a fate-fraught moment, charged with inestimable
possibilities of good, but overhung, too, with cer
tain gravest dangers never theretofore encoun
tered by that soul. 9

The College Man in Doubt
This experience is not peculiar to college stu
dents. But in college the phenomenon of mental
quickening is best defined and most significant.
This is so, for one reason, because the most
of those who come to college voluntarily are
prompted to seek the schooling by the first stir
rings of that very evolution within them. After
entrance the process goes on. But chiefly the
college is the most important scene of mind-
awakening because — to speak a truism — that
effect is the college's dominant aim intellectu
ally. No matter what the curriculum, the imnfe-
diate objective point of all advanced teaching
which understands itself is identical — to make the
student think. Text-book facts are furnished only
as grist for the mill. If, then, the young man en
ters college just at the age when he has thoroughly
"put away childish things," — the most advanta
geous time for both him and the school, — he comes
into the range of these thought-compelling im
pulses at the most susceptible juncture of his
whole life. Should college galvanism then evoke
no new intellectual man from his former juvenile
self, he is indeed but a dull, hopeless clod.
So the new student stands within the college
walls. He misses first, probably, all that rever
ence for authority which has bulwarked every
10

The College Man in Doubt
idea of his. He hears all about him the talk of
proofs and tests, and sees stripling undergrad
uates toiling to verify what he would think suffi
ciently established by the word of the professor.
The air thrills with inquiry. Moreover he is be
wildered by the disappearance of conventionalities.
The ordinary is no longer customary. He meets
old truths in the guise of new expression, and is
hardly less confused when he recognizes their
identity than when he does not. Robbed of his
placid trust in received notions, and driven in
stinctively to an effort at harmony with his sur
roundings, the young student is eventually forced
back upon himself to review his beliefs. He must
needs take a mental inventory and see whether
of all his stock anything remains valid and worth
preservation. Much goes overboard in the course of time.
Reasons felt rather than reasons seen cause the
young man to discard here and revise there. At
length the mind begins the more difficult work of
replenishing itself. The task of selecting what
is true and good is appallingly great. Inexperi
ence loses its way in a maze. Rearrangements
are necessitated in endless succession. Adjust
ment to a reasonable and reasoning universe is
slow and often painful. The struggle may outlast
11

The College Man in Doubt
college days by years. But finally, barring acci
dent without or folly within, the student comes
safely out of the tumult. He attains a state of
thought satisfying to himself as judged by the
measures of a wider world. He acquires poise.
He rests at equilibrium. No longer "tossed to
and fro and carried about with every wind," he
soon wears the worthy distinction of being " a
man of settled mind." And, indeed, he has made
the first stadium on the highway of education,
and passed the most critical period of his mental
life. Every department of thought is, in the case of
the average student, involved in this revolution.
Certainly his thought of religion does not escape.
The elements of disquiet radiating through the
college environment are very likely to pierce
soonest a young man's religious conceptions. His
ideas of sacred forms and phraseologies are well-
nigh sure to be crossed in the first student Chris
tian meeting which he attends. Unaccustomed
styles of religious speech, unaccustomed illustra
tions of religious truth, and unaccustomed declara
tions of Christian purpose — an informality of
worship or a bluntness of exhortation character
istic of college men's gatherings — may suggest to
the new student a gaping unlikeness between the
12

The College Man in Doubt
Christianity of the school and the Christianity of
the home church. Other influences around may
appear to him to be setting awry more elemental
things. He hears Christian men discussing the
literary character, the rhetorical merit, and the
textual exactness, — yea, even the authenticity
and inspiration, — of the Book of books in ways
that back in his old-fashioned home would seem
like the laying of impious hands upon the ark of
the covenant. Much is made of the philosophy
of religion, and debates upon abstract doctrines
go on in his hearing which to the debaters are
little more than mental gymnastics, but which to
his inexperienced mind seem to speak of distress
ing dissensions over the fundamentals of Chris
tianity. Problems are suggested in directions
where the young man did not suspect that prob
lems could exist. A hundred such factors affect
the beginner in college even if he comes in con
tact with no scholarship but such as is genu
inely and conscientiously devout. Inevitably his
horizon widens, and inevitably, widening so, it
includes many unfamiliar scenes.
What comes to pass is in this special field ex
actly what has been described in general terms as
the sequence of the mind's chrysalis-breaking.
A power that no live intellect could resist drives
13

The College Man in Doubt
the young student to review his own notions of
spiritual things. By an instinctive impulse rather
than by knowing purpose, he tries to think
through his religion. His success is much the
same as if he had undertaken to pick out a foot
path along the crest of a mountain range. Many
definite truths loom high and bold in his mind like
the mountain peaks, but there stretch great voids
between. Correlation there is none. He realizes
that there are many phases included in Chris
tianity upon which he has never had one clear
thought. From a mental viewpoint his religion
is fragmentary and inadequate. Oppressed by
this discovery, the youthful student descends into
a fog of bewilderment and uncertainty. But from
this state, under wholesome conditions, natural
reactions soon develop a passionate longing for
certainty. In great struggle the soul offers a sac
rificial supplication for truth. And that struggle
men call doubt.
The corresponding readjustment of thought to
temporal and material fact is accomplished with
less hazard. The youthful thinker in that sphere
has always visible landmarks before his eyes by
which he may correct himself. Errors in belief
are soon stultified by experiment or experience.
But he who seeks to learn of the being of God
14

The College Man in Doubt
and the spirit nature of man puts an oar into a
wide sea. He can guide his course no longer by
physical realities. Faith must be his chart and
beacon — faith in the unseen. And by so much
as the unseen wields less power than the seen in
the ordinary young life, by so much does a more
threatening peril beset the college student, when
the moorings of childhood associations are cast off,
from the side of religion than from any other
quarter of human concerns. But God's good
heavens ahvays blow a kindly wind for every
craft wherein ride prayer, sincerity, and a
learner's humble simplicity, together. And there
is a safe haven.
What has been set forth constitutes an attempt
to show that the appearance of a semi-agnosticism
in a student's thought, at one stage or another of
his college course, is a natural incident of his edu
cation — to be expected and provided for rather
than to be deprecated with pious horror. Particu
larly has it been the desire to make plain that
unsettlement of religious belief is not evidence of
degeneracy or apostasy. To cast off as reprobate
the young man who displays symptoms of infi
delity is to commit soul murder. To suffer such
a young man to consider himself a wanderer from
the covenant is to abet soul suicide. If older
IS

The College Man in Doubt
friends are only wise enough to attend with unob
trusive care the college man in doubt, and if he
himself but has the grace and discretion to save
him alike from presumption and from panic, the
derangement of the expanding soul's beljef will in
time be succeeded by a reasonable ordering of
faith, by an immovable confidence in. undoubted
truth, such as would have long remained impossi
ble to him except for this priceless confirmation of
travail. The medicine for doubt is chiefly, as in certain
fevers, good nursing and the patient's own watch
ful moderation. Sometimes, in lack of both, "the
medicating power of nature " carries a young man
safely through. But the risk is too mortal to be
wantonly taken. Cautious prudence befits the
doubter. And if even one soul, in the midst of
the trial of unfaith, shall gather from these pages
a due sense of the gravity of this life crisis, yet,
infused at the same time with hope, shall be pre
served by God's blessing from despair to courage
and trust, the mission to which this volume is
dedicated shall be happily fulfilled.

16

CHAPTER II
UNHEALTHFUL DOUBT
TO say that doubt is normally an incident of
healthy growth in youth is not to say that
all doubt in youth is healthful. There are
inevitable tendencies to unsettlement in the evo
lution of the young mind, but such derangement
may also be produced or aggravated by causes
wholly morbid and mischievous. To learn to
distinguish between the innocent and the noxious
doubt is an eminent spiritual safeguard to the
student, and to conceive a horror of the doubt that
kills is an inestimable protection to the soul.
Broadly the distinction is the distinction between
willing and unwilling distrust. The involuntary
question, springing unconjured out of the soul's
own struggle and waiting only for its answer, is
never wrong. But the questioning that is invited
and cherished, encouraged and magnified, gloried
in and clung to — this is sin and the seed of the
whirlwind. Whatever beguiles the student to
think it better and nobler to be agnostic, skeptic,
or unpersuaded, than to be "stablished in the
17

The College Man in Doubt
faith " is pestilential. The victim of that concep
tion is mentally and spiritually sick, and his dis
orders solicit the application of admonitory counsel
from well-grounded and tactful friends, his own
sober judgment, and, above all, the grace and en
lightenment of the Most High. The germs of this
contagion may be communicated directly from
evil books or evil men, but the grave danger is
that they may be nurtured in the hotbed of a
young man's own vanity over newfound liberties
of thought. It is a long-standing experience of
freedom which is able, like love, not to vaunt
itself. To point out therefore certain subjective
states liable to impart a deadly virulence to the
student's doubts, will be to make specific the
warning which this chapter would convey.
The notion that a new doctrine is for its new
ness more likely to be true than an old doctrine,
is one of the most harmful sophistries into which
a young man may fall. Every learner in the
history of truth is tremendously impressed with
the way in which certain now universally ac
cepted principles have in times past won spectac
ular triumphs over ancient prejudices. And it
seems almost impossible to prevent his concluding
thence headlong that an invading theory always
enjoys a presumption over an old-time belief. But
18

The College Man in Doubt
a bit of calm reflection must teach the student
that every such triumph of newly vindicated
truth over usurping error reduces the probability
of like future revolutions. The estates of truth
are eternal and are neither all nor most held by
aliens. And every great fact, that all the anxious
study of the ages has brought home to its own,
has made the regnant family of truth more nearly
intact and lessened the number of impostors to be
dethroned. There will doubtless yet be not a few
princes of the immortal line to be restored, but
there will certainly in this late day be many more
pretenders abroad. And the young man who
asks of a new opinion no other credentials than
its novelty will oftener than otherwise be found
following the imaginations of vagrant minds.
Even in an age that so plumes itself on progress,
the prophet's counsel, " Ask for the old paths,"
has a suggestion of practical wisdom for the
young man in college.
Dangerous, too, is it for a student to decide that
the belief of the few is more likely to be correct
than the belief of the many. The common ideas
ofjthe, masses, are, it is truejjn great degree .crude
and nebulous, and yet as the greatest American's
homely philosophy put it, all the people cannot
be " fooled " all the time. In a Christian atmos-
19

The College Man in Doubt
phere, the great popular voice, answejing. to
the tone-pitch, of the universal cqnscience,..is__Qn
the whole more apt to ring right than to^ ring
wrong. And if we pass from the general body of
society to the more restricted circle of the thought
ful, the consensus of opinion becomes of profound
weight as evidence to truth. For truth is never
homesteaded under discoverer's rights. A man
may light upon what no other has seen, but he
cannot appropriate the treasure. What he has
revealed many others will follow to seek, see, and
verify. And if they do not find it and add their
testimony to the original explorer's report, there
certainly stands a prima facie case against its
claim for credence. Esoteric custody of truth
there cannot be until truth is a mere fox-fire of
decadent brains. An aristocracy of truth-de
votees is a conception that has an attractive
glamour to many youthful thinkers, but it is a
conception wholly misleading. Truth is essen
tially democratic.
•- The assumption that a habit of doubt is a sign
of superior intellect is as absurd as it is demoraliz
ing, but nevertheless many a young man catches
at the notion and affects doubt as an accomplish
ment. He prides himself on believing with reluc
tance and possibly aspires to be dubbed an agnostic.
20

The College Man in Doubt
At his worst state he parades his doubts as a fop
parades gorgeous raiment. But could he under
stand how passionately the greatest minds of the
world are pursuing certainty, especially in the
ranges of science, he would surely perceive that
strong mental powers have no affinity for unper-
suasion. Even the agnostic, if sincere, does not
defend his inconclusive attitude except for its
alleged necessity to him. No well-poised, living
mind can content itself jn doubt, To be sure, the
developing soul outgrows credulity; it comes to
demand proof, but it does not divest itself of its
capacity to believe on due proof being given, nor
yet of its desire to know. Only the sluggard
mind can be willing to sit down inert among un
settled questions, and folly puts a dunce's crown
on languor when it claims these unsettled ques
tions as appurtenances of power. But beyond all
intellectual considerations it must startle the most
fatuous heart out of vanity over its doubts if it
shall catch but the merest glimpse of how such
unnatural pride trifles with issues of life and death.
Sometimes men are fain to display courage or
agility by feats of mortalhazard, and we condemn
them for foolhardiness. But their physical reck
lessness is scarcely an image of the bewitchment
of men who dare to juggle for show with the con-
21

The College Man in Doubt
cerns of spirit and eternity. On those narrow
boundaries where a false step may exchange
salvation for ruin, only a fatal lunacy could in
dulge in bombastic cavilings. Prudence will be
only looking for a sure footing.
Another kindred error is for the young college
man to conceive that a habit of disputation sug
gests exceptional parts of mind. Though a like
folly of conceit, this misconception beguiles the
student to an opposite extreme from the agnostic
pretension. Where the young man just spoken
of glories in doubt, this young man glories in
positiveness. On the briefest acquaintance with
some current dogma, he becomes its champion —
chiefly because he is determined to champion
something. Thenceforward to attack that doc
trine is to attack him. Enforcing and urging it
grows to be a business with the youth — the show
of his abilities being always the unconfessed re
ward expected for his zeal. The harm he may
do to others by disseminating false beliefs can be
ignored, but the harm the young man does him
self may lack nothing of being fatal. He puts on
fighting armor, but it is an armor against truth,
not in truth's behalf. It covers up that delicate
sensitiveness to the touch of reason which is the
finest endowment of youth. His coat of mail is
22

The College Man in Doubt
stiff with prejudice. Aiming to shine as a tour
nament knight, he forfeits the far rarer character
of a learner. It is impossible in such state to
have an uncolored mind for God's answers.
Receptivity without bias, but with constant prov
ing of "the spirits, whether they are of God," is
the right badge of the truth-lover. When in the
long interworking of thought and conscience he
reaches settlement on certain phases of dogma,
he may venture to be positive so far, but that
will not be in the first day or the second of his
mental manhood. Even at that stage he can
hardly afford to be a debater. Polemics are made
naturally in the clash and grinding of great
crises, but there is little use for them in the or
dinary progress of religion. The polemic who
makes himself makes a nuisance. Let, therefore,
the Christian student, though ever ready to give,
where he can, a reason for his faith, still flee the
love of religious argument.
It is furthermore an ill thing that a young
Christian at college should presume that for
candor's sake he must read all accessible infidel
or negative literature. It may be freely admitted
that the just-minded man judges no question with
out hearing both sides. But that does not signify
that a youthful, immature thinker is obliged by
23

The College Man in Doubt
fairness to clutter his intellectual workshop with
the lumber of a miscellaneous skepticism. Two
rules for reading in that realm where philosophy
touches religion may well guide the student : Let'
him first read to solve questions that are already
made for him out of his own experience, — not to
make questions that neither life without nor the
soul within has ever brought him. A sympa
thetic heaven knows that the problems which are,
more than suffice to tax the strength of the strong
est ; misguided, indeed, are they who seek for
problems which might be. Let the young man
read what he feels he needs to read. And for a
second rule, let him prefer in every case what has
been written constructively above the work of the
genius of destruction. The student should crave
beyond all things to be built up — he will crave it
if he is of healthy mind. But negation cannot
edify, and it will be no sacrifice of either breadth
or candor if he deals sparingly with books that
magnify the " not," and gives greater heed to
teachers whose pages are strenuous with the force
of a conscience-born message. Whether Chris
tianity fits the facts of life and satisfies the cry of
the spirit, is the question of final appeal in re
ligion. In answer to that question the witness of
men who know Christianity by the practice of it
24

The College Man in Doubt
is a thousand times more worth than that of men
who know it at best by observation of it. The
pioneer who ranges unguided- through the forest
walks in the gloom and leaves gloom behind him.
The pioneer who conquers the forest hews from
step to step and lets in the light as he goes. Let
the student beware of losing himself in a wilder
ness of books ; let him clear his way and till the
ground as he advances.
But the saddest of all allurements to doubt has
seized upon him who evades belief to escape obli
gation. The young man who supposes that while
he does, not accept the_ author.ity_of-Scripture he
is guiltless in disobeying its commands, has but a
slight. appreciation, of the _rrjioral__p_rdex-Qf- God's
government. ., The servant who knew not his
Lord's will may be beaten with few stripes, but
the servant whose ignorance is due only to willful
inattention cannot enjoy the like indulgence.
Where God offers to teach, it is enough sin to be
unwilling to hear. To ignore those warnings from
heaven which weight life with the seriousness of
eternity will not make life less serious nor eter
nity less real. A judgment seat forgotten and put
from mind will only be the more awful when in
the last day the unready soul approaches its inev
itable bar. But the heart which hugs its doubt
25

The College Man in Doubt
as a shield against duty will not be cured of its
fatuity by reasonings. The coming of the Holy
Spirit to convict of the wickedness of despising
instruction, alone can save the soul from its dire
mistake. And may such a gracious visitation be
granted every student who lightly throws off
Christian belief and Christian profession and
thinks that with them he has thrown off account
ability to his God.
If in any of these delineations any college man
catches the suggestion of his own case, it will be
easy for him to hurry stealthily on to the descrip
tion of some one else. We none of us willingly
abide the reading of the indictment under which
we suspect ourselves. Would that it were pos
sible to erect just here a signboard that could
arrest all such fleeing footsteps. Would that
every student might be endowed here with the
faculty of being heroically judicial with himself.
Courage it might require, indeed, but the richest
of rewards would be upon that courage which
could turn back in penitence from self-adulation
and vaunting to the simplicity, humility, and sin
cerity, that clothe the true seeker after truth.

26

CHAPTER III
THE DOUBTER AND HIS PROFESSORS
THE responsibility which the doubts of an un
dergraduate impose upon his professors, if
they be Christian men, is profound — pro-
founder, it must be feared, than the professors
themselves ordinarily realize. The quagmires in
which the student is caught and floundering are
likely the very sloughs in which his teacher has
earlier struggled. Or in any event the teacher
should have reached a solidity of age, tempera
ment, and thought, which is firm standing-ground
in comparison with the quaking foothold of his
frightened pupil. To extend to the youth from
that better vantage ground the assisting hand
most meet for his needs, is a primary duty
of human brotherhood. To talk to him of
Latin syntax and the principles of triangula-
_tion, with never a word about the grammar
of life and the problems of the soul, is like
throwing wisps instead of a rope to a man in
a pit. It is not forgotten that the average faculty chair
27

The College Man in Doubt
of an American college faces either such heavy
teaching duty or such a large student body that
intimate and brotherly association with individuals
in his classes seems well-nigh impossible to the in
structor. But it is at least feasible for the busiest
professor to make his students understand that he
himself knows of and believes in — and is con
cerned that they should believe in — something
more essential than the science or belles-lettres of
his department. He can spread the quiet assur
ance that he will always give sympathetic hearing
to the unburdening of any spiritual perplexity.
He can leave his study door habitually unlocked
for the welcome intrusion of the confused young
man seeking counsel and guidance. He can
always encourage the visitor to tell his inmost
thought and can pray the while for wisdom to say
the luminous word that will dispel the darkness.
It may cost the teacher much — ill preparation
possibly or unseasonable hours of toil — but if he
shall be acknowledged hereafter the spiritual
father of some men in whom great faith is builded
on great knowledge, the distinction will be nobler
than a lifetime of erudite class-room work could
afford. His recompense will repay the cost. But
what infinite misery would punish the unhappy
man who for the pursuits of learning deserted
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The College Man in Doubt
even one soul in throes where want of succor
fixed the seal of death.
The requisite endowment for dealing with stu
dents in religious uncertainty is something not to
be acquired by any human discipline, either sub
jective or external. It is an inspiration imparted
by the Holy Spirit through discipleship of that
Master whose understanding of a soul's difficul
ties was always instant and perfect, as his answer
of help was always unerring. And the gift which
makes some of God's noblemen so Christlike in
this same power of soul-reading and soul-aiding is
not to be defined by any intellectual measurement.
Nevertheless the field of its manifestation may be
negatively indicated. Certain attitudes frequently
affected by older Christians toward young men
tempted to skepticism are so palpably mischievous
that it can safely be said that the Spirit's leading
will never be toward such modes of treatment.
Too often a conscientious teacher, when he dis
covers a student harboring questions that smack
of unfaith, deems it a religious duty to exhibit
horror. From that show of dismay the immature
mind is almost sure to recoil to one of two dis
asters — it may shrink back into a hermit shame,
hiding what it cannot kill, or it may fly to blatant
defiance of the sensibilities which it finds so
29

The College Man in Doubt
easily outraged. In either state the repulsed in
tellect is shut up from the one curative process
which its condition most urgently requires — the
spreading forth of its inner debates in the sun
light of some other's broader and more experi
mental reason. Better discretion in his teacher
invites the frank unfolding of all that the young
man's mind contains of good and bad, and his rev
elations of himself are not to be exclaimed over
but to be met with friendly ministry. A compe
tent physician spends no time in looking aghast at
the malady of his patient. The imitator of the
Great Physician should begin as calmly and as
quickly his remedial work.
It is unfair to a student in a mood of distrust
for his professor to try to force his thinking up to
any given grade of belief. It may seem to the
teacher that the child of Christian nurture ought
to be able to accept many fundamental truths as
axiomatic. It may pain the well-settled servant
of God to handle such hallowed verities as mat
ters open to discussion. But if the student really
does not accept these simple essentials, there is
no evading it. Trying to make him believe that
he believes will mend nothing. His instructor
must go back with him to the "first principles of
Christ" and lay patiently the lowest foundations
30

The College Man in Doubt
of faith. All other building is building in the air.
Every arbitrary assumption must remain a lasting
flaw in the spirit's confidence. But on the other
hand it is a serious mistake to attempt to pry be
hind whatever sound truth the student is quietly
and comfortably convinced of. The first under
taking of a young man's guide ought to be to sort
out just what the youth does receive of the com
mon body of Christian doctrine. Usually it will
amount to more than the young man himself has
suspected. These points of assurance are provi
dential anchorages for the derricks whereby other
stones are to be lifted into the wall of trust. The
wise counselor will make the most of them ; at
all events he will not purposely disturb them.
The firmness of rest is too hardly gained when
one has it not to risk throwing it away when it
has come to a student as a blessing of early en
vironment or of native bent of mind.
For this latter reason a professor whose views
vary in any part from traditional doctrines should
keep those variant opinions out of prominence in
his contact with the learners about him. His dis
sent from accepted ideas of Christianity can
scarcely involve any issue of life and death. He
has, therefore, no right to tear apart a young
man's religious fiber simply for the personal pleas-
31

The College Man in Doubt
ure of thrusting into it some logic or philosophy
of his own. Mysterious hints or suggestions of
the teacher's "heresies," disbursed in class or
lugged into private conversation, can tend only
to bootless disturbance. The young man living
unto God ought never to be diverted from his
course by any merely intellectual signal light while
he is not in spiritual danger. Later life will
bring him to a period where he may more safely
deal with controversies. Yet withal, when a pro
fessor chances upon a student fallen afoul of one
of these controversial points, he must help that
young man to get up on his side of the question.
Mental honesty forbids his doing anything else.
But he ought to lift the doubter with fear and
trembling. The teacher should solemnly realize
that it will be his obligation to start the youth
from this new ground on the march of serious
spiritual life again. Hence the first anxiety of
every thinker who feels himself forced into un
usual positions respecting God's truth, should be
to establish direct connection between those posi
tions and the eternal way of holiness. Otherwise
he will find himself and those whom he has in
fluenced isolated in a wilderness as barren as the
deserts of death.
A burden grievous to be borne is often laid upon
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The College Man in Doubt
a young mind when a well-meaning helper pre
sents to it for reception an entire system of theol
ogy in gross. In such instances the teacher must
be reminded that the Lord's school no more grad
uates finished scholars in a day than does any
schdbl of men. To cover all mathematics at a
lesson and to compass all God's doctrines in one
excursion of faith would be similarly futile at
tempts. Let, therefore, a teacher make no marvel
if a doubting student cannot comprehend the
theory of divine decrees in the same moment that
he accepts the lordship of Jesus of Nazareth. In
deed the cautious monitor should admit no level
ing of truth that would obscure the preeminence
of what things the gospel makes preeminent. As
consecutively as the teacher of children follows
from primer lessons up through the gradations of
the common branches, so should the instructor in
faith begin with the farthest advance of the stu
dent's soul-knowledge and teach on thence, as he
is "able to bear it," — "here a little, there a
little," — the successive elements of Christian
belief. The most vital must come first, and there
after in order of consequence. But always the
progress, to be true progress, needs to be slow
enough to let the inner life grow to occupy each
newly-opened chamber of the spiritual under-
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The College Man in Doubt
standing ; else a wizened soul ere long will be
found the only, the insufficient, habitant of a use
lessly, pathetically spacious dwelling.
Usually, indeed, the metaphor of that lonely
soul represents not more vividly the ill-helped
student than his ill-helping professor. For cflldly
intellectual orthodoxy in the learner is oftener
than otherwise simply the reflex of coldly intel
lectual orthodoxy in the teacher. The chisel of
cold steel can never heat the marble. If a pro
fessor addresses himself to his students' problems
of doubt as to so many exercises of dialectics, he
penetrates barely the outer crust of their need of
him. He reaches the heart of that need only
when he discovers the truth to the doubters at its
spiritual value. And he must illuminate the spirit
uality of truth by his own living of it before he
can have power to illuminate it with his words.
Indeed, a walk of eager loyalty to Jesus, manful
and uncanting, seen in a professor, may itself save
many a wavering student. For a young man's
first declension from the faith consists often in an
apprehension about the manliness of Christianity,
and a living demonstration before his sight that it
is manly, will be the best possible exorcism for
the demon of that question. Let, therefore, the
God-fearing professor live for those who learn
34

The College Man in Doubt
from him, and magnify his precept in the clear
lens of his example.
Thus these remarks return upon their begin
ning — to the sole efficiency of the Holy Spirit as
the Teacher of all teachers. He who guides us
into all the truth can alone make any human
being fit to guide fellow-mortals.

35

CHAPTER IV
THE EXTERNAL BATTLE AGAINST DOUBT
THE pages foregoing have been written con
cerning the student in doubt ; those follow
ing are addressed to him. Will not the
college man whose brain is in a daze of religious
confusion hear a few direct, brotherly words
within the confidential seclusion of these book
covers? Let us consider frankly the feverish
dilemma into which you are cast between a desire
to know the truth and a fear of being driven
away from all that ever seemed to you sacred.
In such a state, fellow-Christian, your first
concern is with externals. Very true, the seat of
your disquietude is far buried in your inward self.
But discretion does not call you within until you
have made sure of certain outer safeguards, cor
responding to the sanitation which a careful phy
sician will order round the dwelling of a patient.
To give yourself the mightiest advantage over
doubt,you should maintain the forms of your re
ligion intact even while you doubt, and the more
rigidly and doggedly the more you doubt. You
36

The College Man in Doubt
need not revolt from this suggestion with an in
dignant refusal to be a hypocrite. It is not an
hypocrisy. You are to-day no rejecter of Chris
tianity. At worst, you are but a doubter — with
many questions unsolved, indeed, but with all the
presumption, pending their settlement, on the side
of your parental training, your own experience,
and your deepest impulses, — which all are Chris
tian. Like the prisoner at the bar, the religion of
Jesus is not to be deemed base till proved base.
With the decision still in abeyance, it has a right
to hold your reverent adhesion and claim you in
its fellowship.
Not merely is it reasonable for you to continue
in a Christian manner of life, but it is a practical
necessity. Unless you do preserve your religious
habits you cannot be an equitable judge of the
difficulties that disturb you. The down pull of
the anti-moral instincts in human nature will, as
inevitably as death, bias you against all moral ac
tivities, unless you hold yourself strictly to the
custom of them. Prayer omitted, the practice
of prayer becomes distasteful, and then the disin
clination to pray gradually works itself into a
prejudice against the doctrine of prayer. So by
morning and by evening, if no oftener, neglect
not to go down on your knees and make the most
37

The College Man in Doubt
solemn longing of your heart into a petition to the
Divinity over you. If you can only do this in
the darkness gropingly, then grope. You can at
least stretch out a hand for leading in the night.
If God ever comes personally to any spirit of
man, it must be in the circumstances of prayer,
when the objects of sense are thrust aside, and
the soul, making round it a quiet void of earthly
things, submits itself to voices from the unseen.
Then the barrier of flesh is the thinnest possible,
and then can the Master of spirits most easily
break through to find the inner man. If you
would know whether God can and will descend to
touch your consciousness, you dare not refuse to
stand at this gateway of prayer daily, and wait
for him. And in that waiting, hidden from all
sight but his, you need not fear that you will be
either hypocrite or formalist.
Similarly you must cling to your Bible reading.
Make a definite daily rule of it and permit your
self no deviations. For it is easy, when one has
grown out of familiarity with the Scriptures, to
believe, not from conviction but from the mas
querading of a lazy indisposition to read, that
they are little worth attention. To be fair to the
Bible, you must keep on speaking terms with it.
If it is the word of God, it assuredly must possess
38

The College Man in Doubt
the inherent power to vindicate itself, but it can
not vindicate itself to the mind that will not meet
it openly and squarely. It cannot plead its cause
from beneath unlifted covers. You can no more
exercise competent judgment upon the Bible than
upon any other work of literature while out of
thoughtful contact with its sentiment. And, for
old acquaintance' sake, if for no other, the Bible
has a right to expect you to come to it in a spirit
of friendliness. Do not be so unjust as to center
your eyes at every opening of the book upon
those passages that perplex you. Turn oftener
to those portions that suggest no perplexity.
Look for what you can believe, appreciate, re
joice in, — for what thrills you, inspires you, and
ennobles your thought. Search for treasure and
you will find treasure. From the view of
such a quest you will surely marvel to realize,
from day to day with deepening comprehension,
how this volume of the ages, whatever the ques
tions that men make about it, still, over and above
all debate, is able to dominate the human mind,
not by what creeds say about it, but by what it is
and contains, as it reveals itself to the reverent
reader. There is assuredly no hypocrisy for an honest
student to fear in regular attendance upon relig-
39

The College Man in Doubt
ious worship. That you ought faithfully and
constantly to observe this habit through times of
doubt is the third particular exhortation of this
chapter. If you can attend divine service statedly
where a wise and warm-hearted servant of Christ
administers an intelligible gospel, — and every col
lege town at least ought to afford more than one
pulpit so manned,— there is all hope that the
preacher will some day bring you, straight from
the Comforter, just the fit message for your puz
zled soul. Or a consistent scheme of belief may
be gradually evolved for you, the composite of
many sermons. But if both these hopes fail you,
and your mental salvation is to arise from another
quarter, you yet will find in the solemnities of
God's house steadying, calming influences that in
your exercised state of mind you can ill dispense
with. The hymn, the prayer, the word of preach
ing, are tangible promises of a way out of your
maze, and ever-repeated challenges to you to
seek for that way. The church service will not let
a man go. So long as you frequent the assembly
of worshipers, none of your spiritual questionings
can die unanswered out of your heart. You can
not forget nor neglect nor displace them nor do
any other thing between defying heaven with
your doubts — which in God's sight you know you
40

The College Man in Doubt
never mean to do — and holding them up to the
divine replies until the last and all of them are
dissolved in the white heat of eternal truth.
Cleave, therefore, to the church, — if not as your
teacher, then as your guardian against that creep
ing lassitude which is as fatal to the doubter as to
the freezing traveler is the numbness that steals
drowsily through his body toward the heart.
Especially should you not forsake the gathering
together of your fellow-students in their devo
tional meetings, — of which the most characteristic
in the ordinary college is the prayer and testimony
service of the college Young Men's Christian Asso
ciation. There is the liveliest reason why such
meetings should be of measureless value to you as
well as of peculiar comfort. In them you will be in
the midst of a fraternity initiated each by his own
doubts — present and troublous, or past and van
quished — into the most perfect sympathy with
you that can exist lower than God's own throne.
When these men, your brothers, speak of faith,
they speak of the faith you long for; when they
talk of struggle, they talk of the struggle you
have met. Your experience will translate their
language; their experience will advise your heart.
Their fellowship will prove a contagion of hope
and an attraction to trust. The road will seem
41

The College Man in Doubt
the better worth traveling for the company of
men whom already you have come to admire for
manliness shown in the college life. Join your
self with the Christian students; emulate the
whole-souled simplicity of the truest of them; and
accept these additional safeguards against hasty
declension from the footsteps of Jesus the Christ.
You will profit most from these student meet
ings if you go beyond silent participation in them,
— if you often speak modestly and briefly when
there is opportunity to volunteer. This may seem
an ill-considered suggestion to a young man tor
tured still with conflict between belief and unbe
lief. And certainly you ought to be resolved to
speak only that which you do know. Glib words
uttered for the show of them are a shame to man
hood. But in your most doubtful moods you will
hardly be unable to fix upon a few great facts of
religion and morality to which your inmost soul
assents. To testify to these things in the pres
ence of your Christian college fellows, — to be a
witness to the landmarks of such faith as you
have, — is not presumption, and equally it is not
false pretense. Instead, the few words that tell
a truth of which you stand possessed, define your
advancement as a learner of sound doctrine, seal
to you what you have already acquired, and face
42

The College Man in Doubt
you, square front, against the next doubt to be
conquered. Such speech, at once diffident and
confident, will put you on frank terms with your
student associates, and open the way to your
being helped and to your helping. It will align
you on the Christian side of college life and con
strain you to live by Christian standards exter
nally — an artificial substitute for motive, indeed,
but yet a hedge along the way that is not to be
despised when the way is dark. Or if, at the
worst, there is no fact or principle at all of which
you are sufficiently assured to speak publicly, you
can still lift your voice to declare yourself a wan
derer, — lost but holding fast the wish for light.
There can never fail to be round you real
brothers from whom that cry will bring at least
the response of hearty words of cheer. You may
walk blind a little way; it need not be silent or
alone in any school where even two or three have
the mind of Christ.
More actual than any direct detriment from a
young man's doubts is in many cases the indirect
detriment of the self-centralization which they
induce. Moved with an invalid's ineradicable
anxiety about himself, the doubter becomes a
morbid student of his own moods and manners of
disbelief. The introspection comes to be chronic ;
43

The College Man in Doubt
the soul grows into a monopolist of its own atten
tion. Not only is truth therefore seen through a
wry angle of excessive individualism, but the
astringent effect of selfishness belittles the life.
For counteraction of this unhealthful tendency,
you should strive to live daily through your doubts
on as wide and altruistic a plane as you may.
The democratic and equable character of college
society does not, indeed, afford especial scope for
self-sacrifice in a brother's interest. But with
eyes open you will find an abundance of small
opportunities for helpfulness which will work to
decentralize you. A cheerful visit to a timid
freshman's room; a little aid for a blundering
student in the year below you; a bit of unaffected
interest in a slighted classmate; and best of all, —
if you feel sure enough of a few essentials to ven
ture on that in God's fear, — an earnest effort to
bring Christ to an unconverted soul, — such look
ing upon the things of others will furnish the
centrifugal counterbalance to avoid the peril of
centripetal collapse. You dare not at any time
neglect the order of your own house within, but
you dare not seclude yourself there. Every day
you must walk in the sunshine outside.
All that has been urged upon you in this chap
ter, dear doubting brother, has been the expres-
44

The College Man in Doubt
sion in practical detail of one purpose, — to save
you from drifting. When there is fire to fight
below decks, the shipmaster is luckless who is
also tossed in the surge of the sea. He is fortu
nate if he can anchor or moor fast till the danger
is over. So this is a call to you to chain your
craft to known moorings till the fire of unbelief is
conquered. You cannot guess into what breakers
you may be driven if you cast off from solid land
just now. Here are the Bible, your habits of
religious observance, the public worship of God,
and the fellowship of Christians — fasten yourself
to these while commotions last. After all is serene
again, it may be that you will feel bound to set
sail for another haven, — albeit in your heart of
hearts you do not expect it, — but you will need a
clear mind and a quiet heart to steer on that voy
age. To drift out of harbor with a mutiny of ques
tions aboard into a fog of mystification, is first a
folly, and finally — if no miracle of rescue inter
venes — a catastrophe. Whithersoever you must
come, do not be washed thither as the flotsam of
a wreck.

4S

CHAPTER V
THE MENTAL BATTLE AGAINST DOUBT
IN the region of the intellect, brother student,
we trace your troublers to bay. Here is the
native home of that strange brood of interro
gations which you never conceived of until your
college studies began to re-people your under
standing. Hither must be brought the exorcism
of reason to test whether these intruders are mes
sengers of evil or angels of truth. For that pur
pose, however, this book can offer no ready-made
solution of problems, — still less a universal spell to
drive away doubt. There is not room here for a
treatise on Christian evidences, — even though a
multitude of accessible books in that sphere did
not render newer statements needless. But cer
tain tactical counsels relative to the conflict with
disbelief are here offered in the sincere trust that
they may at least help to clear the field for action
and give you a hopeful advantage in the joining
of battle.
The cry of honest doubt, peering into the realm
of the spiritual, is for certainty — not for demon-
46

The College Man in Doubt
stration, which is rarely possible even in natural
knowledge, but for that mental rest which, by
appropriating Paul's expressive phrase, may be
described as the state of being " fully assured " in
one's own mind. Religious truth, as all physical
truth, must pay at the doorway of reason the toll
of evidence for its admission. It is well nigh im
pious to talk as if religion had some freebooter
privilege of bolting into you in rude despite of a
cringing judgment. The good God who created
the reason must be reasonable — which is but
paralleling the psalmist's syllogism from the
human eye to the divine seeing. And God's
doctrine imparted to men must be conformable
to their intelligence, unless, indeed, there is an
unthinkable cleft between the universe and its
Maker. There is no command upon you, there
fore, to beat your reason into subjection before
you set forth to search for the verities of things
unseen. You will, indeed, come in a thousand
places to the limits of your understanding, and a
thousand times your faith will be summoned out
where reason cannot follow. But if faith trends
out into that unknown vast along lines that reason
has trodden confidently as far as it might go, and
if faith returns thence with tokens that still weigh
heavy in the balances of persuasion, the mind will
47

The College Man in Doubt
certainly not feel itself bound and driven like a
slave to believe.
You will the more realize the sufficiency and
validity of belief so founded if you compare with
it your acceptance of a multitude of facts in every
day material life which you neither yourself com
prehend nor hope for others to explain. The bulk
of what we say we know concerning the physical
universe is composed, as analysis will show, of
two parts, — received testimony from credible
witnesses and overwhelmingly probable conclu
sions from series of phenomena. And spiritual
knowledge is described in exactly the same terms.
Religion consents to be judged according to the
same scientific standards of evidence, — standards
equally rigid, but as the disposition of certain
skeptics requires it to be said, not more rigid. It
must also be insisted that evidence respecting
matters of spirit must be held answerable to spir
itual and not natural conditions. Furthermore,
candor will keep in mind that a larger segment of
soul life and soul fact lies beyond the reach of
man's investigation than of physical life and fact,
— for the plain reason that the invisible realities
of divine creation are loftier than the visible and
further transcend human capacity. But reason is
able to recognize the exhaustion of its powers
48

The College Man in Doubt
with the more profound problems of material
science — such as the origin and the essence of
life. Nay, more, it is willing to confess the boun
daries of its range and to make only cautious and
humble guesses beyond them. Only so much is
expected of the intellect in exploring religious
truth, — that it will honestly and fairly admit a
demarcation outside which it is incapable of pass
ing judgment. In reciprocity, truth yields to the
intellect the right to challenge it within the field
where reason is active and competent. Religion
claims nowhere, needs nowhere, the privilege of
being unreasonable; but in its higher phases it
most reasonably professes to be extra-reasonable.
This you may register as a fundamental principle
for guidance in the study of spiritual mysteries.
Inasmuch as it is certainty which you seek to
build up in your life, the first step in an orderly
attempt thereat is to take account of what certain
ties you now possess. It is to be sincerely, anx
iously hoped that you will be able to collect no
mean inventory of beliefs which neither outward
nor inward disturbance has yet been able to shake.
Some such residuum of faith the Lord God has re
vealed to us that he will require of men as a first
condition of his approval, — for one of the Fathers
of the Church was inspired to write: " Without
49

The College Man in Doubt
faith it is impossible to please him." Yet it is not
a heavy demand which heaven lays upon you, for
by the scriptural definition immediately following,
essential faith is not the indorsement of a tedious
and obscure creed. It is only a living reliance
upon two universal and immutable facts — "He
that cometh to God must believe that he is, and
that he is a rewarder of them that seek after
him."* Surely in the silent, solemn depths of
your soul you can — surely by spiritual instinct
and independent of argument, you now do —
commit yourself for life and death to this rudi-
mental but sublime confession: " I believe in
God, the rewarder of them that seek after him."
Speak but so much with a meaning heart and
your feet are already on God's solid rock of faith,
already stepping in the pathway that he has
traced upward to the eternal light.. It is enough
to begin with living pleasingly to him.
It might not be psychological to say that the
normal man has an intuition of God, but for a
practical statement it is sufficiently correct and
clear. No matter how obscure may become their
vision in other directions, few persons compara
tively ever lose sight of the native idea of an om-

*Hebrewsn:6. R. V. SO

The College Man in Doubt
nipotent Creator which has grown up with them
from infancy. Atheists are, on the whole, very
unusual persons. Most men take God by axiom.
If, therefore, you, fellow-student, are of the rare
exceptions who honestly do not feel satisfied of a
divine Personality existing in the universe, your
case is undeniably serious. But there is this
cheering thing to be said — you could not be more
hopefully situated in the vestibule of this majestic
truth of God's being than you are as a college
student. The scientific study of nature to which the
curriculum of your school invites you, is essen
tially an introduction to God. Evolution once
undertook to exclude from science the premise of
supernatural origin, but your biological professor
will readily cite you to published passages where
the most thorough-paced evolutionists that ever
lived confess that the problem of original cause
baffles naturalistic theories. They must needs
leave a vast blank in all that region of beginnings
toward which their chains of secondary causes
converge. From that blank it is possible for men
to turn away, calling it mystery, for God compels
no soul even to look toward him. But if you are
true to the character of truthseeker, you will in
stead follow the paths of your research faithfully
51

The College Man in Doubt
to their ultimate goal. If you will but rever
ently consider what marvels of reasoning purpose,
of intelligent device, of benevolent provision, of
measureless conception and stupendous execution,
are written all over earth and sea and sky; if you
will but reflect how utterly the structure of the
tiniest blossom belittles the proudest human skill,
and how infinitely the possibilities of the smallest
life cell outreach the vaunted powers of man's
invention; if you will but seek an adequate
Worker in a transcendent work, — there can
scarcely fail to dawn upon you a sense of the
necessity of God as luminous as a revelation and
as satisfying as knowledge.
Or, if scientific processes are not congenial to
your mind, something of the same influence is
bound to be breathed into your soul from close
personal association with nature unvexed by the
fellowship of humanity. So surely is God in his
own world that — except you are literally a defiant
rebel against divine impressions — you may not
walk abroad on the earth alone without a voice
other than that of man sounding in your ears. A
solitary day in the forest, a solitary night beneath
the stars, are sermons before which atheism dis
solves like a fading mist — if it be not harder than
adamant. Not imagination, not poetic dreaming,
52

The College Man in Doubt
but only thoughtful seriousness of heart, will pre
pare you to hear the oracles of worshiping nature,
and once hearing, you will as soon doubt your
own life as their testimony. Or again, if you
prefer the companionship of books, then the
weighted shelves of historical literature in your
college library stand ready to teach you of that
"increasing purpose" which runs through the
ages and which is the most inexplicable phenom
enon of mankind's long story, unless an over
ruling Intelligence be received into the marvelous
account. So, too, your philosophic studies, lead
ing you to reason from the limited to the absolute,
bespeak the Absolute Existence. In a word, your
fortune to be a college student would seem to
come of God's own plan for setting you in his
very presence chamber, so that you of all men
might not mistrust either his being or his power.
But should you have been always well con
vinced that there is a God, — or should you be
guided by any means into that conviction, — it
ought not to be hard for you to advance thence
to the second step of that primary creed which
we have found in Hebrews — the faith that God
will reward those who seek after him. This foun
dation principle must be true; it cannot be others
wise, for the converse is irrational. The Infinite
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Mind has marked plain paths through the physi
cal universe; every human mind that follows
after is rewarded with the satisfactions of reason,
system, and law, — the messages of intellect to
intellect. Shall divine thought then take care for
answers to the inquiry of men in things material,
but only mock with indifferent silence the cries
that resound through spiritual darkness ? Or is
it possible that God, viewing his children of earth
with omniscient eyes, can behold any soul strug
gling toward him, craving to know him and be
like him, and contemptuously deny it aid? Sooner
might a mother turn from the appealing hands of
her child. No noble-hearted man ever sees a
fellow-mortal reaching upward for better knowl
edge or for better life without sympathy for his
aspirations, and as heaven is higher than the
earth, so much more positive is the certainty of
God's sympathy for every lofty longing, and the
assurance that his sympathy will not die till
translated into help. By every conception of
goodness and kindness which we refer in our
ideals to the eternal throne, — as well as by the
witness of his apostle, — we must believe this, —
that God is a rewarder of them that seek after
him. It is the portal of faith ; once within it the
whole field of Christian trust spreads before you,
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a possibility now, — soon, we may hope, to be a
realization. Are you willing then to throw yourself upon
God as the rewarder of your seeking ? To say
seriously and intensely that you are willing sol
emnly pledges you always to seek and keep seek
ing. To weary in the pursuit of truth, to cool
in the consuming desire to know the realities of
God, is to forfeit the heavenly promise of en
lightenment; to put yourself logically out of the
reach of illumination. God cannot shine into a
face that is not lifted toward him in the ardor of
desire for light. He cannot beckon to a soul that
is not watching him, nor lead a soul too indolent
to follow. 'If, then, you are truly and thoroughly
in earnest, as it behooves a man of conscience
and thoughtfulness to be, you will understand
with yourself from this moment, that for life and
all, irrevocably, you constitute yourself a searcher
for God. And in that search the single confidence
that God will reward may be your constant, life
long guiding star. It will lead you first into the
outer circles of spiritual knowledge; thence as
you follow on it will bring you far into the inner
regions of immortal truth. Even when you have
entered but a little into this wonderful path of
divine learning, you will begin to draw the under-
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scorings of experience beneath your confession of
faith : " That he is, and that he is a rewarder of
them that seek after him." And your rejoicing
progress thereafter will but day by day strengthen
that attestation. Apart from any sort of fulfill
ment, however, it would still be glorious to rest in
so sublime a trust, — a trust that reaches forth to
cling to the surest fact in all the illimitable crea
tion, — that God loves us.
As you feel your way out of your wilderness,
you will discover that the questions of belief which
you encounter part themselves into two classes
by their relations to conduct. Certain of them
immediately touch the order of your life. Believ
ing or disbelieving will shift the view of duty and
vary action. But others are so remote from per
sonal morals that they cannot affect character
directly. It cannot cause the least difference in
your behavior toward God or man whether you
think there were two Isaiahs or one. But whether
Christ Jesus is worthy to be trusted for the salva
tion of your soul from sin is an instant and urgent
problem on which issues of the hour and of eter
nity alike depend. Manifestly, you must recog
nize this inherent classification. Vital matters
must be first and emergently dealt with, as sur
geons work with hasty care upon capital opera-
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tions. Repentance, forgiveness, and regeneration,
— if upon these fundamentals of your relation to
the heavenly Father you can muster no clear
thought, you must attain understanding of them
the soonest that struggle will bring you to it.
Perhaps veritable travail of soul must be under
gone ere you are rid of misgivings, but you dare
not rest without the knowledge of God's essen
tial will for you. Till you know it, you cannot
do it, and till you do it, you cannot be either a
safe man, a pure man, or a man of spiritual in
sight. But as these matters of primary personal
duty are the most imperative, so a loving God,
with divine forethought, has laid them nearest the
entrance of his treasure house — the earliest, sim
plest but richest reward of those who " seek
after him." To repent of sins, to pray for pardon,
to pledge by the grace of Jesus Christ to do the
right as you learn it, — such are the first require
ments of revealed religion. There is no other re
sponse of God quite so -ready, quick, and joyful as
that which welcomes the soul that in these things
comes subjecting itself to the Father of spirits
that it may live. Other things aside, seek first
the kingdom of God. If you have not yet expe
rienced that transforming reorganization of the
soul which we call conversion, determine to know
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its holy miracle for yourself before you attempt
the solution of any other secret. But if already
you have been received into the brotherhood of
the Elder Brother, cling fast to that royal adop
tion as to the surest passport to the regions of
spiritual revelation beyond.
But once on secure footing with God, you will
make yourself most comformable to his laws of
instruction, and to his manner of training men, if
you are satisfied to go forward from that point
slowly, even ploddingly. The divine Teacher is
a wise teacher. No student is crowded in his
school. There are sequences in the growth of the
soul of man and there are sequences in the system
of truth, and God will not violate in either case the
order that he himself has marked out. It is not of
his desire that your spirit should be weighed down
by a dozen burdensome puzzles together. He
means you to take them one by one. Begin with
the problem nearest you, and when under patient,
prayerful study it begins to grow clearer, pass on
humbly to the next. Make no haste; your heav
enly Instructor is not hasting. Some knowledge
you must live into; it becomes a possession only
by the slow means of assimilation. Other knowl
edge you must rise into; you cannot perceive it
until you have climbed to its plane. Some things
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you must learn out of your own chastening; some
out of other men's struggles. Only if day by day
you are still learning, still advancing, be content.
Were the full glories of God's ways and works to
burst upon your dazzled vision with a sudden
noontide of light, your staggering soul would fall
smitten with the overwhelming disclosure. But
some day when — not upon this earth — you stand
enveloped in the trailings of that light which
clothes him as with a garment, you will be glad
that its surpassing beauty dawned upon you by
more and more, as on fair mornings the coming
sunshine rises and increases from a faint glow in
the east unto the perfect day.
The doubts that most and longest annoy the
average student — artd this probably but records
your own experience — stand between him and
the Bible. For victory over these persecutors
there is one universal method — break through
them all to the Bible itself. Anyone can doubt
the Scriptures at a distance, but few from close at
hand. That book of all generations is its own
strongest champion; its own conclusive inter
preter. Familiarity with it is the most efficacious
antidote to unfaith in it. So that with whatever
questionings concerning its authority or its con
tents you may come, the first good service which
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a wise friend may do you is simply to send you
back to read again its pages with new attentive-
ness — to read until its thought saturates you and
its purpose irradiates you. Determine to survey
the Bible first and last with broad and balanced
fairness — not grubbing your whole time away in
dark and obscure places, but honestly following
the chain of its history and poetry and wisdom
out and up into the brightness of its clearest at
mosphere and into the sublimity of its loftiest
heights. Do justice enough to these writings to
study them and appropriate them as you would
any secular literature — first digesting the more
easily comprehended portions and then using your
understanding of them to give you mastery over
the involved and subtle passages. The Bible is
surely entitled to be judged by what you do un
derstand of it ; not by what you do not under
stand. There must be a power in the volume as
good as the best and highest of its teachings.
Look for that highest and best and gauge the
worth of the word by what would be lost to the
world if that were lost. Not in hasty, half frivo
lous visits to its pages, but in quiet, continued,
serious communion there, make friends with the
Bible, and then say whether other books speak to
the soul with such strange, sweet charm as does
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Your judgment on the authority of the Bible
will turn, when analysis is made, upon two ques
tions : First, is it reasonable'to suppose that the
great Creator God would reveal himself and his
will to his creatures on earth? And next, is the
Bible of a character to make credible its claim
to be such a revelation? To the first inquiry,
nothing but a strong affirmative seems a possible
answer. Every natural human expectancy joins
in one long call from the seen to the unseen world
for the opening of the unseen's mysteries. The
absolute inability of flesh and blood to penetrate
those secrets from without ; our essential need of
instruction whereby we may shape our lives ac
cording to the laws of that enduring life which we
vaguely feel engulfing our mortality; and the un
conquerable assurance of our hearts that whatever
God is, he is at least a down-reaching love, — all
these combine in a cumulative conviction that
God must by some means have spoken under
standing^ to man. That a lasting record should
be made of this divine bequest of truth, so that
generation after generation might profit by the
priceless heritage, would still further accord with
our intuitive measure of the length and breadth of
heavenly purposes. If there is an incorruptible
and unfading estate to which the Father desires to
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lead his earthly children, it is a thousand times
more likely that he will give them a guidebook to
direct the way than that he will leave them to
stumble and wander undirected. Hypothesis, on
reason's ground, must needs leave large room for
a revelation from God above. Is the Bible great
enough to fill that void ?
The answer is not to be written in the terms of
argument. You must feel the answer for yourself.
Does the Bible satisfy your soul ? Does it bear
the commission of its divine authorship as it enters
your life? These are test inquiries to which you
must individually make reply in the lone fear and
presence of God. A notable lover of the word
once said that he believed in the Bible because
" it found him lower down than any other book."
Is not something like that true in your life? Do
not its trenchant strokes of truth startle you with
descriptions of your own sin, your own folly, your
own weakness, more vivid and precise than your
nearest fellow could tell, — nay, more exact than
you yourself could put in language? Are there
not scriptural voices for your innermost fears,
your deepest longings, your most secret intents,
than which you could frame no other expression
so adequate? On the opposite hand, does not the
Bible lift you higher than aught in human compo-
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sition? Does your soul soar elsewhere so purely
and so loftily above the dross of worldly trifling
as on the incensed praises of David and the im
passioned raptures of Isaiah? And above all, can
any other source supply such a Saviour as the
gospels depict, — a divine Rescuer compassion
ately come down out of heaven to share the low
liest conditions and bitterest woes of dwellers on
earth, so that thenceforth forever the worst and
saddest of men^might know that a sympathetic
Jesus had gone their painful way before them?
Transcendent Nazarene ! who save by imparted
powers could paint his immortal portrait in the
Bible? Verily, is not the book so supernally illu
minated worthy to be the one epochal message of
God to man? Is not the book which speaks with
the calm surety of knowledge respecting that
eternal life whereof other volumes only guess — is
not this written in the natural speech of heaven?
Must not these oracles which read us better than
we can read ourselves be instinct with the wisdom
of the Author of human nature? And these words
of love which fit the soul as a pillow fits a tired
head — are they less than the accents of a world-
embracing, time-embracing infinitude of pity?
Surely it cannot be but that at length you must
behold in the Bible the indubitable revelation of
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God, and hence the one and only infallible rule of
faith and practice for the guidance of your conduct.
Coming to the Bible, let us come to find what
it is — not to try whether it squares with such and
such a creed and this or that interpretation. The
Bible did not grow in the clamp-locks of a theory,
and it cannot be rightly read within a wooden
frame. The learner of its wisdom must use one
constant criterion for every verse : What was
this meant to mean ? Literal ^senses for pas
sages figuratively intended and figurative senses
where the purpose of the writer was literal are
equally blinding errors. To appreciate the Bible
at its just valuation, moreover, the student needs
keenly to separate the localisms and temporalities
of its origin from those perpetual, inwrought
principles that determine its spirit and give it life
and power eighteen centuries after the canon of
Scripture was complete. This reasonably done,
it will perplex you no longer if the revelation
to the untutored Hebrews at Sinai seems less
spiritual and spiritualizing than the revelation to
the circle of disciples in the upper guest chamber
of a Jerusalem mansion. Indeed, the historical
defenses of Scripture are thrice strengthened if
there proves to be a progression in biblical mes
sages answerable to the cyclic advances of man-
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kind. It would be much less than a divine discre
tion which could not grade its teaching to the
capacities of the taught. A Genesis which reads
like a primer is, considering the state of those who
first heard it read, more palpably from heaven
than would be a Genesis which read like a treatise
on cosmogony. If Moses understood less of God
than Paul did, it is no greater marvel than is any
other aspect of the constant evolution of the race,
while it is still less strange that God should shine
fairer to men through the man who knew him
better. Whether the Bible is inerrant in the technical
sense is a subordinate matter, and by no means
identical with the question of its inspiration. In
errancy is a subject for research, not a theorem
quod erat demonstrandum. No believer in the
Bible believes it because it has been proved to
him to be without mistake ; in the nature of things
such a negative proposition would admit no more
than bare presumptive proof. We are convinced
of the heavenly origin of the book, not by its
manifested accuracy but by larger and higher cre
dentials, — by its majesty, its morality, its ear
nestness, its force, its felt sincerity, and its com
manding spirit of universal love, all worthy of a
supreme authorship. Impelled by the weight of
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such evidence to acknowledge the Scriptures as
the revealed word of God, we have our Father's
sure benevolence to be our pledge that nothing
therein can mislead us. It is safe to trust a
loving God's message ; no syllable in it, relied
upon, can betray us to danger or disaster, — or
else in sad literalism we have verily made God a
liar. But when we are once established in this
unfaltering assurance, it becomes to us a mere
theme of detail to inquire by what method God
has constructed his revelation. We have no right
to manufacture a method for him a priori. If it
should appear that the divine mind ignored the
liability of its human agents to accidental mis
statement in trifles, we could accept the fact
without disturbing our faith in the truth and last
ing supremacy of the Bible, for the grandeur of
its character and purpose would remain undimmed.
Such inaccuracies exist in the best of men's works,
but do not prevent our receiving those of due
authority as reliable and trustworthy. How much
less should they — if discovered at all — hinder our
accepting the word of God. But on the other
hand, if it should be evident that the inspiring
Spirit cleared all earthly fallibilities from the
minds of the scriptural writers, we should only
admire the more and give God thanks. In any
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case, the Bible is our safe and unerring court of
appeal when we seek to know God's pleasure
concerning us, or to inform ourselves of his
standards of right, for therefor was it given.
Having overmastered by honest reason and
God's enlightenment your doubts respecting the
Scriptures ; having unreservedly received and
acknowledged them as supreme over your belief
and your actions, the rest of your way to cer
tainty, though long perchance, is plain. It only
remains for you to learn what the oracles of reve
lation teach relative to the problems that have
troubled you. The immediately needful things —
"the things that accompany salvation" — you
will find emblazoned there clear enough for the
wayfarer. The solution of deeper questions may
be more profoundly hidden and may demand pro
longed and persistent study. But it is not of
God's laws to give men gold without digging, and
the Bible is a mine on which serious labor cannot
be spent profitlessly. The conditions of suc
cessful truth-learning from the Scriptures are
simple. First, there must be in your heart a
real prayer, uttered or unexpressed, that the
divine Spirit will irradiate, before the eyes of
your understanding, the message which he has
written, — for there is no other Bible expositor
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like to the Author himself. Then you must bring
to the book a truthful mind, willing without preju
dice to hear what God says and to obey what
God commands. In an earlier chapter have been
named certain mental states that are fatal to right
apprehension of biblical word and doctrine. If
you take pleasure in believing what no one else
believes, you are a sorrowfully warped man. If
you fear to believe what nobody else believes,
you are equally warped. If you can be measured
by the plummet, you are solely and superlatively
anxious to believe the eternal fact. To study the
Bible for argument's sake is to blind your soul's
eyes, and set your reason halting lamely on un
equal feet. To study it for curiosity's sake is to
go wandering after mirages in a desert. To study
it for life's sake is to unlock the gateway to that
path of the righteous which " is as the shining
light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect
day." This is not a work on evidences, — to repeat
what has been said before, — and there is no room
in it to follow through more specific discussion
separate phases of doubt or explicit difficulties in
Christian belief. The considerations of this chap
ter, generalized as they are, must be left with
you, brother in college, for application on your
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own part to your especial perplexities. They are
so submitted in the fervent trust that some word
here spoken may assist you to see that God is
reasonable and that he has addressed himself
reasonably to his children. If feeling this, you
will but meet him in reason and in the obedient
humility which in the presence of the Creator be
fits the creature, it is the confidence of at least
one friend of yours that in due time every haze
and mist will be swept away, and save for that
glass through which mortality still sees darkly,
you will behold in unmistaken faith the Divinity
over us and that divine destiny to which calling
" the voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea."

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CHAPTER VI
THE SPIRITUAL BATTLE AGAINST DOUBT
Jesus Christ had one supreme resolvent to re
commend to all doubters : "If any man willeth
to do his will, he shall know of the teaching,
whether it be of God or whether I speak from
myself." He has given to one of his modern
prophets — the sainted Horace Bushnell — the in
spiration to set forth the reverse, the completing
hemisphere, of this vastly inclusive principle in
words deserving to be as immortal as Scripture
itself : " There is no fit search for truth which
does not first of all begin to live the truth it
knows." To this climax then, brother student, all argu
ment and all appeal designed to extricate you from
your doubts must come at length. Even when
syllogism has been piled on syllogism in one im
pregnable and overtopping order of logic, and you
are stripped clean of every disagreeing answer or
protest, still you will lack in knowledge of the
kingdom of heaven if only your intelligence is
touched. " The natural man," said Paul, with
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the emphasis of one not recording an observation
but enouncing a law, " receiveth not the things
of the Spirit of God, . . . and he cannot know
them because they are spiritually judged." The
facts of religion are thus declared to be discern
ible only from the spiritual standpoint, and that
standpoint is to be attained only by living the
spiritual life. This is not because Christianity
is an occult system with some mystical cabala to
be imparted to its initiates, but for two very
reasonable reasons, whose sufficiency and neces
sity can be seen even from without.
The first of these is that experience has the
same verifying value in religion that it has in any
material relation of life. In mathematics you re
alize the meaning of the rule for the extraction of
roots only when you have applied it to extract
roots. Chemical formulae grow really significant
only after you have begun to arrive at them by
your own analyses. We look for a man to de
velop thorough mastery of medicine or law only
when he has been long engaged in the practice of
his profession. Desiring to learn of Italy, we
consult by all preference the traveler who has
been in Italy. Throughout everyday affairs we
count deep knowledge possible only in those who
have lived through and through the things they
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know. And exactly likewise it is possible for
none but the vital Christian to comprehend the
intrinsic verities of vital Christianity.. The re
ligion of Christ has an interior aspect peculiar
to itself, just as has any majestic palace, and it is
no more mysticism to say that the best truth of
the gospel cannot be divined except from within,
than it is mystical to say that sightseers in the
streets cannot know the palace chambers as famil
iarly as do the happy residents there. God
is all the time bidding you, begging you, to
come in and explore the ample expanses of his
grace. The second reason why the ultimate cure of
doubt is in living is that God does not, will not,
— yea, cannot, — extend the inestimable favor of
his instruction to the trifling and frivolous, to the
merely curious, or to the hypocritic. The Father
will not foster moral dilettanteism. God's school
is too crowded to find place for the undevoted
pupil ; his teaching too precious to waste on the
dallier. Ere we can sit at his feet, we must give
pledge that we are heart and soul and all in earnest,
for every throb of the universe testifies that
the Teacher is in earnest, and that mightily.
The pledge required is this searching test — that
whatsoever we have learned we shall do. That
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man who has molded the word which was given
him into an agreeing act is granted a new lesson.
When he has added that, too, to his rising
character, his reward is more truth, which means
more duty. So is fulfilled to him "in measure
wasteless " the promise of the Master, "Unto
every one that hath shall be given, and he shall
have abundance." And advancing so from step
ping-stone to stepping-stone of honest truth-
doing, the faithful learner of things invisible is led
joyfully into the secret places of his God, where
trust is all but seeing, and the soul in exaltation
of assurance cries, " I know." But to that
" wicked and slothful servant," who, for his slug
gishness or his sin, will not obey the heavenly
vision, there remains only deepening blackness of
darkness. He cannot challenge Almighty Wisdom
to a tournament of discussion where the good to
be gained is merely the laurels of debate. The
business of salvation is heavy upon the omniscient
Spirit, and he will not stay to argue away the be
loved errors of a soul who will not be saved.
That soul must champ upon doubts till the day of
doom, but " if any man willeth to do his will, he
shall know of the teaching."
What then, brother ? The solemn question
looms high in your face. Are you, as searcher
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for the truth, willing to live the truth you know?
Dare you profess yourself ready to practice what
soever you become convinced is right ; to forsake
whatsoever you are persuaded is wrong? Are
you prepared to shift the base of your truth-
seeking to the headquarters of your conscience?
Do you supremely desire to discover spiritual
reality for the sake of a real life? Before such a
stupendous catechism we may well shrink away,
but ere long, clothed in the strength of Jesus
Christ, we must advance and reply with one
great soul-thrilled "Yes." Otherwise we shall
make nothing but an apparent and worthless prog
ress toward any satisfaction or rest. But fol
lowing in the way of duty you will have daily
repeated upon you the miracle of Christ opening
the eyes of the blind. The secret of dissipating
every doubt will be found wrapped up in the
method of living it away. If the doctrine of
prayer is a difficulty to you, solve it by praying.
If the value of the Scriptures is problematic to
you, work it out by studying the Bible. If you
are weak in faith of Christ's power to renovate
the evil affections of mankind, submit your own
evil affections to him for renewal. If you ques
tion whether his death and sufferings are efficient
for redemption from sin, bring the crucified
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Saviour to the worst sinner within your reach.
If you do not fully trust his providential leadings,
yield yourself to be led and throw your future
upon him. It is the universal touchstone of truth
— the godly life. You are inevitably bounden in
error without it; you are, possessing it, endowed
with treasures of an imperishable knowledge.
Set like a lofty but still closed doorway in the wall
of a dim cloister was one immeasurable sentence
in the last discourse of Jesus to his disciples:
" When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall
guide you into all the truth." The day of Pen
tecost did behold that promised Comforter de
scend, evermore till the end of time to remain
among men. Thenceforward that door in the
cloister wall has been continually open, and
through it successive generations of devout be
lievers, in the ineffable company that Jesus fore
told, have been guided into truth. It is reserved
for you to join that guided throng. For deeper
than thought and remoter than words, there is a
hidden contact of Spirit with spirit — the inner
most seal, the ultimate token, the essential fact,
of Christian experience, — the entrance of the
divine Soul to meet the human soul in their com
mon sphere of existence. And in that touch the
Spirit will make you know, if you heed, what
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no friend may utter nor you yourself repeat.
Up from this fountain, this everlasting spring of
living water within you, must you draw the final
assurance, the last and sufficient confidence, that
will not simply remedy doubt but will render
doubt to you forever impossible. This is beyond
and better than the simple boon of satisfying
answer to this or that question. God is lavish of
his specific replies. But he has provided this
other form of answer, as comprehensive as the
immensity of space, ready in due time to reward
those who " follow on to know the Lord." It is
this rest of soul in the revealing Paraclete — not a
refutation of error but a defeat of it, not a proof
of truth but a sense of it. Out of such great
calmness spoke Paul : " I know him whom I have
believed." Consent not to stop short of that
supreme certainty.

Under the starry midnight sky it is good to take
one's lonely stand and watch the wheeling orbs of
the heavens roll on their ordered march. They
are so mighty; I am so small. They cannot care
what I think of them. Did I question through all
my earthly years whether they are swift suns of
fire or only tiny, glistening gems set in a solid
firmament, my doubt would hinder not the least of
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them on its circling journey by the fraction of a
second. The intricate machinery of a perfect
universe would still work in and out by day and
night unchanged by my puny ignorance or unfaith.
I make no difference to the stars. But the stars
make difference to me. Because they are orbs of
a boundless realm, and not jewels of a near-by
canopy, I cannot afford to be ignorant of the
truth, and it is worth labors unending to know
the stars as they are.
God's spiritual universe likewise is as it is.
Our doubts, our cavils, our speculations, do not
change it. Ever while we guess, or perchance
even vaunt ourselves in our skepticism, the
potent laws which he has ordained infallibly and
irresistibly go on their silent way above us. It is
for naught that we make theories and devise
systems. The ages laugh at our belated labor.
Let us look upward and see the stars shining in
our spiritual sky, and determine, if God will, that
we shall know them simply as they are.
The intellect borrows one passion from the
sensibilities — the passion for truth. Once it is
set on fire, that passion burns up pride of opinion,
prejudice against change, and fear of men, and
with the flame illuminates the straight but rugged
path to fact. May God set that flame alight in
77

The College Man in Doubt
your mind, brother, and direct your steps in that
path. Finally, may He make you a glad illustration
of his Son's glorious pledge to those who abide
in his word :
" Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free."

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