It is also a mistake to suppose that the student mind reacts unfavorably against serious things. It may appreciate the witticism which helps to illuminate a serious point in the discussion, and a first class reductio ad absurdum nearly always clinches a proposition, but mere buffoonery will make a small and brief appeal. The person who attempts thus to denature the gospel he preaches will not meet with permanent favor. This is the case because the student mind is essentially serious. One might not think so after a superficial observance of student actions, but it is so nevertheless. The very laughter and jesting one hears in student circles often mask the most earnest questionings, the deepest longings, and the most serious attitudes. So long as one keeps himself, as he should do, within the limits of honest conviction, and so long as one speaks, as he should speak, in the spirit of love and good will, no other class of people in the world is so ready to have him be brutally frank as are college students. In fact, they discount him if he shows any evidence of evasion or accommodation. They may be right about some things and wrong about other things, but they are honest in all things, and they expect him to be the same. Any one of the fields of thought and knowledge is a serious matter with the honest investigator. It is so dealt with in the classroom and the laboratory. To the student religion is just one more field to be explored. If he does not care to explore it, he does not bother. If he does care to explore it, he does not regard it as a joke. The person who thus approaches it with a sincere purpose should receive honest help. All this leads me to the point where I can say that one of the fine things about the student mind is that it has discarded all traditions and prejudices. It approaches any matter with a disposition to find and face the facts, whatever the consequences may be. It is a real _tabula rasa_, upon which one may write—provided he has a stylus that is sharp enough. Surely this is an opportunity to bring delight to the soul of the honest preacher. The most deadening thing in the world, intellectually and spiritually, is the practice of preaching platitudes and maintaining traditions which are proven, outworn, or unimportant—maybe all three. The most uncomfortable position in which any sincere preacher can find himself is one in which such a type of service is demanded. The preacher to college students finds himself in no such position. He may go anywhere he likes within the limits of the field of truth. He has no traditions to maintain. He is bound by no trammels of creed or dogma. He is not checked by any barriers of prejudice. His way is open. He has but to walk in it in the spirit of reverence and honesty. He is dealing with adventurous minds whose one concern is truth. The mind of Jesus was such a one, and such an audience really challenges a preacher to approach questions in the spirit of the Great Teacher.