Over and over again, since that time, I have asked myself these same
questions about many other young men from many other public schools. I
honour the army as much as most men, more perhaps than many do: but
after all the profession of a soldier is the profession of a
throat-cutter; throat-cutting in an extensive, expeditious, and
honourable way,—throat-cutting in one direction often undertaken merely
to prevent throat-cutting in another direction—but still throat-cutting
after all: and it seemed very hard to believe that the profession of
throat-cutting is, and ought to be, a better preparation than the
pursuit of learning at the Universities, for participation in the Holy
Communion. On the whole I was led to the conclusion that the young men
in the army had retained and deepened the instinctive obedience to
authority, the sense of the need of the subordination of the individual
to the community, and perhaps also the feeling of reverence, while they
had not been taught so fully to appreciate all that was implied in
attendance at Communion or to realize the intellectual difficulties
presented by the New Testament. In other words—to put it briefly and
roughly—the young cadets and officers came to Communion because they had
been taught to feel and not taught to think; and the University men
stayed away because they had been taught to think and not to feel. Now I
will ask you to excuse me if I suggest that the principal danger to your
character at present arises from the want of such discipline as may be
obtained by some in the army, and by others in the practical work of
life. You need some emotional and moral exercise to counterbalance your
mental and intellectual training. You are not aware how much of the most
valuable knowledge, conviction, certainty—call it what you will, but I
mean that kind of moral and spiritual knowledge which is the basis of
all right conduct—springs in the main from spiritual and emotional
sources.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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