Such an impression is not general among those who are familiar
with the inner working of the undergraduate mind and have watched
the result of his philosophy in practical works. Many of the
vital movements of the time have originated among these seemingly
thoughtless college men. It was in a small room at Princeton, in
the year 1876, that Cleveland H. Dodge, W. Earl Dodge, and Luther
D. Wishard, after earnest conversation regarding the moral and
religious life of the institution, decided to send delegates to
the next year’s Convention of the International Committee of Young
Men’s Christian Associations, held in Louisville, Kentucky. This
delegation presented to the International Committee plans for the
Student Young Men’s Christian Association at Princeton. Other
groups of undergraduates took similar action both in America and
in other countries, until at present the World’s Student Christian
Federation includes 148,300 students and professors in its
membership. These federated movements represent twenty-one nations.
In connection with these societies during the last college season
66,000 students met regularly for Bible study.
These associations at the colleges have given rise to many other
organizations which have stimulated the educated life of the
world. The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, which
originated in connection with a student conference at Mount
Hermon, Massachusetts, in the year 1886, has been responsible for
enlisting thousands of collegians who have been sent by churches
and Christian organizations to serve in foreign lands. This student
missionary organization is also accomplishing an educational work
in familiarizing undergraduates with the social, political, and
religious conditions of foreign nations. The college Christian
associations now have 163 graduates among their employed officers
in the institutions of higher learning in North America.
Undergraduate philosophy of life is an evolution. It consists of
three stages: the first is characterized by a sense of calamity or
fear as the student leaves behind the observances and conventional
creeds of childhood, held with unquestioning and often unthinking
assent. He begins to think for himself. He enters an atmosphere of
thoughtfulness and scientific discovery, an environment in which
facts come before opinions. His first alarm is because he thinks he
is losing his religion. He says, like the prophet Micah, when the
hostile Danites took away his images, “Ye have taken away my gods
... what have I more?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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