WITH THE TIDE

Professor Bernard Iddings Bell, of Columbia University, virtually charges in the September Atlantic Monthly that student indifference to religion is the fault of university faculties. To illustrate his contention Professor Bell relates how the Student Council at Harvard recommended in 1925 that "a new kind of required course be made available which would include the study, not merely of philosophy, but also of religion." The writer believes that the Harvard Faculty actually defeated the purpose of the recommendation. He says, "The new course has indeed been added to the curriculum, but it is only a half course, and instead of being required for a degree, it is optional and actually limited to two hundred students. Under these conditions it is obvious that the very students who most need the instruction which the new course offers will be the last to avail themselves of it."

The Professor, then, assumes that all students need to have religious understanding crammed into them by ukase, and he further assumes that students will benefit spiritually by enforced religious discipline. The idea that the sum total of a large number of people can all have that conception of and feeling toward a Delty which is religion, is patently absurd. Those familiar with the history of English-speaking peoples, from the days of Chaucer to our own, know that there has always been a large amount of definite irreligious even under an established church. There are at all times large groups of people who apparently have no need for religion, and even though they accept its outward forms, never have even a remote conception of its significance. The establishment of democracy, which meant the destruction of the "divine right" idea, at once removed the strongest aid of religion and destroyed the most palpable symbol of traditional Christianity. With the rise of industrialism the number of people who have no constant need of the mental assurance which religion provides has increased enormously.

Naturally, when these people enter college, as they do in ever increasing numbers as the aim of education becomes more professional and less cultural, they do not make a sudden metamorphosis and become pious. Nor would they be able to do this if it were required of them. True piety can be won by the individual alone. He must experience deeply much of life, and he must suffer. Since modern living conditions tend to remove the opportunities for meditation and suffering, or at least to postpone such opportunities till after college life, large numbers of students are excusably irreligious. No college course, let alone one which would presumably contain at least eight hundred men each year, could act for the individual as his own experiences would, and so supply him with real religious convictions. Such a course would repel or make hypocrites of those whom it would be intended to help.

The Harvard Faculty, far from "swimming with the tide," as the author has put it, has provided a competent officer to give religious advice to all those who need it. In doing no more it has acted wisely. Fighting the conditions and spirit of the times is a vain and thankless task. To push the issue as far as Professor Bell suggests would certain be inadvisable, and might work irreparable harm.