THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3613, 12 June 1923, Page 65

THE SKETCHER.

RELIGION AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION. “There can, I think, be little question as to the truth of the general impression that something has happened to the religion of our young people,” writes James Bissett Pratt in the Yale Review. “They do not believe wnat their predecessors believed; they do not express the feelings their predecessors felt and expressed; they do not act as their predecessors acted. Most important of all, they are not interested in the religious things that interested the older generatipn. Their grandfathers believed the Creed; their fathers a little doubted the Creed; they have never read it. I purposely put the matter in exaggerated form, but as a bare outline of the general impression many people are getting from what they regard as ‘typical’ representatives of the rising generation, this will fairly serve. “This impression is probably due chiefly to the attitude of some of our young people towards the churches. Thus the Congregationalist tell us that: ‘The vast majority of (college) students are not interested in the church. They have no sense of the importance of the church. They have relegated the church beyond the horizon of their interests.’ And in another connection the same periodical speaks of the ‘coldly critical and even contemptuous attitude towards Christianity’ shown by many young men and women in contrast to the ‘fervent faith and consecrated spirit’ of ‘their fathers and mothers.’ “The more extreme representatives oi these so-called typical young people go to church neither to pray nor to scoff; if they can help it they simply do not go. If they go they are well behaved but inwardly bored. Contrast with the Past.— “Of course, many do still fervently go to church as their fathers went, and eagerly listen to the sermon as their fathers listened, and inwardly feel as their fathers felt; but I have in mind that large portion of the younger genera tion —whether a minority or a majority I know not' —which is developing an attitude towards religion seldom met with 30 or 40 years ago, and which, therefore, sets the tone for the general impression that the observer inevitably forms. These voung people are as far removed from heresy as from orthodoxy. “Year by year this contrast witli the past becomes more marked—as, 1 think, every college teacher, everyone who is brought into contact with the development of thoughtful young men and women, must note. For nearly 20 years I have been giving a course on the history ot religions. I remember with what hesitancy and with what precaution, in the first years of my teaching. I turned from China, India, and Persia, and approached the religion of the Old Testament. The transition had to be made with all the sympathetic skill I could muster; and never a year went bv hut some of my students came to me after sleepless nights, wearied with inner struggle, sometimes with indignant voices, to talk out, after class, the implications involved in the Higher Criticism and in the attempt to deal with the Hebrew religion in the same historical light as we had studied Hinduism and Buddhism. All this is changed now. So Great a Change.— “The youth of every age have probably been looked upon somewhat askance by their elders as radical or irreligious. Yet it is certainly true that not often has the change in religious attitude from one generation to another been so great as has the change that we are observing to-day. A large proportion of our young men and women not only do not "know what they believe on religious and cosmic matters, but in an unusual degree have little care to come to any conclusion. They feel much less need of -a creed or of any definite form of faith than most youthful generations have felt. They have probably less respect for authority than any of their predecessors have had since the Renaissance. ‘“The question really at issue is this: Have the younger generation, in throwing aside (or in being deprived of) some ot the traditional ‘forms’ of religion, lost anything of solid and vital importance; anything that is essential to or helpful for the .values of life? I use both the phrases essential to and helpful for the values of life because the two are by no means identical and both must be considered. The double question is plainly, in the last analysis, one of psychology. “Are the traditional forms of religion which the young seem to have laid aside, essential to the values of life? And, first of ail, are they essential to religion? On this question there can he little doubt that the position of the optimists is unshakable. Religion and also life can get on —can continue ts exist—without these forms, because both life ana religion are deeper and more fundamental than any forms of expression or means of cultivation can be. The Young Generation.— “The young people of our day are doubtless by nature just as religious as any of the older generations. It will not do, indeed, to say that man has a religious instinct; yet it will be very near the truth to assert that man is instinctively religious, and that, therefore, no surrender of traditional creeds and institutions can deprive him of religion. Given a being endowed, as man is, with the emotions of awe and reverence, with the sentiment of love, with curiosity intensified by reason into an incipiently metaphysical or cosmic sense—given such a being, you are bound to find emerging in his consciousness that attitude towards the Determiner of Destiny which is, psychologically considered, what we mean by religion.

Forms of Religion.— “The forms which our traditional Christianity has developed are, therefore, by no means essential to religion, and the fact that the younger generation make less use of them than did their predecessors by no means proves that they are irreligious. “If, however, both life and religion can get on without the traditional forms of expression and cultivation which past generations have made use of, it does not necessarily follow that they can get on just as well, or that these ancient rites can be dropped without genuine loss to the values of life. Here, in fact, is the real heart of the question. And if we are to discuss it intelligently, our first effort should plainly he to define more clearly than we have yet done what these ‘traditional forms’ of religion are. I am not sure that I can tell all that should he included under this term, but the main part of its meaning will, I think, be summed up under the following four heads ; a definite faith ; a revered and familiar sacred book ; a religious sanction for morality* a systematic and deliberate cultivation of the spiritual life, both public and private—through institutional activities, and through prayer, reading, and contemplation. A Sacred Text.“A revered and familiar sacred text contributes much less to life than does a religious faith, and its value has been very greatly exaggerated. Doubtless the xiible was a real help to the Hebrews and the Puritans of old ; but we do not know just how well they might have done with some substitute for it, and we do know the pernicious extremes to which reverence for its letter has often been carried. There can be little ouestion, however, that every great religion has owed much of its beneficent power to the sacredness of its texts; and that the inner lives of Christians, especially of Protestant Christians, have been peculiarly enriched by the nobler passages of the Bible that have been and are still their familiar and most revered possessions and the constant companions of their pilgrimage. But not everyone realises the extent to which this contribution which the Bible is able to make is due to the fact that its passages were first learned and loved in early childhood and as sacred words. Met with for the first time at a later age, they could never have this power. Treated as purely secular writings they could never have this power. The inner hold that the Bible has had over the souls of men has been due to the fact that, with its own inherent nobility, it has come into the life of the impressionable child or youth and has borne the seal of the community’s reverence. “‘Men can get on without the Bible. They can live good and religious lives without it, or without any sacred book. The man who does not know' the Bible, or whose acquaintance with it has begun in unimpressionable middle age, will probably never know that he is missing anything. But it will still be true that he lacks one of the chief aids to quiet confidence and active inspiration W'hich for 19 centuries Christians have possessed, and for which he has no adequate substitute. Prospect for the Future.— “What, then, is the prospect for the future? Not altogether dark, I think. For, as has been pointed out, religion is too fundamental to human nature ever to be lost. Our younger people are truly religious at bottom; and while they do not seem to be spending much of their time remembering their Creator in the days of their -youth, the clays are ahead of them in which the exigencies of life will inevitably thrust upon their attention the eternal problems and bring them more and more into some religious attitude. “The spiritual life of man will always be capable of intense cultivation, hv the old methods and doubtless by new and as yet unguessed ones, for all those who realise that it is worth the effort required.”