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The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, June 1929

Student Christian Movement

Student Christian Movement.

"A word spoken in due season, how good its it."

—Prov. xv, 23.

Many things may go together to constitute such a season, but S.C.M. members know that when out of the tumbling mass of activity all too frequently about to overwhelm us, certain specific relations emerge and are recognised as a S.C.M. activity, then almost magically this type of word will be spoken.

Perhaps youth talks too much. As a movement we do talk about life and religion and philosophy, since many of us can look back to times when out of a heart-to-heart talk around a camp-fire, from the nature-inspired reflections of an easy hike, or even from the mutterings of a head wrapped in a perpetual rug, a new view of life has opened up before us—breathlessly we have grasped at a nearer approach of the values in the pursuit of which lies the essence of life.

But what do we do? Let us give a partial answer and an important reflection. The inspiration of Cambridge Conference—student life at its best—has been recalled at three week-end camps. The presessional camp at Trentham and a recent one at Lower Hutt both had their novelties. From the men we learn that a cold week-end was spent in song and luxury at the top of a greasy flight of steps at Haywards.

Unfortunately, we have to say good-bye to a pair of leather shorts and clear blue eyes; to a ready song and a good one; a smile which makes us wonder—in other words, to Donald Grant. We shall never forget him.

Sel Sewell has returned from India, and has enlightened many an untravelled soul. We have discussed with her the preaching and practice of religion in the East and West—a subject which supplemented an address on "Students in China," by Rev. J. M. McKenzie.

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We may talk about "Sunday Teas" and "Study Circles," or about a well-attended "Universal Day of Prayer," and an address from Mr. M. A. Tremewan, but to the uninitiated all this may mean little. To us it means an escape from the devotion of our "days to finding the rightness and wrongness of things that are never wholly either. In the S.C.M., activities are so arranged that we can adopt the position of viewing the phenomena of life as a whole, as a mixture of truth and falsehood, and as a continual struggle for a truer balance between them. The achievements of the United Student Movements, of the World Federation, its activity and undoubted scholarship, give us cause for pride for virtue lies in the exclusive pursuit of neither goal. Here we try to follow; to work and play in harmony, achieving something of the sense oneness which, because of the nature of file, permeates all activity. We make a call to all to try this with us.

"Stand in the multitude of the ancients who are wise and join thyself from the heart to their wisdom".—Ecclus vi., 34.