Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

SMAD. An Organ of Student Opinion. 1933. Volume 4. Number 1.

Letter to SMAD from J. C. Sewell

Dear "Smad, "—

Zarathrustra's apprehensions about the spread of Christianity in the College is, we hope, prophetic. He gives the student Christian Movement credit for a less direc[unclear: t] method of self-advancement than it actually adopts. Propagation rather than propaganda its mode of survival.

The Free Discussions Club is not, apparently, in its own esteem, moribund; nor could the College afford to have it so. It is lifeless only in so far as it is insincere and concentrated on debating points rather than on understanding.

Your correspondent rightly deplores lack of interest in the younger student, but it is quality rather than in quantity that the lack appears in existing societies. Interest may be in what a man can do, in what he can be made to accept intelletually or in him himself. Whichever society is most genuine in this last form of interest will have the most far-reaching effect on student bought.

Zarathrustra's interest is rather of the second type, and he exaggerates its importance in the Christian Church, where dogma and dogmatism have a poor record. Doctrine is rather another thing, and comprises the Christian phiosophy. The Student Christian Movement would be superficial indeed if it shirked the intellectual problems of the Christian. A great part of the circle discussion is devoted to an honest investigation of the doctrines which have emerged from man's consideration of Jesus Christ. But the mind, in common with other parts of a man's physical self, does not serve him best when devloped in isolation. Jesus constantly insisted that only in conjunct ion with practice could truth be grasped by the human mind and puzzlement banished. "My doctrine is not mine, but /His that sent Me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself."

One attitude implied by your correspondent I must flatly deny. The Student Christian Movement does not regard the "atheist" with contempt or animosity. For the rest, what he rather loosely calls "Divine dogma" thrives in war.

I am, etc.,

J. C. Sewell.