Looking Back: Our Colleges

From February 1924

“Meal Monday” in our Scottish Universities still preserves a link with the heroic days of oatmeal and the midnight tallow-candle, when “plain living and high thinking” gave to our Church and nation and to lands beyond the seas some of the best of Scotland’s sons. Times have changed; but the place of the Universities and the younger Training Colleges and Technical Schools in the life of the nation is as important as ever.

Each of these colleges represents a busy, active stream of life, constantly enriched and renewed by a fresh generation of students. Together they are sending forth thousands of men and women each year to take their places as the ministers, teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists, and journalists of the future. In the class-room and the constant bustle of student life, character is being moulded, opinions and convictions formed, and the whole outlook on life modified and developed. With the influx of new ideas, old familiar beliefs and habits have to stand the test of analysis and searching criticism.

It is thus significant that in the midst of this busy life there exist groups of students, organised by student leaders and united through the British Isles in a fellowship of students, “who desire to understand the Christian faith and to live the Christian life,” and who profess to see in Christ “the one sure guide for all mankind in every sphere of thought and conduct.”

The Student Christian Movement had its origin in the days of Henry Drummond. During the thirty years of its life it has grown steadily, until now it has its branches in practically every University and College in the United Kingdom. Since its first beginnings it has sent over two thousand of its members abroad on missionary service, and it has had a deep influence on the student life of the whole country.

When we think in terms not of one nation alone but of the whole world we realise more readily to what extent the future depends on the present generation of students. In Universities and Colleges throughout the entire world, a great body of men and women are preparing for tasks of leadership in the different nations. Wherever there are students, the World Student Christian Federation is to be found. Movements such as that in Britain are actively at work, or pioneer efforts are being attempted for the spread of the Christian gospel.

The British Movement has appointed Sunday 24th February as a day of special prayer for students throughout the world, and for the work of the Federation of which it is a part.

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