hat the University was but another stepping-stone, even as her
social life had been; another series of calls and opportunities to
"prove" her God to be immanent good. And she thankfully accepted its
offerings. For she was keenly alive to the materialistic leadings of
the "higher education," and she would stand as a living protest
against them.
It had not taken her long to discover the impotence lying at the heart
of so-called modern education. She had not been slow to mark the
disappointment written upon the faces of many of her fellow-students,
who had sought in vain a great awakening light in those sacred
precincts of learning, but, their confidence betrayed, were now
floundering in the devouring morass of materialism. To her keen
insight the University stood revealed as the great panderer to this
latest century's obsessing idea that the true function of education is
expressed in the imparting of changing, human information and a
training for the business of earning one's daily bread according to
the infamous code of the world's carnal social system. The University
did not meet the most urgent need of the race by equipping men to
stand against the great crises of human experience. It did not teach
men to lay aside the counterfeit man of material sense; but rather
emphasized the world's belief in the reality of this man by minutely
detailed courses in his mundane history and the manifestations of his
pitiable ignorance in his wanton crimes and watery ambitions. To
Carmen, God was the most insistent fact of creation. And mankind's
existence could find its only justification in ceaseless, consecrated
manifestation of His harmonious activity. True, the University vaguely
recognized God as infinitely competent. But in the same breath it
confessed its utter ignorance of a demonstrable knowledge of Him, to
know whom alone is life. True, these men of worldly learning prayed.
But their hollow prayers bore no hope, for they knew not how to gain
answers to them.
And yet the girl remained in her new environment, awaiting the call to
"come up higher." And meantime she strove to gain daily a wider
knowledge of the Christ-principle, and its application to the needs
and problems of her fellow-men. Her business was the reflection of her
Father's business. Other ambition she had none. The weak, transient,
flighty, so-called intellectual life which she saw about her sent no
call across the calm currents of her thought. Her education
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