Nine O'Clock Talks
by the Rev. Frederic B. KelloggChaplain to Episcopal Students inCambridge, Massachusetts
Christ ChurchCambridge, Massachusetts
FOREWORD
These short sermons by the Chaplainto Episcopalian Students inCambridge are collected here for theirinterest to Christians of all ages and as areminder of the important religious workbeing carried on in colleges. It is a truismthat the years of college are crucial forstudents; it is then that their interests becomeclear and the direction of their life'swork takes shape. But for Christians, educationinvolves more than the trainingof the mind and the acquisition of knowledge;it involves, like every other phaseof life, enlistment of the will and dedicationof the spirit. Awareness of this facthas given rise increasingly in recent yearsto questions concerning the proper placeof religious teaching in the secular moderncollege and university. Withoutentering on that question here, one maybe quite certain that a chief force in thereligious life of students will always be[6]associations for devotion and discussionsuch as those conducted by Mr. Kelloggunder the auspices of the Bishop RhinelanderMemorial for Student Work.During his nearly ten years of service hehas influenced by precept and exampleliterally thousands of students. Thesesermons thus carry a double meaning.In addition to their own high value asChristian interpretations, they are tokensof a necessary work to be done.
John H. Finley, Jr.
Eliot House
Harvard University
"In the beginning God createdthe heaven and the earth."
So the Bible opens, so the worldbegan. The historian, Arnold Toynbee,has shown us how many beginningsthere have been since that time, howkingdoms rise and fall, one civilizationsucceeding another as new life and inspirationtake the place of death andcomplacency. There never will be anend of beginnings or of ends so long asthe world endures.
A study of this historical cycle showsthat mankind has never lost its hope fora deus ex machina, a God who will savemen at the last moment from the effectsof their own bad beginnings. It makes agood story to tell how the Gods fromOlympus intervened on the behalf oftheir favorites on the plains of Troy butit is disastrous when men mistake thisday-dream for reality. Yet at the end ofeach age there is to be seen a frantic[8]scrambling for divine favor, a scurryingto the churches when the Goths threatenedthe Roman Empire, for example,or a bull market for indulgences as theRenaissance replaced medieval society.
Men are forever trying to substitutefaith in a last resort God for faith in the"beginning God".
But seldom if ever has the substitutionbeen successful. Once an avalanche ofevents has been loosed by the criminalityor carelessness of men, God will notintervene until the tumult and the shoutinghave died down, and his still smallvoice can once more be heard.
No one can mistake the fact that weare at the beginning of a new era now,an era in which events will happen morequickly and more drastically than inany period in history. And these eventsmay be either for good or for evil dependingupon whether we decide nowto follow the "beginning God" ra