Reaching University Students: Approaches to Faith and Evangelism

In 1970, they tell us, there will be six million university and college students in the United States alone. In Great Britain, they're building ten more universities. This represents the most influential mission field in the world. How do we approach them? Well, mystics like Glenn Clark sometimes have approached people on the basis of experience. God answers prayer. You can know God. That's one way. Some organizations approach the college student by saying, the Bible says. Of course, one of the difficulties is not everyone will accept that. Generally, on a university campus, you'll find those who speak on the reasonableness of Christian faith.

But I find there's an approach that comes before these other three, and that is that faith in God is a universal human intuition. Some evangelicals have a strange notion that when the Apostle Paul spoke at Athens, his ministry was a failure. He spoke at Mars Hill to the faculty club, the professors and philosophers of that center of university culture. He began with the intuition of God, proceeded to the reasonableness of faith, and then to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, as a result of which a couple of the members of the faculty accepted Christ. I don't think that was a failure.

Instead of giving you a formal lecture, I thought I would share with you some experiences in presenting Christ this way at the university level. Yesterday I was at Arizona State University. I was speaking in 36 lectures in six days. One professor of philosophy said to me, we had an evangelist here last year. We asked him to speak on a certain subject, but instead of that, he preached a sermon. And he said, even when I was pulling his coattails, he was giving an invitation. Well, I said, I won't do that. I said, now, what is your idea? Well, he said, we believe in the separation of church and state, of course. This is a state campus. So he said, what would you suggest? I said, may I speak on the Declaration of Independence? Oh, why, certainly.

So I got up before a class of 200, and I said, our founding fathers declared, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So you see, actually, our founding fathers began with the universal intuition of God. A hand was raised right away, sir, just a moment, wouldn't an atheist fight for these rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? I said, yes, as there's many a patriotic atheist or agnostic who would fight without a thought of God. But that doesn't deny the fact that the founding fathers began that way.

There was an Irishman taking a shortcut across an estate. One Sunday morning, he encountered the owner, an English duke. The English duke said to him, my good fellow, you're trespassing. Said the Irishman, how's that? He said, this is my property. And where did you get it? He said, from my father. And where did he get it? From my grandfather. And where did he get it? He said, from my ancestors. Said the Irishman, where did they get it? He said, they jolly well fought for it. Said the Irishman, I'll fight you for it. You see, there's many an unbelieving American will fight for his rights, and he thinks he has them because his ancestors fought for them. But what's to prevent someone stronger than we taking them from us and saying, you don't have these rights anymore? Where did you get them in the first place? No, we have a title, and the founding fathers say we have this title from God.

And you see, it has its corollary. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness not only belong to the founding fathers, but to the aboriginal Americans, the red Indians, and to the Negro slaves brought in unwillingly. And not only that, these are not American rights. It doesn't say we hold these truths to be self-evident that all Americans are created equal. No, the Norwegian has them in Norway, and the Chinese has them in Hong Kong. God gave us these rights. We're born with them.

Now why did they call it a self-evident truth? I asked my class, what do you mean by a self-evident truth? The fellows said, well, an axiom, something you assume to be true, difficult to prove. I said, well, shall we illustrate? I believe I exist. You believe you exist. Is there anyone not sure? One fellow raised his hand. He said, I'm not sure. As you mean you hold the view that life could be an illusion, that we are prisoners of our five senses? He said, yes. Well, as I know the point of view. There was a Chinese philosopher who dreamed one night that he was a butterfly, and in the morning when he awakened, the dream was so vivid he didn't know whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

At the University of Oregon recently, a young lady said, I don't believe that existence is an axiom. She said, it could be a dream. I said, what do you see here? She said, a lampshade. I said, what color? Pink. I said, what have I done? She said, you switched it on. I said, what have I done? You switched it off. Now, I said, this could be a dream, we'll concede that, but isn't it strange that we're all dreaming the same dream? I find that people who deny the self-evident truth of existence don't act that way. They go down to the cafeteria and order lunch like any other civilized being. So you see, our founding father said that faith in God is a self-evident truth. It's a universal intuition.

So what about the savage? When the white man arrived on this continent, he found a noble savage, the red Indian, who worshipped the wind and the weather and the sun and the stars. But he had a concept of God, the great spirit above all, and when the Jesuits first preached to him, he knew what they were talking about. I worked as a chaplain with 13th Air Force in New Guinea, and among those savage Papuans, I found a sense of God, even though they were steeped in superstition and corruption. If you travel to India and find that welter of pantheism and polytheism with 33 million gods, nevertheless, the further back you go in Hindu thought, the purer the monotheism till you get a pure monotheism in the Vedas. And the Apostle Paul was able to make the same appeal through this welter of gods and goddesses of the Greeks and the Romans. He said, you've got an altar to the unknown God and him I proclaim. It's a universal intuition.

A student raised his hand. He said, what about the scientist? Does he have this intuition? I said, yes. You see, there's a fallacy, especially in state campuses, that science contradicts the idea of God. That is a fallacy. It's strange how people will swallow a fallacy if it's stated in philosophical language or scientific language. I knew of a man in Los Angeles who was writing his doctor's thesis on alcoholism. Now, to get a PhD, you must make a contribution to the field of knowledge. You can't make a rehash of somebody else's term paper. You must add something to the field of knowledge, and in recognition of that scholarship, they give you a doctor of philosophy degree. Well, he began to wish he hadn't allowed them to choose a subject, because what could he add to the knowledge of alcoholism, such a common topic? Then he had an idea. He thought, if I could discover the common denominator in drunkenness, maybe I could discover the cause. He found an old fellow in Skid Row who was willing to do the necessary research for him, for nothing but the raw materials. On Monday, he got drunk with whiskey and soda. On Tuesday, he got drunk with rum and soda. On Wednesday, he got drunk with gin and soda. On Thursday, he got drunk with brandy and soda. On Friday, he got drunk with vodka and soda. My friend said, what makes him get drunk? It's the common denominator. It's the soda. I take it that that's a fallacy.

I asked my professor of geology at Northwestern University when I was doing my master's degree in that field, is there anything in geology that would hinder your believing in God? He said, nothing. Geology is a study of the crust of the earth, and you wouldn't expect to find God among the sedimentary rocks in the first place. I asked a chemist the same sort of question, got the same kind of answer. If you take any branch of science from astronomy to zoology, not one of them contradicts the idea of God. Not one. The scientist is neutral.

Another lad raised his hand. He said, well, what about the atheist? What about the atheist? I said, what about the atheist? I said, is there any atheist here? Now, in a town hall meeting in the United States, you'd never get anyone to admit he was an atheist, but in a university classroom, several of them raised their hands, so I picked on one. I said, you're an atheist? He said, yes, sir. Were you always an atheist? No, sir. I said, when were you a believer? Well, he said, when I was a kid. I said, well, maybe you were right then and you're wrong now. Hmm, he said. I said, look, why did you change? Well, he says, I'm a lot smarter now than I was then. I said, really? I have a friend in San Francisco, a German, who was hired by IBM to do research for them, pure research.

He has an IQ of 225, the highest IBM ever found, so they hired him at a good salary, and he's a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. But I said, you've left him a long way behind, I take it, as well as the president of this university who also is a believer. My friend began to backtrack. He said, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to put it that way. What I meant is that I decided against what I'd been told when I was a kid. That's all right, what you were told when you were a kid, but can't faith make sense to you now? It's a universal intuition.

Let's take the best-known atheist, the well-known apostle of parliamentary good manners, Mr. Nikita Khrushchev. I have a friend in California who was born in Russia. His mother was deaf; she learned to lip-read Russian, and so did he, to help her. He said he was fascinated lip-reading Khrushchev while he was on his American tour. When Mr. Khrushchev said out of the side of his mouth, who's the big fat fellow over there, am I supposed to know him? He didn't realize that my friend was reading him loud and clear. But he said what amazed him was how often that man talked about God. Someone shouted, how's your health, Mr. Chairman? He said, praise the Lord, pretty good. Somebody said, what do you predict for Russian-American relations in the next ten years? Well, he says, God only knows, but I'll tell you what my thoughts are on the matter. He said on one occasion, may I quote an old Russian proverb, whatsoever a man soweth, shall he also reap? In December, the Chinese communist issued a blast at Khrushchev and called him a Bible-quoting buffoon.

When I came to the United States, I found most fundamentalists thought that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the Antichrist and Mrs. Roosevelt the false prophet. Maybe Khrushchev is a fundamentalist in disguise. I don't know. But someone cornered him and said, Mr. Khrushchev, you talk a lot about God for an atheist. Oh, he said, that's conversation. Well, are you an atheist? He said, of course I'm an atheist. I'm chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. I'm an atheist. But are you a convinced atheist? He said, I am an atheist. He has a quick temper, too. They say, are you sure you're an atheist? God knows I'm an atheist.

So I make this point, and I hope you'll never forget it. Faith in God is a universal human intuition. Universal. Even those that fight it have it. But it's agreeable to reason. It is verified by divine revelation. And it is confirmed by human experience. Agreeable to reason? I haven't time to deal with atheism and agnosticism and materialism and pantheism and deism and all the others. But let's consider the common denominator of opposition to faith in God. When you pin them down, their only alternative is chance. I contend that chance is repugnant to common sense.

A pilot came to me one day, said very cheerfully, well, does a man have to have a religion? Can't you just take things as they are? We came into this world by chance, and everything came about by chance. I said, what do you know about chance? He grinned. I'm the champion officer in this organization for shooting craps. I'm a successful gambler, so I study the law of probability. I said, all right, then what's the chance of getting six in your roll of dice? He said, one out of six. I said, what's the chance of getting two sixes in succession? He said, one out of 36. I said, why did you say 36? He said, it's a multiplied chance. Law of probability.

There may be some young ladies here that have never rolled dice, so perhaps I should explain. If Prexy were to run a raffle, 1,000 students put in $1 each, winner take all, your chance of winning is one out of 1,000. But the chance of winning twice in succession is one out of a million. That's the law of probability. I said to the pilot, what's the chance of winning, rolling dice six three times running? He said, well, that's one out of 216. I said, what's the chance of four times? One out of, don't tell me, one out of 1,296. I said, what would be the chance of getting to roll the same way 12 times? Well, he says, maybe you could tell me that one. I said, one out of 2,176,782,336. How do you get that figure? Multiply six by itself 12 times.

Now I said, what would be the chance of getting dice to roll the same way all the time? He says, that's fantastic. I said, yet you glibly talk about the universe coming about by chance. Take something a little more complicated. Take the human body. When your life began, it began as a single cell, which doubled, quadrupled, became hundreds of cells, thousands of cells, millions of cells. But they all cooperate in a pattern by chance. If I want to send a telegram, I go to Western Union, take a telegraph form, I write a message, give it to the girl, she counts the words. Tells me how much to pay, I give her the money. She rings up in a cash register, gives me back my change. She takes the message to the telegraphist, it telegraphed through, the procedure is reversed. By chance. No, by organization. Someone had to hire those girls and somebody had to buy those cash registers. Somebody had to print those forms and somebody had to train those telegraphists.

But take the human Western Union. If I take a pin and stick it into your leg, a nerve in your leg sends a telegram to your brain saying, Murphy, you've been stabbed. And your brain sends a telegram to your vocal cords urging you to say something appropriate. And it happens like that, by chance. Chance is repugnant to common sense.

A student raised his hand, he said, well, sir, just a moment. Professor Miller of the University of Chicago passed a bolt of electricity through some primitive gases, ammonium, methane, and the like, and got amino acids. I said, yes, sir. He said he did that to duplicate lightning in the Earth's atmosphere before the volcanoes had belched forth their oxygen. I said, yes, sir. Well, he said, doesn't that suggest chance? Professor Miller was highly commended for that. Scientists today are working night and day to duplicate the processes of life in the lab. Anyone that makes a breakthrough will get a Nobel Prize. What kind of Nobel Prize shall we give to the intelligence that brought it about in the first place, whose thoughts were simply thinking after him? Yes, sir, but a bolt of lightning. I said, listen, man, if you were almighty God, would you build a lab to do these things? Wouldn't you use the natural forces you had created?

I was walking along the beach in Queensland when suddenly I saw some marks in the sand stopped. They were circular, but I decided some lowly worm of lowly intelligence had just accidentally made those marks. You couldn't say that of a spider's web. It has utility, therefore purpose. But as I walked along the beach, I saw a puddle of water exactly the shape of Australia. Now, that could have been an accident. The tide could have gone out and left a puddle of water in the sand. But 10 yards further along was another puddle of water, and 10 yards further along another one, 14 of them in a row. And that staggered me. It wasn't till the following day I found the explanation. A little, lonely Australian boy with nobody to play with, with his bucket and spade, digging out maps of Australia, going down to the tide, filling his bucket, and then filling the maps with water. You see, the more complicated the end result, the more we look for a higher intelligence to explain things. Now, you can believe in chance it's a free country, but it's repugnant to common sense.

I talked to a scientist once, and finally said, well, I can't accept your arguments. I said, are they invalid? No, he said, they're valid, but I can't accept them. I said, why? Well, he said, if I did, I'd have to believe in God. I said, that's the point. Agreeable to reason, but verified by divine revelation.

Where do you begin when you meet that type of student who says, well, I don't believe your Bible anyway. Why should I believe the Bible any more than the Koran or the Hindu scriptures? Where can you begin? I always begin with the person of Jesus Christ. I've done my doctoral discipline in the field of history. I'm satisfied that the New Testament is a well-authenticated record of an historical person. A girl said to me, sir, I come from Hawaii. My folks are Buddhist. I don't know what I am. But she said, aren't these stories about Christ just legends, like the legends of the Buddha? I said, no, there's a difference. The legends of the Buddha can be traced. They grew up centuries after Buddha lived and walked. But she said, what about the New Testament? Wasn't that written a long time afterwards?

I remember once a Unitarian minister telling me that the Gospel of John was written 300 years after Christ by someone who just borrowed the name. At that time, I had not been to theological college or seminary, and I instinctively felt he was wrong, but I couldn't argue with him. That was a popular view in the 1920s and 1930s. But today, William Albright, a leading scholar and not from our particular tradition, is convinced. The Gospels were all written before 85 AD. If, for example, it was written 300 years after Christ, how come then that Polycarp, AD 135, made quotations from it? That's a problem, isn't it?

Supposing World War III came and destroyed civilization as we know it. Supposing in 2000 AD, survivors emerge from the caves and decide to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible. They have a committee on law, a committee on education, a committee on politics, a committee on industry, and, of course, a committee on religion. The first item on the agenda of the last committee would be the reconstruction of the sacred writings of Christianity, the most widespread faith.

After a year, they meet to compare findings. One man says, here's a book I found in the ruins of Los Angeles, but the front page is burned. I don't know what to call it. Seems to be a life of Christ from four points of view and some letters. Another man says, here's the same book, I think. I found it in London. The back pages are burned, but the title page is The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I don't understand that. Someone else says, well, here's a book called The Old Testament. Why are they bound together? What's one got to do with the other? Well, he says, let's make a study of this.

Someone says, here's one with the Apocrypha. One man speaks up and says, I found a book by a prophet called Lloyd Douglas. It's called The Robe. That should be in the Bible. Fascinating reading. Another man says, here's a book called Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. Someone else says, here's the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith. Where would they draw the line? Well, by a little historical research, they could discover that before 1925, no one had ever heard of The Robe. Before 1875, no one had ever heard of Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy. Before 1825, no one had ever heard of The Book of Mormon. Read them for what they are worth. But they are not authenticated eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, and that we have in the New Testament.

And Jesus Christ claimed to be God revealed to man. And without fear or favor, given the proposition of God, you can say the revelation of God and Jesus Christ is unsurpassed, utterly unsurpassed. That's your talking point. Begin with him. But then, is it confirmed by human experience? Oh, yes. At the age of 21, I felt a call to the ministry. It was during the Depression. It was the bottom of the Depression when there were 13 million unemployed starving in this country. The unemployed don't starve today, but they were starving then. Three million unemployed in the United Kingdom.

I left my native Ireland and traveled across to Liverpool in England. The only friend I had within 150 miles of Liverpool was a Roman Catholic scoutmaster whom I had met at a jamboree. His name was Frank Nelson. He said, Edwin, where are you going to sleep at night? I said, in bed. He said, very funny. I said, where are you going to get your next meal? I said, I don't know where I'll get it. I know where I'll put it. I was whistling in the dark. Well, he offered to lend me enough money to go back on the next ship. I said, no, thank you, Frank. He said, well, what are you going to do? I said, the scripture says, my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. If that's true, I can depend upon it. If it's not true, the sooner I find out, the better.

I got on my bicycle. I had $0.65 total funds, plus a promise to support my mother. And I started off in England, a strange country to me. When I reached Chester, it began to rain very heavily, so I prayed that I might reach Shrewsbury about 40 miles south without getting wet. You would agree, you could not cycle 40 miles in the rain and not get wet. That was a physical impossibility. I got there without getting wet, and yet it rained all the way. She said, did you hitchhike? Hitchhiking was unknown in England in those days. It wasn't until the GIs went over and showed the limeys how to do it, they caught on. In 1933, if you'd stood on a road with your thumb out like this, the people would have thought you had a sore thumb. They wouldn't know what that meant.

I didn't hitchhike, but a truck driver had stopped to tie a waterproof cover over some bags of sugar. He wheeled around, he shouted, hello there. In such a friendly way, I knew he must have made a mistake. English people are notoriously reserved. They don't speak to strangers. I wheeled my bicycle over. I said, did you mistake me for someone? He says, I'm sorry. I thought you were a friend of mine called Bert Cook. I said, that's funny. I have a friend called Bert Cook, too. He said, you're not English. I said, no, I'm from Ireland. He says, I knew you were a foreigner as soon as you opened your mouth. Then he says, you wouldn't know the Bert Cook that I know. I said, I was in England once before on vacation. The fellow I met was studying at Handsworth College to be a Methodist minister, and his name was Herbert J. Cook. He said, blimey, mate, it's the same bloke. Where are you headed for? I said, London. He said, not tonight. I said, no, it'll take me three days on a bicycle. How'd you like to ride with me? Are you going to London? No, he said, I'll take you to Wellington. I said, I don't even know where Wellington is. He said, that's near Shrewsbury. I'll go with you.

When I got to Shrewsbury, it was 11 o'clock at night. I had nowhere to stay, so I stopped the nearest policeman to see where I'd get cheap accommodation for the night. In Great Britain in those days, the Salvation Army had working men's hostels where you could get a bed for about a dime. The policeman looked me up and down. He said, what do you do for a living? I knew what was in his mind. During the Depression, here and there, the police arrested the unemployed on charges of vagrancy for protective reasons. No fixed abode, no visible means of support. Now, what could I say as to my profession? I'd been a bookkeeper. I'd given that up. I couldn't say I was a clergyman. I'd not been ordained. So I said, I'm an evangelist. He said, you don't look like an evangelist to me. Well, I said, what's an evangelist supposed to look like? Well, he said, you're very young. I said, I'm 21. He said, that's young for an evangelist. How long have you been an evangelist? I said, not very long. He said, how long? I said, well, just a little while. Then he said, I have reasons for asking. How long have you been an evangelist? I said, well, if you must be technical, I started at 8 o'clock this morning.

He said, do you have anything to show that you're genuine? I said, yes, some letters of introduction. He said, show me one. I had one from an Episcopal rector to show to people in the Church of England, one from a Presbyterian minister to show to people in the Church of Scotland, one from a Baptist, one from a Methodist, and so forth. I was well-recommended, I'm glad to say. But the last letter was written by an obscure friend of mine who wasn't at all well-known. He worked in the equivalent of a storefront mission, but he wrote the nicest letter. So I showed it to the policeman. I thought he wouldn't know anyone in Ireland anyway. He read it through with his flashlight, and then he shook hands warmly. He was a converted man. He was a deacon in the Shrewsbury Baptist Church, hence his questions, to see if I were genuine. And third, he was a close friend of the William Philbert that wrote that letter in Ireland. He took me home that night. I slept on a feather bed. Next morning, I had two eggs for breakfast.

Frank Nelson said, where are you going to sleep at night? Where are you going to get your next meal? Something clicked in my mind. When the disciples said to the Lord, Lord, increase our faith, he didn't say, very well, I'll give you a great ready-made faith, which will do for every emergency. You can use it when you need it. He said, nothing of the sort. He picked up a grain of mustard seed, a speck, a living speck. And he said, if you've got faith this size, you can move mountains. And that's a secret. You use the little faith that you have.

I left Shrewsbury happy. I had no idea where I was going, but I've been traveling ever since, for 30 years. I was cycling in Kent when my old bicycle broke down. I discovered I needed new handlebars, new front fork, new back wheel, new front wheel, new three-speed gear, new crank, new pedals, new tires, new tubes, and several other new parts. I decided to pray for a new bicycle or the money to buy one. I had to wheel the bicycle the last 10 miles. My friend, who was expecting me, got tired waiting, left a note on the table, make myself at home. They were out at a meeting. The phone rang, and there was my answer to prayer. A Baptist minister across the Thames in Essex had suddenly taken ill. His deacons were in desperation trying to get another preacher to take his place two days before Christmas. Christmas is a busy season for families and for preachers, too. No one could come.

I don't know how they got the address of my newfound friends, but they called me long distance and asked me if I'd preach the Christmas sermons in that Horn Church Baptist Church. I said to the deacon on the phone, but you don't know anything about me. He said, Mr. Orr, don't be offended, but we are so hard up, we'd take anybody.

Not a soul in that church knew that I needed a bicycle, but another deacon came to me after the morning service. And to make a long story short, he wanted to know if I would be offended if he gave me a Christmas present, a bicycle that he had custom built at Coventry, the best roadster made in the world, handball-bearing. I said, what makes you offer it to me? I had no intention of refusing it, but it was an unusual gift at the end of a service. He flamed red in the face. English people, as I said, are self-conscious. He said, while I was preaching, God told him, give that young fellow your bicycle.

With that bicycle, I visited every county from Land's End in the southwest of England to John O'Groats in the northeast of Scotland. So you see, I'm not discussing theory with you. I did not have a dramatic conversion. I was only nine when I was converted. But certainly, I've had experience to confirm this universal human intuition that's agreeable to reason and verified by divine revelation. I've put it to the test, and I find that it's true.

Well, I don't suppose you need much convincing on whether or not there's a God. We do have some campus atheists. They think they are atheists, some secretly and some openly. Really, they're in adolescent rebellion. But if you don't believe in God, what do you believe in? Chance? No, I think we'll have to make it simple and plain. Faith in God is our compass for living. And God has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Not only does God reveal himself, but he gives us a corrective revelation of ourselves, that we are sinners, that we have fallen short.

And he gives us the first message of the gospel. Do you know what the first word of the gospel is? Some people say love. Some say believe. No, no. Would you agree that the first word in the mouth of John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus Christ, the 12 disciples, the 70 disciples, the Apostle Peter, the Apostle Paul, would be the first word of the gospel? Well, I can refresh your mind. In those days came John the Baptist, preaching the will of Jesus of Nicaea and saying, repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Then Jesus began to preach to say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Then the 12 went out and preached that men should repent. When Peter reached the climax of a sermon on the day of Pentecost, they were pricked in their hearts. He said, what shall we do? He said, repent and be baptized, everyone, even for the remission of sins. At this climax of a second great sermon, he said, repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out.

What about the Apostle Paul? He said, whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but first at Damascus, then Jerusalem, then Judea, then to the nations I told them they should repent and turn to God and produce works made for such repentance. But what does the word mean? Metanoia, repentance, means changing your thinking, changing your behaving, and changing even your feeling. It doesn't mean self-reform. It means a change of attitude. And that's the first word of the gospel.

Thank you for listening. If any of you are interested in this approach to students, and you've got friends outside Wheaton that argue with you, you'll find a little book of mine in your bookstore called Faith That Makes Sense, written in not too pious language. God bless you. Let us stand for prayer.

O God, help us to realize that thy word says, he that cometh to God must first believe that he is, and that he rewards them who seek him. And those of us who are Christians, help us, Lord, to realize thy commandment, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy strength, and all thy mind. Lord, forgive us for mental laziness. Help us to meet students on their own ground and to win them to Jesus Christ. And may grace, mercy, and peace from Father, Son, and Spirit be our portion, now and forevermore. Amen.