The Young Priests Keepsake | Page 7

wish, burn it, yet, it is a distinct gain. You are
shaping a sword that will stand you in good need yet.
2. During study hours an English author should lie on the desk. When
the head grows wearied, instead of uselessly goading the tired jade or
consuming brain tissue on that most fatiguing of occupations, day
dreaming, sip a page or two of English. You rest your brain, and while
doing so store up knowledge, silently develop taste and acquire style.
3. Again, how are vacations consumed? The student who does not read
at least two hours a day is letting a golden opportunity pass and wasting
a precious gift of God--time. It may be said that this after all is a rather
slow process; it will only mean about a volume a month. Yes, but that
means twelve in a year, or at least eighty-four in your course, not a bad
stock to start life with.
4. In the training of the future priest the recreation hour can be
converted into the most important item on the day's programme. He
plunges from the silence of the study hall into the vortex of the world,
for it is the world in miniature; its passions, its pride, its meanness, as
well as its gentleness of heart and heroism of spirit are all flowing
around him. If properly utilised, the recreations can be minted into
veritable gold. In the term "recreation" I include all those occasions of
free intercourse where students meet to interchange thought--the hall,
the club, &c.--and the more numerous these are the better. Here the
student is his natural self, unrestrained by a master's presence. The
young minds are free to wrestle, and opposing thoughts to clash. The
fire of contradiction will test the genuine ore: the same fire will
consume all that is worthless in his opinions and principles: the clay
and alloy of his character too will go.
He learns to cast away many a cherished notion now dinged and broken
in the war of minds; he is taught to distrust himself and tolerate the
opinions of others. If the recreation, however, is to be a mental
gymnasium it must be guided by fixed rules, and this is most important.

The tone must be of a high level. No vulgarity; no scurrility. In the
hottest debate we must not forget that we are gentlemen.
We should argue, not to overcome an opponent, but to make truth
evident. Minds in debate should resemble flails on the threshing floor,
that labour not to overcome each other, but to separate the solid grains
from the chaff and straw.
No man should be ashamed to say "I don't know" or "Perhaps I am
wrong."
Without these safeguards the recreation or debate might easily become
a cock-pit of unbridled passions. "Our fortunes lie not in our stars, good
Brutus, but in ourselves." The making of the priests depends not merely
on the college, but also on the students' own endeavours. This latter fact
is but imperfectly understood, or acted on only in a very limited extent.
It is from intercourse between minds of various bents, the debating
clubs, the social unions, and not the lecture halls or study desks, that
the Oxford student draws strength and elegance of character. It is the
want or misuse of these opportunities that leaves the young Irish priest
so raw and unfinished.
Knowledge only comes from the professor and the book, but the
character is shaped, rounded, and polished by a variety of agencies
lying outside both these. The creation of these agencies is almost
entirely in the student's own hands.
[Side note: The dangers of the hour and how to meet them]
If the Irish priest on the foreign mission is to become a force in the
future, his course of philosophy must be both solid and practical.
The last half century has not only changed the arms of his adversaries
but transferred the conflict to new grounds.
Protestantism is dying. The mere veneer of Christianity is fast fading
off among the sects.

The cobwebs of neglect are overspreading the works of theological
controversy; but in the domain of ethics and metaphysics activity daily
grows in intensity.
The student would do well to keep this fact before his eyes. It is proper
that a priest should be conversant with the errors of the past and the
arguments by which they are met. Many of these errors he will discover
exhumed, draped in new disguises, and paraded as the fruit of modern
"thought." But it will be well also, in his studies, not to ignore the fact
that the Agnostic and the Socialist are, under his very eyes, digging
what they confidently assure us is to be the grave of Christianity.
Agnosticism and Socialism are the two