204 RUKAL LIFE IN CANADA 



first, that students to-day have the spirit of social service. 

 I speak not yet of them as the college has moulded them, 

 but of the student class as they are to-day in themselves. 

 Back of the college lies the social preparation, un- 

 directed of human purpose, in the environment of the 

 boy life. This spirit may not as yet be articulate, 

 but it is apt to be there. For our students come from 

 homes in touch with the movements of to-day. If from 

 farm homes, as so many of them are, then from the 

 homes of those farmers who are farming well. Their 

 fathers and brothers in all probability have had some 

 contact with the forces that are making for scientific 

 farming, if not through attendance at the agricultural 

 college, at least through familiar use of its bulletins. 

 Thev are not from the homes of farmers who are fail- 

 ures, those growing antiquated, those becoming deca- 

 dent. If from the industrial ranks, then from homes 

 which are in touch with the forward movements of the 

 great labor world. It was ever so. But, someone may 

 say, Do not students often come from the homes of the 

 poor? Granted; but in what wise poor? From the 

 homes of widows of fine extraction, from the homes of 

 the poor who aspire ; not from the sinking poor or the 

 degenerate. They are sons of the morning, men of the 

 coming day. 



Environment as well as origin gives them the spirit 

 of the present, the social spirit. The youths growing 

 up in the homes of our Canadian churches are fed upon 

 the bread of social service. The church papers, East 

 and West, for example, and those of the other denom- 

 inations in equal measure, present it most attractively. 

 The pages of all Sabbath-school publications teem with 

 it. In our fine and strong religious fiction, such as 



