APPLETON CHAPEL.

Believing that many of the best things in Harvard life escape the notice of the undergraduates, we venture to call attention to Appleton Chapel and its services, as we presented the claims of Phillips Brooks House in this column on Wednesday.

Partly as the result of an adequate endowment which came to the Chapel last year, alterations and repairs have been made to the interior and its furnishings, which are to be finished this week. The Corporation has made an increased grant for the music from the same fund.

The University maintains daily morning prayers and a Sunday evening service. In 1886 attendance at the Chapel services was made voluntary, and a plan was adopted by which the ministrations of the Chapel should be more truly representative of religious opinion and practice among the students.

We believe that there are many students who do not realize what service the University performs in maintaining in quiet constancy this opportunity of religious worship and instruction in the midst of the student community. And we are sure that there are many men who have not reflected how much they might do by their participation in those services to sustain this effort on behalf of the best life. Ministers of distinction of various denominations and from all parts of the country put their experience at the disposal of the students, not only in the Chapel services, but also by keeping the hours from 9 to 11 o'clock each morning at Wadsworth House for consultation with any men who may come to them.

There is no university in the country in which provision is made in more thorough and thoughtful fashion for the religious welfare of the student body. But it is in full accord with the principles and spirit of Harvard that it is left to the students themselves to decide, each man for himself, in what measure he will avail himself, in what measure he will avail himself of the provision which is thus made. Nothing is more obvious than that large numbers of students, who by no means lack sympathy with religion and who would acknowledge their own need of that aid in their religious life for which the Chapel stands, do yet, in the multiplicity of other interests and their failure to hold themselves to a fixed habit, lose altogether the advantage which they might derive from sharing in the public worship of the University.