A GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED

Twenty men, from the eight hundred members of the Freshman Class, attended the special service in Appleton Chapel last night. The report might be fit subject for the lamentations of a Jeremiah. But to take it as a sign of these decaying times is to miss the point. The seven hundred and eighty Freshmen who stayed away are not necessarily agnostics; not necessarily indifferent, even; they are simply unenlightened. The wiser twenty report that the Freshman service was an inspiration and a true pleasure. Informal talks as stimulating as those of Professor Moore and Dean Sperry are not to be had on every street-corner; music of such character and quality as that which Dr. Davison's trained choir rendered is a pleasure which many have come from far to hear. The whole tone of the simple service was one which the man of religious tastes would find inspiring and even the man who confesses to no such tastes would be certain to enjoy.

It is easy to account for the Freshman's apathy toward a chapel service. Perhaps he has come from a "prep" school where daily chapel, twice on Sunday, is an irksome compulsion; perhaps from a home where the parental regulation was equally stringent; or again his previous church affiliations may have been unsympathetic or distasteful. For all these reasons he welcomes the tolerance of Harvard, and interprets the freedom from necessary church attendance as a sort of compulsion to stay away. Strangely enough, this feeling does not always wear off with the passing of Freshman or even Sophomore year. Boastful Juniors have been known to take pride in the fact that they had never seen the inside of Appleton, just as their forefathers must sometimes have boasted of a non-cut record for old Holden--each, it would seem, with about as much understanding of values. But gradually they filter in; and typical morning-service congregations have more Seniors than under-classmen, not because Seniors are more serious-minded, but because they have found those fifteen minutes an agreeable manner of opening the day. The reaction is not necessarily religious; its only effect may be to turn the mind for a moment out of its ordinary channels. But in doing that alone, it has accomplished much; the fact that the service is voluntary and sectarian gives it double value. Professor Shaler liked to speak of chapel as his daily "moral bath--as needful, sir, as the other." Most of us would be content with weekly applications. But to go through a year of college without knowing the genuine satisfaction of an Appleton service, is to neglect one of those opportunities which are almost obligations to one's self.