The "Times" Reacts

Whether college chapel should be compulsory or not is a question that seems likely to be discussed anew because of statements just made by the Rev. Edward C. Moore, President of the Harvard Board of Preachers. He was expressing something like resentment at the charge that Harvard was "godless" because its students can attend the morning exercises in chapel or not, as they please, and but few of them do go. That he said, was a better state of affairs than the one existing at Yale, where the chapel attendance is large, because it is obligatory and absence is penalized; for there, he declared, "the turmoil during the service is terrible."

His implication was that the Yale students were at least as "godless," as those of Harvard, and no more of them derived religious benefit under the compulsory chapel system than of the Harvard students under the voluntary system.

Most elderly graduates of colleges big and little can remember rushing to chapel in the cold of early Winter-mornings, sleepy, reluctant and with much trust to a long overcoat; but not all of them can remember that they profited largely from the performance of that stern duty. At the time they tried to agree with the prevailing belief, that anything painful was virtuous, but not all of them succeeding in doing it, and such as didn't still have their original doubts N. Y. Times