less attract a large percentage of the students from their busy lives. Most important, perhaps, are the quiet morning prayers in Appleton Chapel. For five minutes before a quarter of nine every week-day the silver-toned bell of Harvard Hall calls the men together; and as the last peal dies away the simple quarter-hour service begins. The rich morning sunlight streaming through the stainedglass windows, the reverent atmosphere of the chapel, and the serious faces of the listeners, contribute to make an impressive scene. Sing MEETING-ROOM OF THE ST. PAUL'S SOCIETY, PHILLIPS BROOKS ing by the college choir, a few verses read responsively, a brief, earnest talk by the preacher of the day, ending with the Lord's Prayer recited together, a closing hymn, and the service is over, promptly at nine o'clock. The attendance varies from day to day, depending largely upon the power of the preacher to attract. On a Monday morning, before the many who spend Sunday away from Cambridge have returned, the number may fall to sixty or seventy; on some days it rises to three hundred or more. A few regular chapel-goers there are who may be seen morning after morning, rain or shine, in the accustomed seat. But the majority attend perhaps two or three times a week, so that the whole number who come under the influence of the services is much larger than might be supposed. One of the chief reasons for the success of these purely voluntary services lies in the quality of the speakers. A board of five preachers of any denomination, together with the regular Preacher to the University, take turns in conducting the services. Many of the best preachers in the country have been numbered from year to year on this board since its founding in 1886Phillips Brooks, Lyman Abbott, George Gordon, Henry van Dyke, Washington Gladden, Dean Hodges, Bishop Lawrence, President Tucker, of Dartmouth, President Hyde, of Bowdoin, Dr. Faunce, now Presi HOUSE dent of Brown, and others equally well known. The Sunday evening services are open to the public, and, if the preacher is popular, are often crowded, but seats are reserved for the students, who predominate in numbers. No services are held in Appleton Chapel Sunday mornings, but seats are provided for the students at the expense of the University in many of the neighboring churches, and a large number of students regularly attend churches in Cambridge or Boston. Most picturesque and famous of all are the vesper services held in the late afternoon on Thursdays from Thanksgiving to Easter. It is customary for students to entertain their friends on these days, and every week the chapel is thronged with fair maidens in prettiest costume. The service is largely of song, with usually a solo by one of the boy sopranos. Toward spring, as the afternoons lengthen and the Yard grows more and more beautiful, the number of visitors increases, till one must go early to secure a seat. Far less noticeable, but of deeper effect than any services, are the quiet talks in the "Preachers' Room" in quaint old Wadsworth House. Here, in a cozy study with easy chairs and open fireplace, the preacher pro tem. keeps open house. Thus, the whole morning long, every day during term-time, some leading clergyman gives his time to talking personally with men about anything that interests themand he is rarely left idle. They come with all sorts of questions, doubts, and moods, just to get advice and help, as from one man to another. The preachers have invariably agreed that this pastoral work-such as is offered by no other college or church in the country-is by far the most valuable part of their duties in Cambridge. In the private record book which holds the experience and suggestions of each successive preacher are many like the following from the hand of Phillips Brooks: "There have been some interviews here which have made me feel that for one of them alone it would have been quite worth while to take the small trouble which coming all these days has involved." In addition to the religious privileges offered directly by the University there are several groups of students who seek a further expression for their religious feel ing. The largest of these groups is the Christian Association-the descendant of a society formed in 1802, and now a member of the Intercollegiate Y. M. C. A. of North America. Its regular members must be "members in good standing of evangelical churches," but all students are cordially invited to join in its work. Devotional meetings, usually led by students, are held once a week, in the early evening, with an average attendance of about thirty. Several weekly Bible classes are conducted, with an enrollment of some seventy students. A pleasant readingroom, with the daily papers and magazines, as well as a well-selected library of modern religious books, is open all day, and attracts a good many readers. At the beginning of the college year the Association is busiest. A reception committee keeps members on hand in the reading-room to welcome new students and assist them in every way possible. Handbooks with general information of all sorts about the University are distributed; small baggage is taken care of; letters are received for students whose address is uncertain; a list of rooms and boarding-places is prepared. During the first week a reception is held, at which opportunity is given freshmen to meet each other and upper-classmen. anthropic work carried on by the Association, which includes weekly Gospel services at the Davis Street Industrial Home, teaching at the Chinese Sunday-school, and the daily care of a sailors' readingroom on T wharf, is under the supervision of a salaried general secretary. Another association, the St. Paul's Society, aims to unite the Episcopalians of the University in worship according to the customs of their Church. Meetings, of from ten to twenty-five, are held weekly, usually in charge of some clergyman. During Lent and Advent evening prayers are read daily by one of the members of the Society. A chapter of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, formed in connection with the Society, holds monthly meetings. The Catholic Club has for its aim "to improve the moral and religious life of its members, to make the Roman Catholic religion better known at Harvard, and to increase the good will that exists between the Catholics and Protestants of the University." Fortnightly conferences are held on doctrinal subjects, and occasional open meetings, addressed by prominent Catholics. The club has been up to this year the only one of its kind outside of the Catholic universities, and its existence has done much to reassure Catholic students who have wished to enjoy the educational advantages of Harvard while still keeping firm hold of their religion. A more recent organization is the Religious Union, which is intended to include "all men interested in religious matters, without distinction of belief," who wish to come together and discuss religious and ethical questions. As yet it has but a small membership-about ten or twenty usually gathering for the discussion. Besides these organizations there are several smaller religious societies of different denominations, which meet less frequently and are chiefly social in nature. The religious privileges which thus lie open to the student are of the very best. And yet it is true that a large class of men—and among them many of the best in college-do not take advantage of them. Appleton Chapel, with its splendid corps of preachers, attracts a considerable proportion of the men, but the religious societies draw only small numbers. This is doubtless due in part to the fact that All this varied activity, besides the phil- some of them have at times been in the hands of narrowly pious men-and the ordinary Harvard man has a horror of narrowness. But, beyond the distrust arising thence, it is evident that neither prayer-meetings nor religious discussions in which they may be expected to take part are attractive to the body of students. Not that Harvard is so different from the "outer world" in this respect. Prayermeetings and church-going are nowhere so universal as in former times, when the customs of most of our New England colleges were crystallized. Indeed, religious expression is probably as large an element here as in any other equally matter. Thus it would be quite impossible, for instance, for an officer of the Young Men's Christian Association to be found cheating, as has happened where the position is one of social repute. Whatever religious expression takes place is thoroughly genuine and natural; every bit of it means something. When Henry Drummond, after making a tour of American colleges, returned for a day or two to Harvard, he paid hearty tribute to the genuineness of her religion. "Your morning chapel is the best of all," he said on leaving; "it is the most religious service I ever attended." heterogeneous community in America. Where in any Protestant country can be found so large an attendance at purely voluntary daily services? By "compulsion" the numerical attendance could be made much larger, but compulsory chapel, with its half-clothed and irreverent or at least indifferent audiences, and the disgust for religion which it often breeds, has long been abolished, to the satisfaction of all. Nor is there the less obvious compulsion of custom. No Harvard man attends any religious service because it is the thing to do. There is absolutely no social position or prominence in any way to be gained by it; it is regarded as a purely personal Why, then, is it that larger numbers of earnest students do not join in these genuine and sincere devotional exercises? This is the problem. Several reasons may be mentioned which combine to hinder religious expression here. In the first place, life for the serious undergraduate is at a feverheat. He has more to do, that is really worth doing and that he really wants to do, than he can possibly include. Athletics of every conceivable sort, debating, literary work, tutoring, concerts and lectures on every conceivable subject, innumerable clubs and societies, besides the regular college work, draw him this way and that, with a thousand calls upon his time. Religious services are not attended as a matter of course; they must show that they are worth more to him than other things he might be doing. Besides this, a hesitation in the minds of many about identifying themselves with any particular religious belief results from the whole critical atmosphere of the University. Contact with beliefs of every description leads to tolerance and to hatred of dogmatism. Everything must be weighed before being accepted; sleepy, perfunctory acquiescence in tradition is felt to be wrong. Individualism, in the sense that every man must stand on his own feet and think out his own position, prevails. All is in ferment. Doubt, suspended judgment, are welcomed as alone trustworthy. Most men feel that they are not yet ready to settle the most important problems, or commit themselves to anything professedly religious. Still further, the shattering of religious prejudice and preconception leads many men to a temporary position of dislike for anything that bears the name religion. This reaction from blind belief to absolute hostility is a stage through which many Harvard men pass, and on some it leaves a lasting mark. But in most men, underlying their distrust of religious forms, there still lurks a genuine religious yearning, however unprofessed and even unrecognized. To this condition of affairs comes the enthusiasm attending the opening of Phillips Brooks House, and a renewed attempt to find an adequate expression for the religious spirit. Besides the increased aggressiveness of the existing societies, a new movement has been started by the formation of a central committee, composed of delegates from the various religious societies and other men prominent in college, including the presidents of the Senior and Freshmen classes, the ranking scholar of the Senior Class, and the Captain of the 'Varsity football team. committee has planned University religious meetings of a very simple nature, to be held monthly in the large hall of Phillips Brooks House. Prominent and wellloved preachers are to be invited to speak, and the address is to be followed by an informal reception to the speaker, with light refreshments. The committee be This lieves that the meetings of the various groups of men comprising the different religious societies are all the better for being small and personal in nature, but it hopes in these University meetings-free from all profession of faith-to reach larger numbers and unite them in common sympathy. It is too soon to predict how this interesting experiment will turn out. Its success or failure will go far to indicate the attitude of the educated young men of to-day toward religious matters. But, whether the time proves ripe for this or not, those who know Harvard best will continue to have the utmost confidence in her ultimate solution of the religious problem. No one has known Harvard better than Phillips Brooks, for whom we have named our new building, and no one had more confidence in her. In reply to a young man expecting to study for the ministry, who was choosing his college and was a little afraid of the influence of Harvard upon his faith, he wrote, in a letter dated March 28, 1887: “I am glad that you are thinking of coming to Harvard College, and I hope that you will do so. I think that it was never so good a place for the life and study of a young man as it is to-day. I have known it for the last thirty-six years, and watched it closely all that time. It has improved and ripened steadily, until it may be said to-day, with no disparagement to other colleges, that nowhere can a better education be obtained than at Harvard. There are young men there of every form of religious faith, and many who have no faith. There are scoffers. Perhaps there are blasphemers. There are also earnest, noble, consecrated Christian men, and many souls seeking a light of truth which they have not yet found. You will meet in the college what you will meet in the world. You will have to choose what you will be, as you will have to choose all your life. You will find all the help which Christian friends and Christian services can give to a young man whose real reliance must be on God and his own soul." What was true thirteen years ago is true to-day. Harvard men, as a rule, profess little, hate the appearance of sham or cant, but are candid, open-minded, honest, and manly, and stand by the motto of the University— Veritas. O A Town of of Modern Miracles By Clifton Johnson With Illustrations by the Author N one side of a narrow valley among the foot-hills of the Pyrenees in southern France rises a great ragged precipice. It faces to the north and the sunshine never warms it, and its shadow serves to deepen the natural gloom of a narrow cavern that reaches back into the base of the cliff. Fifty years ago the herders from the town of Lourdes, not far distant, fed their pigs here on the banks of the swift mountain river Gave, which hurries noisily through the ravine; and when a sudden shower caught the herders unawares, they drove the swine to the cave and crouched in its shelter to wait till the rain passed. The aspect of the place has altered since then. It would be sacrilege now to put the cavern to such plebeian uses, for in 1858 a little shepherdess, Bernadette Soubirous, had a series of visions at this spot, the fame of which has served to make Lourdes one of the most notable places of pilgrimage in the world, In feudal days the town had a fame of another sort. Its castle, perched then as now on a lofty and almost inaccessible rock where seven valleys meet, was the key of all the mountain district lying to the south, and Lourdes was the scene of many a fierce combat and long siege in the old wars with the English. But changes in the methods of warfare, and especially the advent of railroads, made the town and the ancient castle no longer of consequence. The currents of life flowed in other channels, and this region of big hills and rough ridges became one of quiet and stagnation. When Bernadette was born, in 1844, Lourdes was apparently destined to an existence of unending commonplace. The inhabitants were pious, law-abiding, and contented, but at the same time were ignorant and unenterprising. Most of Bernadette's childhood was spent a few miles from Lourdes at Bartres, in the home of a foster-mother. Bartres was a |