instances, as we have abundant reason to believe, the method is far from satisfactory either to those that listen or those that lead. Sometimes the whole performance appears like a performance merely, — a mechanical repetition, a lifeless routine, negative at best, a scenic exhibition, too familiar to be interesting, and too bare to be beautiful, - a simulacrum. But it is instantly known that it cannot be that, without being something worse than that. Professing to be communion with God, the highest and holiest of all acts of which man is capable, the moment it degenerates into a heartless function it falls below respectability into profanity, becoming as offensive to the Omniscient Majesty as it is irksome to the compelled participators. Sometimes the occasion is one of listlessness. Sometimes it is a scene of positive disorder. So many are the elements to be reconciled, in fact, and so delicate the conditions of a sacred success, that it may be said, we presume, without hazard, that the result is very rarely all that is desired.

Perhaps the first condition of any adequate benefit from the service is that it be treated by all that are responsible for it as a reality; as what it pretends to be; as real prayer. After all, to a striking degree, the tone and manner of a whole institution will insensibly take their character from the manifest spirit and bearing of its principal conductors. Let it be plain to every hearer and witness that in these gatherings there is more than a pretence of praying. Let it be seen that in one at least, in him who is speaking, and in as many as do truly accompany him, man is verily speaking to his Maker, and speaking in an humble expectation that he shall be heard ;-telling his real wants, acknowledging sins that he really deplores, breathing requests for helps and blessings that he really desires. A nameless power and impression will inevitably go with such devotions. Artifice will be driven out. The ingenuities of invention, in thought or phrase, will never so pass the line of simplicity as to trespass on the awful sanctity of the Ineffable Presence invoked. Excess of human elaboration and indolent neglect are equally alien from a veritable intercourse with the Father of spirits. And nowhere is either error more likely to be seen through and despised than in an auditory of young men. Their quick moral instincts, and their yet unperverted habit of judging without the bias of a mere current and institutional propriety, render them accurate and searching critics of sincerity.

Were the modern naturalistic theory of prayer and its effects to be generally accepted, our suggestions would, of course, be impertinent. That theory, making all devotion not only dramatic, but illusory, and ascribing all its apparent effects to a reäctionary excitement of

the worshipper's own faculties, turns the idea of reality into ridicule. We are to go through the genuflexion, the mumbling, the expectant posture, the use of the vocative case, the solemn tone and pleading cadence, and measured form of stately language, just as if God heard and might answer, but with a perfectly cool private understanding of the philosophical mind, all the while, that the display is purely scenic, the Deity himself being as much removed from the transaction as he is from the praying-machine of the Eastern idolater. Indeed, is there a Deity left? Where is he? What is his care for his creatures? Of what nature are those affections that enjoin prayer as a duty, under a promise that it shall be heard, only to cheat first the credulous intellect, and then mock the disappointed heart? This cannot be the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who was so wonderfully and tenderly revealed to his children, when it was affirmed of him that he numbers the hairs of their heads, and notices the fall of the sparrow, and who has compressed the whole mystery and rationale of prayer into the one gracious and eternal pledge, "Whatsoever ye shall ask, believing, that shall ye receive." Nothing can more effectually dissipate veneration and explode worship, whether among the young or the old, than this superficial and impious interpretation, which is offered by some nominal teachers of the Bible to their pupils. It justifies the worst sneers that recklessness and infidelity have thrown at a histrionic, hypocritical priesthood. It is as short-sighted and self-contradictory as it is insulting to our manhood. If we are to pray only to warm our emotions, kindle our energies, elevate our mood, under the delusion that we are heard, as by a fetch, while He to whom the offering professes to ascend sits with sublime unconcern in a distant chamber of the universe, or slumbers like Brahm, then it is obvious only they will pray who have not yet found out the secret of the trick; and to explain the nature of the exercise, or to offer a reason for it, will be to dispel the charm and abolish the practice! Probably the notion was broached to protect the uniformity of what are called the laws of nature, and is a part of the qualified Pantheism that is so apt to attend certain stages of an immature and conceited science. But Nature's reputation is not to be saved by limiting the freedom or power of God. We shall not vindicate creation by binding the Creator. How it is that the free-will of God plays into the order of his works, and yet that he heareth and considereth the faint cry of the least of his poor offspring, is a wonder that science will not solve, at least till it passes over from its acknowledged province of analyzing, classifying and discovering facts, to define and exhibit the essence of being. No: Education, from its very beginnings, must

render unto faith the things that are faith's. The outward exercises of adoration must rest on a serene, immovable confidence in the personality of God, in the communications of his Spirit to man, in his willingness to draw nigh to them that draw nigh to him, in all those emotional attributes that move his Infinite Heart to answer to the sigh of pain, the tremblings of fear, the throb of hope, the anguish of penitence, and the joyful upspringing of love in every tempted and erring child. There must be a reality. Except for this it will be vain to make room, in the curriculum of secular institutions, for sanctimonious addresses to the Most High. To preceptors and pupils alike, the ceremonies of the chapel, so far from being effectual, will not even be decent, but a dismal conspiracy of mutual imposition and make-believe, - an awful initiation not only into the darkness of unbelief, but into the crime of a sacrilegious lie.

The particular circumstances of a literary institution will naturally impart a somewhat local and special character to the petitions and thanksgivings offered before its members. Young men are not insensible to this direct and peculiar reference to their wants. It touches their feelings and carries them more easily up to the Mercy-Seat. Thorough and relentless despisers of every species of cant, and commonly sensitive to sentimentalism, no class of persons will be found more readily and cordially to appreciate a kind word or a considerate desire in their behalf. Whatever the negligence of that external air which, in youth, is so often found to be the uncomely and graceless mask of honest gratitude and trust, they still like to know that their teachers care enough for their best welfare really to pray for it. Thoughtless and impulsive in their hours of social amusement, they are yet bound in esteem and affection to those set over them, who remember their troubles, sympathize with their conflicts and discouragements, and entreat God to bless their life, their homes, their friends, their studies, their reciprocal relations with their instructors, their bodies, their sports. And, therefore, allusions to the passing events of their experience, to the little incidents of the community, and to their individual trials, if made in a manly tone and with some delicacy of expression, are apt to engage their interest, and aid the best impres sion of the service. The differing usages of sects, as well as early associations, will have much to do in determining the frequency and particularity of such allusions. It is of the utmost consequence to avoid what may provoke comments, excite curiosity, or raise so much as a question of taste. Undoubtedly those are everywhere the best public prayers which at once enlist the most entire and respectful attention, by their fitness, variety and earnestness, while they are

being offered, and are afterwards treated with silence. For, in respect to worship, considered as a product of human thought or originality, silence is a higher tribute than the most approving criticism -except, perhaps, in those confidential intimacies where friends take sacred counsel together about the deepest things. And whatever the specific mention of the supplication may be, it will never be invested with so august a dignity, nor raised so completely above all cavil or levity, as when it can be put into some words out of the Inspired Book.

It is an interesting inquiry, what other exercises should attend the offering of prayer. But in this regard we apprehend there is already a considerable uniformity of usage, and that the simple schedule usually followed is not far from the best. Of course the Scriptures will be read. Here again let there be no formality. Let the passages be selected from different parts of the volume; and they may be profitably selected from almost every part of both the New Testament and the Old. Sometimes a consecutive passage, or even a short book may be read on successive days, with a certain advantage in keeping up the connection in the narrative or argument. But sequences of that sort often fall, we have thought, into a kind of visible mechanism, which young men do not love. It looks like a saving of trouble, and they feel put upon. Further, the Bible is not to be read as if it were an exercise in elocution. The grand object is to bring out the meaning, and get it in contact with the hearer's soul, with as little showing of self as possible. Whoso has reached into the depths of the Bible's heart will read it well. Some men's reading of it is more original, more suggestive of new ideas, than some other men's sermons. And this is no declaimer's device. It comes by a profound spiritual acquaintance with the inmost sense of that revelation of the mind of Christ. Whether brief remarks could be profitably thrown in, not to convey doctrine, but simply to uncover and explain the text, is worthy of consideration.

In some of our colleges the Scriptures and the prayer are accompanied by a hymn, sung by a choir, or, perhaps better yet, by the general body of the students. We are convinced the value of this addition cannot well be over-estimated. In all true, simple sacred music there is a nameless effect of good, against which few exceptional breasts are wholly steeled. It falls in with the better inclinations and hopes. It soothes irritability. It abates appetite. It shames meanness and lust. It assists the incipient resolves of the penitent. It comforts grief. It puts the whole mind into a more appropriate attitude for the prayer that comes after, unconsciously opening the hidden

avenues by which heavenly blessings flow down to nourish the growths of character. Probably this effect lies more with the strain of harmony than with the words. Hence the greatest pains and discretion are to be used in fixing the style of the music, seeking to combine the noblest practicable artistic with the purest religious expression, attaining animation without a florid movement, and solemnity rather than surprises or startling transitions. Operatic flourishes and complicated fugues are as much out of place in chapel as rhetorical confessions of sin. Chants, if there is patience enough for the discipline and practice, are more appropriate for praise than any kind of psalmody. If a hymn is sung, let it be a hymn. A hymn is not a chapter of didactics, nor a moral essay, nor a piece of reasoning, nor a precept, nor a creed, nor an exhortation, nor a narrative, nor a catalogue of virtues, nor an inventory of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. A hymn is an aspiration cast into poetical language. Its purpose is to stir devout feeling, — at the same time conducting the soul in a penitential or jubilant frame to heaven, and quickening within it those social affections of humanity which prove mankind to be of one blood, in one brotherhood, under one Father. Nor can any group of human beings be anywhere found in whom these sentiments may be often waked to a grander purpose than a band of companions, already associated in the little commonwealth and the intense politics of their academic economy, and destined soon to take central and commanding places in the nation, for Christ, or against him.

Recent debates, in many quarters, have broached the question whether congregational worship is not, in some sense, disowning its own name, by being practically the least congregational of any worship in the world. Even if the sacerdotal idea has gone out, a service confined exclusively to one officiating individual retains the priest. To what extent a liturgical practice might be advantageously introduced into our colleges, where men of all denominations are assembled, is a point to be determined rather by cautious and guarded experiment than by preconceived opinion, or precipitate guess-work. We cannot conceive why such experiment should not be freely made, and conducted with forbearance and good-will on all sides. Among all parties there is, as we suppose, a common interest in finding out the best mode. Surely we can afford, at this time of day, to purify ourselves of the sectarian suspicion and the ecclesiastical narrowness which would reject the best, or refuse to search for it, because it might involve the adoption of a neighbor's way, instead of the pursuit of our own. We confess ourselves inclined to believe that if the Scriptures could be generally read alternately, as according to the