urate knowledge of what they teach is no compensation
for a want of respectful familiarity with the text itself.

Hardly less important for good and evil are the chapel services. They
are much attacked. It has been argued that public worship is
distasteful in later life because of the compulsory chapels of
boyhood. If this were really so, evidence should be forthcoming that
those who come from schools where there is no compulsory attendance at
chapel, because there is no chapel to attend, are more eager to avail
themselves of the opportunities offered by college chapels than are
their more chapel ridden contemporaries. No one, however, can be quite
satisfied that chapel services are as helpful as they might be. The
difficulty is how to improve them. The suggestion that they should all
be voluntary is at first sight attractive but there are two
insuperable difficulties. The one is the power of fashion, for it
might well become fashionable in a certain house not to attend chapel.
Those who know anything of the inside of schools know how such a
fashion would deter many of the best boys from going, and martyrdom
ought not to be part of the training of school life. The other
difficulty is more subtle, but none the less real it originates in the
boys' quite healthy fear of claiming merit. Those in authority, if
wise, would not count attendance at chapel for righteousness, but some
of the most sensitive boys might think that they would do so, and
might stay away in consequence, and thus deprive themselves of
something they really valued. Two or three, not many, might come from
a wrong motive, and perhaps these would stay to pray, but they would
be no compensation for the loss of the others.

From time to time it is possible to have voluntary services, and
attendance at Holy Communion should always be voluntary, not only in
name but in fact. On the whole it is better that a boy who neglects
this duty should go on neglecting it, than that those who come should
feel that their presence is noted with approval or the reverse.

But it is different with the daily service. Irksome it may sometimes
be, not only to boys; but half its virtue lies in the fact that all
are there in body and may sometimes be there in spirit too. The
familiarity of the oft-repeated prayers and the oft-sung hymns leads
to inattention perhaps, but seldom, it may be hoped, to callousness;
religious emotion may only occasionally be stirred but the thread of
n