ately about our Chapel
services; I am a member of the Committee, and as so often happens when
one is brought into close contact with one's colleagues upon a definite
question, I find myself lost in bewilderment at the views which are
held and advanced by sensible and virtuous men. I don't say that I am
necessarily right, and that those who disagree with me are wrong; I
daresay that some of my fellow-members think me a tiresome and
wrong-headed man. But in one point I believe I am right; in things of
this kind, the only policy seems to me to try to arrive at some broad
principle, to know what you are driving at; and then, having arrived at
it, to try and work it out in detail. Now two or three of my friends
seem to me to begin at the wrong end; to have got firmly into their
heads certain details, and to fight with all their power to get these
details accepted, without attempting to try and develop a principle at
all. For instance, Roberts, one of the members of the Committee, is
only anxious for what he calls the maintenance of liturgical tradition;
he says that there is a science of liturgy, and that it is of the
utmost importance to keep in touch with it. The sort of detail that he
presses is that at certain seasons the same hymn ought to be sung on
Sunday morning and every morning throughout the week, because of the
mediaeval system of octaves. He calls this knocking the same nail on
the head, and, as is common enough, he is led to confuse a metaphor
with an argument. Again, he is very anxious to have the Litany twice a
week, that the boys may be trained, as he calls it, in the habit of
continuous prayerful attention. Another member, Randall, is very
anxious that the services should be what he calls instructive; that
courses, for instance, of sermons should be preached on certain books
of the Old Testament, on the Pauline Epistles, and so forth. He is also
very much set on having dogmatic and doctrinal sermons, because dogma
and doctrine are the bone and sinew of religion. Another man, old
Pigott, says that the whole theory of worship is praise, and he is very
anxious to avoid all subjective and individual religion.

I find myself in hopeless disagreement with these three worthy men; my
own theory of school services is, to put it shortly, that they should
FEED THE SOUL, and draw it gently to the mysteries of Love and Faith.
The whole point is, I believe, to rouse and sustain a pure and generous
emotion. Most boys have