ur services.
To arrange the whole of our religion for brisk, straightforward boys,
whose temptations are of an obvious type and who have never known
sickness or sorrow is, I believe, a radical mistake. There is a good
deal of secret, tender, delicate emotion in the hearts of many boys,
which cannot be summarily classed and dismissed as subjective.

Sermons should be brief and ethical, I believe. They should aim at
waking generous thoughts and hopes, pure and gracious ideals. Anything
of a biographical character appeals strongly to boys; and if one can
show that it is not inconsistent with manliness to have a deep and
earnest faith, to love truth and purity as well as liberty and honour,
a gracious seed has been sown.

Above all, religion should not be treated from the purely boyish point
of view; let the boys feel that they are strangers, soldiers, and
pilgrims, let them realise that the world is a difficult place, but
that there is indeed a golden clue that leads through the darkness of
the labyrinth, if they can but set their hand upon it; let them learn
to be humble and grateful, not hard and self-sufficient. And, above
all, let them realise that things in this world do not come by chance,
but that a soul is set in a certain place, and that happiness is to be
found by interpreting the events of life rightly, by facing sorrows
bravely, by showing kindness, by thankfully accepting joy and pleasure.

And lastly, there should come some sense of unity, the thought of
combination for good, of unaffectedness about what we believe to be
true and pure, of facing the world together and not toying with it in
isolation. All this should be held up to boys.

Even as it is boys grow to love the school chapel, and to think of it
in after years as a place where gleams of goodness and power visited
them. It might be even more so than it is; but it can only be so, if we
realise the conditions, the material with which we are working. We
ought to set ourselves to meet and to encourage every beautiful
aspiration, every holy and humble thought; not to begin with some
eclectic theory, and to try to force boys into the mould. We do that in
every other department of school life; but I would have the chapel to
be a place of liberty, where tender spirits may be allowed a glimpse of
high and holy things which they fitfully desire, and which may indeed
prove to be a gate of heaven.

Well, for once I have been able to finish a letter without