As to doctrinal and dogmatic instruction, I cannot feel that, at a school, the chapel is the place for that; the boys here get a good deal of religious instruction, and Sunday is already too full, if anything, of it.  I believe that the chapel is the place to make them, if possible, love their faith and find it beautiful; and if you can secure that, the dogma will look after itself.  The point is, for instance, that a boy should be aware of his redemption, not that he should know the metaphysical method in which it was effected.  There is very little dogmatic instruction in the Gospels, and what there is seems to have been delivered to the few and not to the many, to the shepherds rather than to the flocks; it is vital religion and not technical that the chapel should be concerned with.

As to the theory of praise, I cannot help feeling that the old idea that God demanded, so to speak, a certain amount of public recognition of His goodness and greatness is a purely savage and uncivilised form of fetish-worship; it is the same sort of religion that would attach material prosperity to religious observation; and belongs to a time when men believed that, in return for a certain number of sacrifices, rain and sun were sent to the crops of godly persons, with a nicer regard to their development than was applied in the case of the ungodly.  The thought of the Father of men feeling a certain satisfaction in their assembling together to roar out in concert somewhat extravagantly phrased ascriptions of honour and majesty seems to me purely childish.

My own belief is that services should in the first place be as short as possible; that there should be variety and interest, plenty of movement and plenty of singing, and that every service should be employed to meet and satisfy the restless minds and bodies of children.  But though all should be simple, it should not, I think, be of a plain and obvious type entirely.  There are many delicate mysteries, of hope and faith, of affliction and regret, of suffering and sorrow, of which many boys are dimly conscious.  There are many subtle and seemly qualities which lie a little apart from the track of manly, full-fed, game-playing boyhood; and such emotions should be cultivated and given voice in our 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.