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 in various degrees a religious sense.  That is to say, that they have moments when they are conscious of the Fatherhood of God, of redemption from sin, of the indwelling of a Holy Spirit.  They have moments when they see all that they might be and are not—­moments when they would rather be pure than impure, unselfish rather than self-absorbed, kind rather than unkind, brave rather than cowardly; moments when they perceive, however dimly, that happiness lies in activity and kindliness, and when they would give much never to have stained their conscience with evil.  It seems to me that school services ought to aim at developing these faint and faltering dreams, at increasing the sense of the beauty and peace of holiness, at giving them some strong and joyful thought that will send them back to the world of life resolved to try again, to be better and worthier.

I am afraid that I do not value the science of liturgical tradition very much.  The essence of all science is that it should be progressive; our problems and needs are not the same as mediaeval problems and needs.  The whole conception of God and man has broadened and deepened.  Science has taught us that nature is a part of the mind of God, not something to be merely contended against; again, it has taught us that man has probably not fallen from grace into corruption, but is slowly struggling upwards out of darkness into light.  Again, we no longer think that everything was created for the use and enjoyment of man; we know now of huge tracts of the earth where for thousands of years a vast pageant of life has been displaying itself without any reference to humanity at all.  Then, too, as a great scientist has lately pointed out, the dark and haunting sense of sin, that drove devotees to the desert and to lives of the grimmest asceticism, has given place to a nobler conception of civic virtue, has turned men’s hearts rather to amendment than to repentance; well, that, in the face of all this, we should be limited to the precise kind of devotions that approved themselves to mediaeval minds seems to me to be a purely retrograde position.

Then as to arranging services in order to cultivate the power of continuous prayer among boys, I think it a thoroughly unpractical theory.  In the first place, for one boy so trained you blunt the religious susceptibilities of ninety-nine others.  Boys are quick, lively, and bird-like creatures, intolerant above all things of tedium and strain; and I believe that in order to cultivate the religious sense in them, the first duty of all is to make religion attractive, and resolutely to put aside all that tends to make it a weariness.