some measure to understand, the character of the better intellects.

These latter remarks must be understood rather as suggestions of what the spirit of College lectures ought to be, than as any distinct proposition. For such a system might easily be carried so far as to sacrifice the higher students to the lower;-a proceeding by all means to be avoided; since it would impair the dignity of our education, and cloud the prospects of the progressive sciences in England.

SECT. 5.-OF ATTENDANCE AT COLLEGE CHAPEL.

THE subject of the enforcement by rule of the student's attendance at the religious services of his College, is one in which the discussion of opposite opinions can hardly be carried on without offence and pain. The sacred character and deep interest of all which belongs to our religious concerns, lead men almost inevitably to look at such questions with excited minds: while the very wide and profound nature of all the principles on which religious questions must be discussed, renders it difficult to argue closely on this subject. What! it is said, on the part of those who object to the enforcement of rules in such cases, do you undertake to make men pious by compulsion? Do you not know that the consciousness of a perfect freedom is requisite in order that a man may turn his thoughts in any fitting manner to his Heavenly Master? Would you degrade the ordinances, which ought to be so sacred,

into mere lifeless formalities? Would you constrain men, with averse minds and unregulated thoughts, to go through the external ceremonies of prayer? Would you make that which pretends to be the worship of God, be in reality a muster for the sake of order? Would you force men to come together in the name of God, when you have no higher object than to interrupt their idle or foolish hours? Constraint, which in matters of study is merely absurd, is here profane.

It will readily be supposed that the ancient College system, in this, as in other points, has taken the side of discipline, in opposition to that of perfect freedom. A daily public worship in the College Chapel is established, or supposed, in the English Colleges; and the attendance of the students at this service is in most, I believe in all, enforced by means similar to those already mentioned. At the period to which these institutions owe their origin, it does not appear to have been conceived possible, that thoughtful and pious persons should wish to be liberated from this obligation of daily public prayer. The thoughtlessness of youth might require to be admonished of its duty; the infirmity of age might require indulgence; but the general rule, that the Christian members of a great institution, collected for the most serious purposes, and living together after the manner of a large family, should have a practice of daily prayer in common, appears to have presented itself to the minds of the legislators of that time as a self-evident maxim. Nor can we wonder at this; when we consider that, after the Reformation, pious men of our

own Church, most averse in their minds to mere hollow show and lifeless ceremony, were most earnest in recommending a rigorous and formal regularity of time, place, and circumstance, in the conduct of men's devotions. And when we consider further, that in most large families, of which the heads have strong religious feelings, daily regular family worship is in our own time kept up, and is considered as a practice highly important, both as it testifies their sense of their relation to God, as it tends to sober and direct each person's own thoughts, and still more, as it proceeds upon the hope of obtaining for the whole family, the blessings promised to common supplications ;when we consider this, we cannot be surprised that College worship, which may be looked upon as only another kind of family worship, has always been insisted on.

But, it may be said, by all means preserve the daily celebration of divine service in the College, but let it be attended only by those who repair to it voluntarily. You will thus have a genuine worship; and those who go, will really derive from it religious benefits.

To this I should reply, by asking whether those who practise daily common prayer in their own families, leave it to their children and their servants to attend the service or not, as if it were a matter of indifference? whether, if any member of the family were to absent himself constantly,-I do not say out of religious scruples, but out of mere want of seriousness and impatience of constraint,-whether, in such

a case, remonstrance and urgency would not be the proceeding and the duty of a pious head of a family?

But it may be said, remonstrance and advice are very different from College punishment for absence from the College chapel. And to this I reply, by referring to what I have already said, respecting College punishments. They ought always to be so administered and understood, as to have the character of remonstrance and warning. College punishments, however slight, however formal, are an expression of the disapproval of the College. Every person in authority, and every governing body, have their respective modes of expressing their approbation and disapprobation. The parent, or the master of a family, does it in one way; the College does it in another; but the meaning and object are the same in all such cases. If, then, we allow the propriety of interference in the case of the family, on what grounds do we deny it in the case of the College?

Or, take the matter another way. Suppose that we leave attendance at the College chapel voluntary; and suppose, as would probably be the result, that a great number of the students appear there very rarely, or absent themselves altogether. Suppose, too, we know (as may easily be known,) that this practice is not accompanied by any voluntary religious exercises of any other kind, but arises from mere want of serious thought, and aversion to regular habits. Are we to allow this state of things to continue, without interposing in any way? It appears to me that we cannot do so. The whole system of our Colleges is

framed upon the principle of not allowing those habits to continue unchecked and unopposed, of which we disapprove. We could not see our pupils going on, week after week, and year after year, with no recognition of their Christian duties and hopes, without some expression of our sorrow and dissatisfaction. Let it be supposed, then, that we must remonstrate. But what will verbal remonstrance effect, or who can employ it adequately, in a body, it may be, of several hundred young men? Remonstrance, then, must be represented, or at least supported, by College punish

ment.

But it may be said, that if we thus obtain the form, we lose the substance;-that the persons thus brought together by compulsion, have no devotion in their thoughts, and are not bettered by the practice. I acknowledge, with regret, that a College chapel is not, in the sincerity and earnestness of its devotions, all that the friend of religion would wish it to be; but is the Parish Church? In both places there are the cold and careless; in both, the serious and pious. I trust that many a heartfelt prayer arises to heaven in the daily services of our Colleges; and that many, even of the thoughtless and callous, have their thoughts calmed and solemnized by its stillness and order.

Institutions can be bound to do only what is possible. They keep up the laudable practice; they give the daily occasion; they prevent manifest neglect and transgression. They can hardly do more; they cannot control men's wandering minds, or drive