THE New York World of last Sunday makes a good point in favor of abolishing compulsory prayers and Sunday worship at Harvard. In an editorial entitled "College Government" it points out that the undergraduate is not looked upon now as he was in the times of our fathers: "The view taken of him heretofore has been that he was not an adult, and that the college, having him under tutelage as well as under tuition, had some responsibility for his behavior. But the elective system presupposes that the student is an adult able to take care of himself and responsible for his own conduct in the same way and to the same extent as any other citizen." Now, inasmuch as the ordinary citizen is not compelled, early in the morning, to "run and worship God" on week-days; nor on Sundays to "attend morning service and remain during the entire service," the World fails to see why we Harvard citizens should be obliged to do so. It blames particularly Emerson for "coming down from Concord to oppose a motion for the discontinuance of morning prayers," and James Freeman Clarke, "the liberal of the liberals," for "protesting against removing the requirement of attendance on public worship. Both these gentlemen," it continues, "are doubtless aware that however much a student is required to attend chapel, . . . . the requirement has very little effect on his habits in those respects during after life. Neither of them would dream of requiring him, after he has graduated, to attend church, . . . . and very likely neither of them would think any the worse of him for not attending. What their reason may be for upholding the old theory of a college police, we do not know." The World closes by putting its views, for the benefit of Messrs. Emerson and Clarke, into the form of an interrogation which certainly ought to receive the consideration of these gentlemen and their colleagues of the Corporation. "What becomes of the theory of the elective system, which allows an undergraduate his own voice in matters of study, if he is to be denied any voice in matters of religion? In other words, how is it possible to reconcile a system of study which assumes that a college student is a man with a system of discipline which assumes that he is a boy?"