The Nation, in addition to the article which we recently published, discusses the refusal of the prayer petition in connection with President Eliot's report. In this report, it will be remembered, the president says that in studies and discipline, a broad, distinctly University policy has been followed both towards teachers and students. The startling manner in which this policy is sometimes deserted, is thus shown by the Nation.

"The recent decision of the President and Fellows in regard to voluntary attendance at prayers, shows that this policy still lacks something of completeness; and we hope that the next annual report will be devoted to an historical review of the progress in religious discipline for sixty years-say from 1826, when the study of Hebrew, from being prescribed, became optional. This seems already necessary in order to justify an alarming innovation in the Divinity School, where also the pxan of freedom is sounded by President Eliot. The Dean of the school calls special attention to the fact that "marks for absence were first given up at lectures, then at chapel, and finally the student was left free to select the studies that he would pursue, and the order in which he would pursue them." This is the more extraordinary because we cannot imagine theological students to be capable of a perfunctory performance at prayers, as is the case with ninety-nine hundredths of the undergraduates to whom the liberty of non attendance is denied. There is, therefore, nothing shocking in the idea of compulsion as applied to the former. We observe that among the lectures at the Divinity School last year was one on Vivisection, by the Dean of the Medical Faculty. This suggests the utility of a lecture to the undergraduates by the Dean of the Divinity School, setting forth the grounds of his liberality in respect to prayers in his own domain."

By all means let us have the lecture.