With this morning's service, the new system of voluntary attendance at prayers is inaugurated. The students of Harvard have been granted a request that no student shall be compelled to attend Chapel simply because it is recognized that request was based upon principle. For any other reason such a request would have met with its merited rebuke. But now that it is established, that each student shall be allowed to exercise his own discretion in attending prayers, does there not arise another question of equal interest to the student and perhaps of even more politic interest to the university, - the question whether the present plan will be successful? It is hardly matter for surprise that in the opinion of many the abolition of compulsory attendance upon prayers meant the discontinuance of the religious services themselves. In so far as the attendants upon prayers are concerned, such an event is a possibility. But it is no more a probability than that any house of worship, situated in the heart of a great and thriving community, will be closed for lack of worshippers. Each student is now expected to exercise, while a resident of the university, that discretion in attending divine worship which as a member of a Christian home he is wont to employ. If it can be demonstrated by an actual diminution in the number of those present at Chapel that the petition which met with such support from the students was dictated by other than a spirit of adherence to principle, it can be urged justly that the students of the university have belied themselves and have masked under an assumption of honor an indefensible form of laziness. It was urged when the first prayer petition was presented to the Overseers, that the cause of the petition was a repugnance on the part of the students to arise fifteen minutes earlier each day and to incur the physical trouble of walking to and from chapel. To those who signed the petition in honest conviction of right, and to all who hold to their honor as gentlemen, such an imputation is as unwarranted as it can be proved to be untrue. It is now in the power of the students to show what they had in mind when they asked that they should no longer be forced to attend prayers.

We wish the preachers in charge every success in their work, and feel assured that each success will be secured to them. It is, moreover, an imperative duty upon the part of the students to see that success assured through their own voluntary action.