Prayer Petition.

Unfortunately this was crowded out of yesterday's issue. The following petition, printed on postal cards, has been decided upon by the committee, and will be sent to every undergraduate in the academic department, after the holidays.

"To the Honorable the President and Fellows and the Board of Oversers of Harvard University, and the Faculty of Harvard College. Respectfully petitions of his own free will the undersigned undergraduate of Harvard College, that your honorable bodies will abolish all compulsory attendance upon prayers.

(Signature)

The undersigned also approves the address of the committee of undergraduates, setting forth reasons for the granting of this petition."

The reasons are stated in a preamble which reads as follows: "To the Honorable the President and Fellows and the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and the Faculty of Harvard College: Respectfully represents the undersigned committee on behalf of the undergraduates of Harvard College that compulsory attendance upon prayers should be abolished for the following among, other reasons:

1. That voluntary attendance upon prayers would necessarily betoken genuine interest in the religious exercises.

2. That the sense of compulsion accompanying the present attendance upon prayers is not conducive to the development of sincere religious feeling, but, on the contrary, produces indifference, if not hostility, to the observance.

3. That the already recognized propriety and justice of not enforcing attendance upon prayers in the case of some whose religious faith is not in harmony with the particular observance, tend to show the impropriety and injustice of making such attendance compulsory at all.

4. That the abolition of compulsory attendance upon Sunday services at church and the remission of compulsory attendance upon prayers twice a week, already conceded, leave no logical ground for the retension of further compulsion of religious matters.

5. That such compulsion of undergraduates is inconsistent with the entire freedom conceded to students in the Scientific School, and in all other departments of Harvard University.

6. That a large majority of the undergraduates of Harvard College earnestly desire the abolition of compulsory attendance upon prayers.

The committee further earnestly requests your honorable bodies, in the event of the rejection of the following petition, to state at length reasons for such rejection. Signed by the committee: Odin B. Roberts, John H. Huddleston, Augustus H. Vogel, Adams D. Claflin, Willian D. Brewer, Hammond La Monte from '86; George P. Furber, Emory H. Rogers, Livingston B. Stedman. George A. Morrison, Franklin E. E. Hamilton, Frederic S. Coolidge from '87; Lloyd McK. Garrison, Marshall H. Clyde, William Barnes, Jr., Robert H. Fuller, George H. Carpenter, Wilder D. Bancroft from '88; Perry D. Trafford, Bernard C. Weld, William G. Rantoul, George T. Keyes, William S. Keyes, William S. Scott, Edward W. Grew from '89.