The Prayer Petition from the O. K. Society.

TO THE HONORABLE, THE BOARD OF OVERSEERS, AND THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY: -

The members of the O. K. Society respectfully submit the following petition to your honorable bodies:

Our morning prayers are a survival. There was a time when there was nothing arbitrary in compulsory chapel, for the man who thought at all was sure to think that it was a good and useful institution. It might have been inconvenient, it might have been disagreeable, but the judgment of the student was certain to pronounce it salutary. Of course there must always have been some grumbling; there must have been in some quarters a pert condemnation of it; but such feelings must have been confined to the petulant and visionary. The average sense of the community pronounced without hesitation for public and obligatory prayer as a natural and becoming practice.

But the aspect of things has changed. Now, even those who themselves at tend prayers with pleasure, or who would attend them with pleasure, if they were voluntary, feel that this pleasure is tainted by the consideration that they are not free. Even these persons who look on prayers with a certain favor, feel that to make them compulsory is wrong; that there is nothing in public prayers so natural and so necessary that it should be a student's duty to attend them. It cannot be denied by one who tries to be sincere that, if all students were anxious to go to prayers, they would hardly notice that attendance was compulsory. But however large a part laziness may have in ordinary opposition to prayers, it would be a mistake to suppose that there is not a genuine, conscientious disapproval of them. This disapproval is founded on the widespread feeling that religious practices should be made matters for individual taste and feeling to direct; that everyone has a right to follow his own bent in such matters. So widespread is this feeling, that it underlies the arguments of those who defend compulsory prayers as well as of those who oppose them. No one thinks of assigning as a reason for making attendance at prayers compulsory the only reason that would have had any weight with those who established these prayers in the beginning - namely, that public prayer is the only seemly way for a student to begin his day, and that in trying to evade it, a man tries to evade his duty to God and to himself. Such a reason seems to all now inadmissable; the good reasons for making prayers compulsory are different now-a-days. It is now the necessity of not keeping away the children of religious parents; the propriety of making the students get up early; the utility of a daily roll-call; or even the satisfaction of seeing the students gathered all in one room. The function of chapel is no longer devotional; neither the college authorities nor the students look at it in that light. There is no feeling in the community that makes public prayer an indispensable form of beginning work; there is no feeling in the students that it is a religious act to attend prayers. Such attendance is a matter of discipline, not of worship; it is a thing people are afraid to stop, not one they are able to defend. The force that keeps prayers up in their present form is inertia. If laziness has some part in the opposition to prayers, laziness has as great a part in the defence of them. As regards the reason so frequently urged that attendance at chapel serves as a sort of roll-call, and that without such a compulsory service laziness would be encouraged, it is evident that, if this be a reason for the continuance of the present service, a daily morning roll-call could easily be substituted for it.

There is but one worthy reason why prayers as at present conducted should be opposed; they are not prayers. There is but one thing essential to their being defensible; that they become prayers. If the men who established them had been told - "These prayers will be a mere roll-call, a practice kept up for fear of losing money; the students will not listen; they will not pray; the office of conducting them will go a begging; the singing will be a contrivance; the whole will be an anomaly, a source of ill feeling and disunion," we are constrained to believe that those devout men would have preferred to establish no prayers, to devise some other way of calling the roll, and to leave the students who wished to pray to do so in private. They established prayers that they might pray together; only while they serve this end are prayers worth having. If they are to serve this end, it is evident they must not be compulsory. In our day there is not that unanimity of feeling which makes the expression of the aspirations of all in a single form possible; what alone is sacred to one is wholly unmeaning to his neighbor. To make prayers compulsory, then, would in itself defeat their object, since they could not be for all an occasion of worship.

On the other hand, to dilute and dampen the service until it loses the impress of every belief and of every tradition, so that it may offend no prejudices, is a sure way of making it a mockery; the studied reserve, the conscious insufficiency of such a service is too notorious to be pointed out. In our day, to make a religion fit for all, is to make one fit for nobody. The prayers, then, should feed the craving for worship which some yet feel; they should have a meaning. But since they cannot possibly have one meaning for all, let only those attend them whose sentiments they express. But above all, let them be prayers; let them be for someone the genuine expression of spiritual life.

To accomplish this object, one change among others seems necessary in this service - to omit all extemporaneous prayer. If the student goes to pray, he must not be exposed to the caprices of any individual; he must not be waiting to hear what he is to pray for; he must be borne along by a familiar service which gives utterance to the primary, daily needs of every man. References to passing events may serve to attract attention - if made eloquently they may move, if made blunderingly they may amuse or disgust - but the office of daily prayers is to bring the passing and casual under the shadow of the eternal; to make a man feel that amid the confusion of his hurried life, he can lay hold of an unvarying, underlying truth.

To make such a feeling possible, it is necessary to use some traditional form of prayers, the older and more universal, the better. Thus each may feel that his prayer is the prayer of all; that it is not a selfish wish or capricious will that he utters, but the cry of all mankind. By using a ritual service of this sort, we may help to bring back this sense of the authority and sublimity of religion. We may be brought to feel that the same impulse prompts men now which has always prompted them. Only by interpreting the deepest and most fundamental human consciousness has religion any sanctity; only by interpreting human history has it any meaning. Around such a service sentiments of reverence and love would gather in time, and college prayers would have a different meaning than that they have now.

What the results of such a service might be a few words may tell. Prayers would come to be of meaning; they would be a help and not a hindrance. A more sincere religious feeling would necessarily be diffused throughout the college. A higher and a broader morality would be created in student life. That reverence and love which religion, if of any meaning, must inspire, would be preserved, instead of being, as at present, foolishly and blindly wasted. The very manliness of a nobler ideal would ripen into nobler lives. The memories of such a service would linger in every mind and heart. The finer and subtler influences emanating from it would profoundly affect every life.

In view of these facts,

We respectfully petition your honorable bodies that -

A. Attendance at morning prayers be made voluntary; and that

B. Some form of service, other than that now in use, and in consonance with those ideals that we have tried to express, be substituted for the present form.

A. B. HOUGHTON,H. LA MONTE,G. SANTAYANA,Committee of the O. K. Society.L. L. HIGHT, Secretary.