UNIVERSITY RELIGIOUS WORK

In the religious and philanthropic work being done by Harvard students three organizations take the most prominent part. These are the Student Volunteer Committee, the Christian Association and the St. Paul's Society. Another institution, organized last year and now coming into prominence, is the Committee on Religious Meetings in Phillips Brooks House, which aims to extend its influence as far as possible to all members of the University, and is most intimately connected with Harvard moral and religious life.

The St. Paul's Society this year continues its work in about the same way that it has been conducted for several years. The work at the boys' club at Roxbury, now in its third year, is continued by about ten men as heretofore. Almost every member of the society teaches a Sunday School class in some church.

In connection with the Episcopal organizations here is a chapter of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew which is doing active work.

The charitable and evangelistic work which the Harvard Christian Association is carrying on in Cambridge and Boston, though comparatively little known, is the most important and most practically helpful part of the life of the Association. This philanthropic work has recently been taken up with new activity; a large number of men have entered into it and are making more effective the whole system of charities with which the Christian Association is interested.

Every day between 75 and 125 fishermen and sailors who come into Boston harbor use the reading room on T wharf, and 800 fishermen have their mail addressed there. Monthly smokers and entertainments are given by Harvard men, who thus keep in more or less close touch with the life on the wharves about the harbor. No organized evangelistic work is done in connection with the reading-room, and it is meant to influence the sailors and fishermen simply through giving them some other place than the saloon in which to pass their time on shore.

Ten Harvard men are assisting in industrial and evangelistic work at the Boston Industrial Home, an institution at which tramps are given food and shelter in return for work. Fifteen men are teaching in the Chinese Sunday School on Beacon Hill where from 75 to 100 Chinamen attend regularly. These men come at first simply to learn the English language, but a large number of them, attracted by the spirit of the place, continue to come back again for the religious teaching of the school. Not a few of these Chinamen have become Christians, and some have gone back to China as missionaries of the Christian religion.

The children's free reading room in East Cambridge is the most recent philanthropic institution founded by the Christian Association. The 70 books bought a few months ago have been added to by numerous gifts, and a very good juvenile library of about 430 volumes has been collected at the reading-room. Perhaps to the scope of the influence and work of the reading-room no better testimonial is needed than the fact that its membership roll of 250 was made up almost immediately and that 75 children are now on the waiting list. A reading club and an athletic club, under the direction of Harvard men have been organized among the children.

One of the most interesting, though one of the simplest, branches of the Christian Association's work is the series of amateur concerts, readings and impersonations given by men from the University at the college settlement in Boston, at T wharf, and at other places. This work is, of course, not vitally important nor very far reaching in its effects, but it is a charity that creates a great deal of happiness.