SPERRY REPORTS GROWTH IN CHURCH ATTENDANCE

Holding mounting Sunday chapel attendance and steady observance of morning prayers as witness, Dean Sperry of the Divinity School expressed confidence that the liberal system of non-compulsory chapel services has proved its worth in the annual report of the activities of the Memorial Church.

"It was in the autumn of 1886 that the Corporation voted to abolish compulsory Sunday and daily services and committed itself tot he present system," the Dean remarks. "It says much, both for the validity of the system and the religious life of the University, that fifty years after the event we are able to give so decent an account. We should remember what was said when the voluntary system was begun,--an early morning service gathering twenty men, all young and present of their own choice, would be the most significant congregation in Protestantism!"

The average Sunday attendance of over 600 is an increase of almost a hundred over that of ten years ago. In commenting on the daily level of 61, Dean Sperry raises doubt that any other show daily services on over 200 days in church with an equal constituency can the year gathering an equal number. "He finds, however, that the House plan has greatly reduced the upperclassmen in attendance and in all probability accounts for the fact that the congregation is mainly made up of Freshmen living in the Yard and of Graduate students on their way from North of the Yard.

In addition, Dean Sperry reports the inauguration of several conferences of all those concerned with the religious life of the men in the University which include the Board of Preachers, the student pastors assigned to the care of members of their own communions enrolled here, the officers of Phillips Brooks House, and several college deans and medical officers