former to a visitor at an English school. * Of course this was not so, but when boys congregate alone the exaggerated queries of one will set many a timid listener on the road to nowhere. It is a sorry experience, full of pain, but by many regarded in retrospect as a strengthening. How shall this not uncommon state of a boy's mind be met? By sympathy, of course; and by expert handling. Not every older person can cope constructively with "honest doubt." Humane clergymen are needed in every school, men who are not in a hurry, who can spend an evening before the fire, who see as much usefulness in conferring with one as in exhorting the ninety and nine. The loss of faith is often temporary, due to a mental tangle, to the supposed obligation of believing all things with equal intensity. Simplification is heaven's law. The great must be parted from the incidental and then we must bear witness to the great. Doubt is not resolved by negation. To tell a boy that after all almost everything is uncertain is not a constructive way to heal his trouble. It is like the perfectly successful operation under which the patient dies. We can urge a drastic simplification with these words: Let all faiths go but three. The first fundamental is that God, a personal loving Creator, exists. Can you hold to that? Then secondly the natural act of such a God is to show Himself in a Person whose word is God's word, a Heavenly Leader here on earth. We have such in Jesus Christ. And last, as to ourselves and our destiny, let us credibly maintain that we are not creatures like the midge or the ox, but immortal spirits, destined for growth in a realm of timeless progress and personal communion. With some such definite doctrine as that (it must be definite, for youth) a boy's doubts can be met, and finally helped.

The submission to agnosticism by men in places of influence bodes ill for youth passing through (and it can be a passage through) this valley of shadows. A thin vagueness, a kindly tolerance, a deference to a Great Perhaps is chaff to hungry souls. The doubter needs bread, not stones; the nourishing nitrogen of fish, not the secretion of scorpions. If a schoolteacher is unable to provide this bread and fish he should sadly say so to his superior, but not blazon his doubts afar. The popular master, the redoubtable boy-leader who blatantly shows his lack of religion is not a good builder in a school where faith and doubt are bound to be permanently built into a boy's religious belief.

Religion is not practicable without creed. In helping youth, the adventure of creedal faith is essential. Youth craves creed, and is not intellectually competent to live by nuance or vaguely spiritualized interpretations. Doubt must be met and faith fed by definiteness; by a simple statement of what the Christian church has held from the beginning. The Apostles' Creed is none too binding or definite for youth, and though leaders should have great sympathy with those who cannot in part accept it, the kindest guidance consists not in explaining it away, or reversing the miracle of Cana, or declaring that after all a good life, manly morals and a spirit of service are more important than what we believe. This mischievous and shallow notion should be cast out of all school chapels. It accounts for much of the failure of religious influence, the very field under discussion. To water religion down to humanitarianism is an insult to the children of God. In the world of the spirit, God is surely as grave a matter as man. If we turn ourselves and our brethren into gods, dwelling on our own needs and our own precious development, the soul's pilgrimage will lose its validity and its destination. "The kind of gospel which consists in weekly exhortations to behave like Christian gentlemen is powerless to attain the very object which it seeks. Christian practice has its roots in the Christian verity, understood, believed, revered, and kept in mind. We do not ask for formal lessons in Christian dogmatics, which are apt to be repellent to many; but we ask that sermons and instructions of every kind should awaken or reënforce the belief in a living and ever-present God." So long as Godconsciousness is anything but central in boarding school religion, religion there will be thin and transitory. The only cure for godlessness is God; the only nourishment, the only healing balm for the ups and downs of the inquiring human mind is God. Our schools have been afraid of theology, and have made a god of morality. We must get back our perspective, our proportion, and yes, our sense of humor. Goodness is but one attribute of perfection--the others are beauty and truth. The good man is not the end of creation. The good man communing with God is. So long as we neglect God in our schools there will be no true religion there. Let schools cease their tiresome and often needless exhortation, "Be good, be good;" and let jaded elders smooched with the world's coarse thumb heed the cry of youth: My soul is athirst for God, yea even for the living God. When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?

§ 2

Sunday in Schools. Sunday, the day of rest and of religion, is the most necessary day of the week in boarding schools. Group life seems to run smoothest by routine, all the members doing the same thing all together, and at the same time. We must contemplate with chagrin the inevitable cramping of cer