A LUXURY

A prominent University professor once described the reading or "Beowulf" as an "intellectual luxury" for any man not seeking a doctor's degree in English. To the scholar this poem is more of a pleasant interest than a required task-but one which very few students find time to enjoy. Much the same attitude has often been taken towards the attendance of college chapel. The student finds it hard to make time enough at nine o'clock in the morning for religious exercises, even though he may recognize the benefit to be derived from them. Consequently, he never acquires the habit; and soon attendance is a luxury rarely indulged in.

Outside of this category, however, there are men who have never been to chapel or "who do not know that chapel exists". For these a single day's required presence would do a world of good. They,-although the comparison may seem somewhat far-fetched, are very similar in spirit to the man who gloried in the fact that he had been in college for four years without ever having seen a football game-a "pride in ignorance" plainly inappropriate, and fortunately not prevalent among men who are interested in a "college education". "But certainly these who have never seen a football game are rarer than those who have never been to Appleton, and are regarded as more "queer".

Present-day liberties make it a little too easy, sometimes, for men to miss advantages simply by failure to see them. The liberties are right; unlike a prescribed course of study or Fresh man athletics, the benefit of religion departs as soon as the element of compulsion enters. That truth was learned here nearly forty years ago, when "morning prayers" were first made voluntary. And furthermore, the chapel loses nothing by the absence of those who fail to make its acquaintance. It exists for those who choose to enjoy such a "luxury", and as long as it serves them freely it remains faithful to its ideal. Ignorant neglect by the others is simply poor policy on their part. The spirit of inquiry, that tries all things before praising or condemning. Is the only spirit that ever finds full satisfaction.