Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
The proper ventilation of their churches and vestries would
remove that spiritual deadness of which their prayers and hymns
complain. A man hoeing his corn out on a breezy hillside is bright and
alert, his mind works clearly, and he feels interested in religion, and
thinks of many a thing that might be said at the prayer-meeting at
night. But at night, when he sits down in a little room where the air
reeks with the vapor of his neighbor's breath and the smoke of kerosene
lamps, he finds himself suddenly dull and drowsy,--without emotion,
without thought, without feeling,--and he rises and reproaches himself
for this state of things. He calls upon his soul and all that is within
him to bless the Lord; but the indignant body, abused, insulted,
ignored, takes the soul by the throat, and says, "If you won't let _me_
have a good time, neither shall you." Revivals of religion, with
ministers and with those people whose moral organization leads them to
take most interest in them, often end in periods of bodily ill-health
and depression. But is there any need of this? Suppose that a revival of
religion required, as a formula, that all the members of a given
congregation should daily take a minute dose of arsenic in concert,--we
should not be surprised after a while to hear of various ill effects
therefrom; and, as vestries and lecture-rooms are now arranged, a daily
prayer-meeting is often nothing more nor less than a number of persons
spending half an hour a day breathing poison from each other's lungs.
There is not only no need of this, but, on the contrary, a good supply
of pure air would make the daily prayer-meeting far more enjoyable. The
body, if allowed the slightest degree of fair play, so far from being a
contumacious infidel and opposer, becomes a very fair Christian helper,
and, instead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise to celestial
regions.
This branch of our subject we will quit with one significant anecdote. A
certain rural church was somewhat famous for its picturesque Gothic
architecture, and equally famous for its sleepy atmosphere, the rules of
Gothic symmetry requiring very small windows, which could be only
partially opened. Everybody was affected alike in this church; minister
and people complained that it was like the enchanted ground in the
Pilgrim's Progress. Do what they would, sleep was ever at their elbows;
the blue, red, and green of the painted windows melted into a rainbow
dimness of hazy confusion; and ere they were aware, they were off on a
cloud to the land of dreams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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