“It is not uncommon for those who have no habit or inclination to sleep during the morning hours of secular days, to be overcome with somnolency in church soon after the devotional exercises are begun, and to find it impossible to derive any edification from them until they have lost themselves for a moment or two in absolute unconsciousness. Then they have no difficulty, sometimes a lively pleasure, in attending to the exercises which follow. The worshiper is then withdrawn from the familiar excitement of customary avocations. It is idle to suppose that in these few moments of repose, upright in his pew, he has rested enough, in the common acceptation of that word, to repair any waste of tissue that would explain the new sense of refreshment that ensues. He has received, in that brief retirement from the world, some reinforcements which manifestly are not dependent upon time or space for their efficacy—spiritual reinforcements, and spiritual reinforcements only. He has removed himself, or been removed, further away, out of sight or hearing or thinking, so to speak, of his phenomenal life, and nearer to the Source of all life.” This explanation may or may not be true. He adds: “It was quite a common impression among the ancients that sleepers in temples of religion were more apt to receive divine communications there than elsewhere.” (“Mystery of Sleep,” John Bigelow, pp. 94-95.) CHAPTER XXX WE LEARN TO DO BY DOING Sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn. YOUNG. Good health and good sleep are so interdependent that it is as difficult to separate them into cause and effect as to determine “which came first, the hen or the egg?” If it be true that life may be wonderfully prolonged as soon as we have learned to avoid disease and exhaustion, and that we may learn to avoid both by avoiding excess, then it is as much within our power to live long and well as to sleep long and well, if we so wish. Senility, the disease of old age, is now believed to be caused by germs which flourish in the waste matter left in the system through improper or excessive eating.