potatoes and
meat, must plainly be found for them; but a thousand human beings are
put into a building to remain a given number of hours, and no one asks
the question whether means exist for giving each one the quantum of
fresh air needed for his circulation, and these thousand victims will
consent to be slowly poisoned, gasping, sweating, getting red in the
face, with confused and sleepy brains, while a minister with a yet
redder face and a more oppressed brain struggles and wrestles, through
the hot, seething vapors, to make clear to them the mysteries of faith.
How many churches are there that for six or eight months in the year are
never ventilated at all, except by the accidental opening of doors? The
foul air generated by one congregation is locked up by the sexton for
the use of the next assembly; and so gathers and gathers from week to
week, and month to month, while devout persons upbraid themselves, and
are ready to tear their hair, because they always feel stupid and sleepy
in church. 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
s