Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1875 — Air and Religion. [ARTICLE]

Air and Religion.

Many a farmer and housekeeper wonder why it is that they must needs take a nap every Sunday in sermon time. When the parson gets comfortably into the second or third head of his discourse and the congregation have settled into the easiest position to listen, gentle sleep begins to steal over their faculties, and the good man is surprised at finding his argument less cogent than it seemed when prepared in the solitude of his studv. At home the busy matron never thinks of napping at eleven o’clock in the morning, anci the man of business would consider his sanity or common sense sadly called in question should a friend propose a half-hour’s nap at that hour of the day. Nevertheless, they both sleep like kittens in their pews, and logic, rhetoric, eloquence are alike wasted in the vain attempt to rouse their sluggish souls. The question of the poet, so often sung in our assemblies, My drowsy powars, why sleep ye so! is exactly in point, and, we propose as an answer: "Because we are breathing carbonic acid gas—deadly poison; because the sexton did not let the foul air of last Sunday’s congregation out of the doors and windows, and the fresh, pure air of heaven in." Look around at the audience; that feverish Hush on the face isn’t heat; it is poison. The lady nodding over there, her nose and face like a scarlet rose, is not too warm, for the thermometer doesn’t stand over seventy degrees; she is partially suffocated; what she wants is fresh air.' The hard-working mechanic or farmer doesn’t sleep because lie watched with a sick child last night, butsimplv for want of oxygen to keep the flames of intellectual and physical activity brightly burning. Nobody can rise on wings of faith in a poisonous atmosphere. Oxygen and religion cannot be separated in this unrighteous manner. We cannot live in conformity to spiritual laws while in open violation of the physical. Is your sexton a mao of intelligence sufficient to understand the necessity and reason of ample ventilation? Does he know that every human being vitiates, at the least estimate; four cubic feet of air every minute? Linger when the congregation leaves, and see if he shuts every door and window tight to keep in the heat till evening service. Then see how dimly the lamps urn in the vitalized air; how hard the minister tries to raise himself and his listeners to the height of some great argument, and how stupid they are—nothing but bad air. Now for the remedy, which costs labor and. money both, for ventilation is a question of dollars and cents. Saturday the sexton should be instructed to open all the doors and windows, to let out all the dead and foul air, and let in all that is fresh. It takes no more coal on Sunday morning to heat the church to seventy degrees because of its purification. Sunday noon let the openings of the church be again thrown wide —warmth and bad air will alike disappear, atfd though extra coal may be required to raise the temperature the minister will preach so much better in consequence, and the hearers will listen with such increased relish to the sacred word, that the loss of the pocket will be infinitely compensated by the gain of the soul.— Educational Monthlv.