p. 45 | Out of Place by Dudley Marvin Canright

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 10, 1866

Out of Place.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

THERE are many things which are very good and even pleasant, when in the right place, but out of place they are disagreeable. "A place for everything, and everything in its place," is a motto that cannot be too well heeded.

That a crying child in meeting is entirely out of place, I regard as being a self-evident truth. Who that has ever witnessed the scene, will not agree with me? Its shrill cry can be heard above the speaker's loudest note. He may speak loud and still more loudly, he may use his most attracting gestures, he may exert every nerve, to attract the attention of his hearers, but all in vain. You will still see half, or two-thirds of the faces turned toward the crying child. If the speaker thinks he has gained the attention of any, he will soon be undeceived by seeing them turn around every few minutes to see if the youngster's strength is not about exhausted! Alas! they generally look in vain. When I am speaking, it is out of the question for me to keep my thoughts together, or to know what I am saying, if there is a crying child before me. Or if I am trying to listen to another, I lose about all they say. I think that this is the general experience of all. The child should at once be taken from the meeting. A crying baby will kill a social meeting as quick as water will a fire.

But says one, "The poor woman wants to go to meeting as well as others, and she can not go without taking her baby." Well how much good does the poor woman get from the meeting when her child is crying and she is exerting all her strength and genius to keep it still? If she hears one word in ten she does well, or if she can repeat the text when she gets home it is because it was read before the child began to screech. Peaceable, quiet children do not disturb their mothers, the speaker, nor the congregation. Such we love to see in meeting.

Dogs in meeting are also entirely out of place. I have often seen the worship of God disturbed by the growling, and even fighting, of dogs right in the house. Persons will bring their dogs with them into the house of God as complacently as though it was the proper place for them. If they disturb the meeting, their masters are the last ones to stop them.

This is not only out of place, but a manifest piece of ill manners. We have not the least hope of converting the dogs, and we sometimes despair of their masters who have so little sense of right and wrong as to bring their dogs into the house of God.

D. M. CANRIGHT.

Lockport, N. Y.