Bad Air vs. Religion

James White · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 23, 1874

Bad Air vs. Religion.

Many a farmer and housekeeper wonders why it is that they must need take a nap every Sabbath in sermon time. When the parson gets comfortably into the second or third head of his discourse, and his 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 study. At home, the busy matron never thinks of eleven o'clock in the morning, and 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 powers, why sleep ye so!” is exactly in point, and we propose as an answer, “Because we are all breathing carbonic acid gas—deadly poison; because the sexton didn't let the foul air of last Sunday's congregation out of the doors and windows, and let the fresh, pure air of heaven in.”

Look around at the audience; that feverish flush isn't heat, it is poison. The lady nodding over there, her nose and cheeks like a scarlet rose, is not too warm, for the thermometer doesn't stand over 70 degrees; she is partially suffocating; what she wants is fresh air. The hard-working mechanic and farmer doesn't sleep because he watched with a sick child last night, but simply for want of oxygen to keep the flame 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 man 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 all the heat till evening service; then see how thin the lamps burn in the vitiated air; how hard the minister tries to raise himself and listeners to the hight of some argument, and how stupid they are—nothing but bad air.

Now for the remedy, which costs labor and money; 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 such as is fresh. It takes no more coal on Sunday morning to heat the church to seventy degrees because of this purification. Sunday noon, let the opening of the church be again thrown wide—warmth and bad air will alike disappear, and 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 Monthly.