VENTILATION AND LIGHT IN CHURCHES.
By Talmage
WE want more common sense in the building of churches. The idea of adaptiveness is always paramount in any other kind of structure. If bankers meet together and they resolve to put up a building, it is especially adapted to banking purposes; if a manufacturing company put up a building, it is adapted to manufacturing purposes. But adaptiveness is not always the question in the rearing of churches. In many of our churches we want more light, more room, more ventilation, more comfort. Vast sums of money are expended on ecclesiastical structures, and men sit down in them, and you ask a man how he likes the church. He says, "I like it very well, but I can't hear." As though a shawl factory were good for everything but making shawls! The voice of the preacher dashes against the pillars. Men sit down under the shadows of the Gothic arches, and shiver, and they feel they must be getting religion, or something else, they feel so uncomfortable. Oh! my friends, we want more common sense in the rearing of churches. There is no cause for lack of light when the heavens are full of it; no excuse for lack of fresh air when the world swims in it. It ought to be an expression not only of our spiritual happiness, but of our physical comfort, when we say, "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord God of Hosts. A day in thy courts is better than a thousand."