SLEEPING IN CHURCH

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 15, 1877

SLEEPING IN CHURCH.

Few church-goers can be strangers to the disagreeable sensation which meets them on entering a church in the afternoon. A choking feeling of stuffiness, a powerful odor of fusty clothes and moist flannel, and a prevailing element of peppermints and perspiration, form the more marked features of the atmosphere. Who ever saw a church in process of being ventilated? How many churches even have a window open from one year's end to another? There should be no surprise that our churches are unfilled in the afternoons. Of those who go few remain awake, and in the evening, naps are equally prevalent. Most of us have at some time or other been present at an open-air sermon. The language may be poor, the train of thought weak; but who ever saw any of the audience asleep?

Many worthy people feel troubled over this failing, and accuse themselves of moral apathy and other sinfulness. But given the vitiated air, and sleep on the part of those who breathe it is inevitable. It is a law of nature, and not a matter of conscience. It is no more a question of moral responsibility than is being burned when the lightning strikes a person. Sleep is the warning that signals the decrease of the life-giving oxygen in the air. In vain the ecclesiastical unfortunates struggle against their fate. Pins, scent-bottles, and friendly nudges are resorted to, but all in vain. By the time that “firstly” is reached, the auditor is far into the heart of the land where the patient patriarch dwelt. And when the prickings of a faithful conscience have impelled him to try if a change to the sanctuary of some reputedly more “rousing” preacher, or to some more airy tabernacle, will not enable him to keep awake, he finds that the change has been made too late. Man is the creature of habits, and especially of bad habits. Such was the experience of the convivial doctor who found that on those rare occasions when he went to bed sober he was unable, from habit, to go up stairs in any other way than on all fours.

Bad air could explain not only many a fit of illness, but a great deal of “spiritual deadness” and positive wickedness. Corruption and carbonic acid gas always go hand in hand. There can be no holy living without holy breathing—that is, breathing the pure air of heaven.—Home Journal.