are ready to tear their hair, because they always
feel stupid and sleepy in church. The proper ventilation of their
churches and vestries would remove that spiritual deadness of which
their prayers and hymns complain. A man hoeing his corn out on a
breezy hillside is bright and alert, his mind works clearly, and he
feels interested in religion, and thinks of many a thing that might
be said at the prayer-meeting at night. But at night, when he sits
down in a little room where the air reeks with the vapor of his
neighbor's breath and the smoke of kerosene lamps, he finds
himself suddenly dull and drowsy,--without emotion, without thought,
without feeling,--and he rises and reproaches himself for this
state of things. He calls upon his soul and all that is within him
to bless the Lord; but the indignant body, abused, insulted,
ignored, takes the soul by the throat, and says, "If you won't let
_me_ have a good time, neither shall you." Revivals of religion,
with ministers and with those people whose moral organization leads
them to take most interest in them, often end in periods of bodily
ill health and depression. But is there any need of this? Suppose
that a revival of religion required, as a formula, that all the
members of a given congregation should daily take a minute dose of
arsenic in concert,--we should not be surprised after a while to
hear of various ill effects therefrom; and, as vestries and
lecture-rooms are now arranged, a daily prayer-meeting is often
nothing more nor less than a number of persons spending half an
hour a day breathing poison from each other's lungs. There is not
only no need of this, but, on the contrary, a good supply of pure
air would make the daily prayer-meeting far more enjoyable. The body,
if allowed the slightest degree of fair play, so far from being a
contumacious infidel and opposer, becomes a very fair Christian
helper, and, instead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise
to celestial regions.

This branch of our subject we will quit with one significant anecdote.
A certain rural church was somewhat famous for its picturesque Gothic
architecture, and equally famous for its sleepy atmosphere, the rules
of Gothic symmetry requiring very small windows, which could be only
partially opened. Everybody was affected alike in this church;
minister and people complained that it was like the enchanted ground
in the Pilgrim's Progress. Do what they would, sleep was ever at their
e