1.C 10. Questions and Answers

Questions and Answers.

REV DR. BACON. Would you recommend the hanging of one or two architects by court-martial y MR. BEECHER. I do not know that a court martial would be the proper tribunal by which to try them, but I would at least make them recite the Westminster Catechism every morning as a punishment. Architects, however, do a great deal of good work. They certainly help, by the exterior of churches, to beautify our towns and villages. But there is a certain thing that I never found an architect to be wise about ventilation. I never knew anybody else who was. There is no difficulty in ventilating a house when there is nobody in it. The difficulty is to have a house full of people, and then to ventilate it. How can you get fresh air into a room, after letting out the bad air? Draughts will be caused, and people will take cold. That question architects have never been able to solve. In reference to prayer-meetings, this lecture has a bearing which I may as well mention here. One of the great difficulties with them ordinarily is that people are so separated as to lose the whole social element. You will notice that after a prayer-meeting which has been very dull, and very stiff, and very proper has been closed, and the brethren gather around the stove, they commence talking socially among themselves, and then it is that the real conference-meeting begins. One deacon says, “ Brother So-and-so, when you were speaking on such a topic you said so and so.” He goes on, and makes quite an effective little talk, but you could not have dragged it out of him with an ox-team during the meeting; and so one and another will speak up and join in, and they will get warmly interested in their discussion. Around the stove was the real meeting. The other was the mere simulacrum of a meeting.