CHURCHES, DEAD
There is a Scandinavian tradition which tells of seven parishes of the Northland that lie buried under snow and ice, but whose church-bells are heard ringing clearly.
May not churches ring their bells and maintain all the forms of life, and yet lie buried under the snow and ice of death? (Text.) (450)
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Table No. 6—Church Property—Gain by Decades. (See Church Statistics.)
+
| VALUE OF CHURCH
| PROPERTY REPORTED
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| | Per cent
YEAR | Amount | of increase
| | over value
| | at preceding
| | census
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1906 | $1,257,575,867 | 85.1
1890 | 679,426,489 | 91.7
1870 | 354,483,581 | 106.5
1860 | 171,397,932 | 90.3
1850 | 87,328,801 | . . . . .
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CHURCHES, SELFISH
Most churches are religious cisterns instead of spiritual reservoirs. A cistern has all the trenches dug, the pipes laid, the roofs shaped to catch the showers of the favoring sky, and the water runs into it to be dipped out by the owner or occupant of the building, for the purpose of consumption. A reservoir has streams running into it, but all its trenches are dug and pipes laid in order that the water shall flow away from it, for the purpose of distribution.—Theodore S. Henderson. (451)
CIGARET SMOKING
Cigaret smoking is the most dangerous form in which tobacco can be used, because combustion goes on so near the mouth that all the products of burning are drawn into the mouth without change and are absorbed by the blood-vessels and carried to the brain. In the pipe and cigar many of the products from burning are condensed in the stem of the pipe and body of the cigar, and never reach the mouth. In the cigaret these poison products, small in amount, are constantly taken by the blood-vessels of the mouth and affect the senses. The sight, the smell and the hearing are all diminished and enfeebled, later the power of reason and muscular control. No form of tobacco is so cumulative in its action as the products from cigaret smoking; the quantity is small, the absorption is more rapid, and the resistance by nature is less active. The cigaret-smoker is slowly and surely poisoning himself, and is largely unconscious of it. In the young the poisoning is very acute and active; in elderly persons it is less prominent, but that it is equally dangerous, in the effects on the nerves, on the brain and on the senses, enfeebling them and destroying their activity, is beyond all question. The pipe- or cigar-smoker may not seem much worse for his addiction, but the cigaret-smoker is always markedly damaged by it.—T. D. Crothers. (452)
CIRCULATION IMPEDED
The moral and spiritual circulation, the free action of life-forces in character, may be checked and impeded as well as the physical forces, as described below:
From the experiments of Scharling, Gerlach, and others, it has been shown that appreciable quantities of carbonic acid gas are hourly exhaled by the skin. If this process of cutaneous respiration is absolutely interrupted, as by covering the skin with varnish, death follows very soon, the heart and lungs becoming gorged with blood, as in ordinary cases of asphyxiation. In ignorance of this physiological fact, certain monks in the middle ages gilded the skin of a young lad who was to represent an angel (angels being understood, it would seem, to have a golden skin); but he did not live through the performance of the "mystery" or "morality" in which he had to play his angelic part. Even if the body be inclosed, all but the head, in a water-proof covering, asphyxiation follows. Some, indeed, present themselves in public gatherings, not within the walls of lunatic asylums, either, with the respiratory, circulatory, and perspiratory organs manifestly obstructed, and, in fact, with the whole economy of the body from head to foot hampered obviously to the eye by powder, paint, enamel, corset, tight gloves, tight shoes, and goodness knows what other contrivances for checking all the processes and movements for whose perfect freedom of action nature has carefully provided. These may, perhaps, be best explained as cases of reversion to the ways of savage progenitors.—R. A. Proctor, Syndicate Letter. (453)
