Habits In Church - Page 2

high school, I would call together the school once a month, to train all hands in the habits requisite for listeners in public assemblies. They should be taught that just as rowers in a boat-race row and do nothing else,--as soldiers at dress parade present arms, shoulder arms, and the rest, and do nothing else, no matter what happens, during that half-hour,--that so, when people meet to listen to an address or to a concert they should listen, and do nothing else.

It is perfectly easy for people to get control and keep control of this habit of attention. If I had the exercise I speak of, in a high school, the scholars should be brought together, as I say, and carried through a series of discipline in presence of mind.

Books, resembling hymn-books in weight and size, should be dropped from galleries behind them, till they were perfectly firm under such scattering fire, and did not look round; squeaking dolls, of the size of large children, should be led squeaking down the passages of the school-room, and other strange objects should be introduced, until the scholars were all proof, and did not turn towards them once. Every one of those scholars would thank me afterwards.

Think of it. You give a dollar, that you may hear one of Thomas's concerts. How little of your money's worth you get, if twenty times, as the concert goes on, you must turn round to see if it was Mrs. Grundy who sneezed, or Mr. Bundy; or if it was Mr. Golightly or Mrs. Heavyside who came in too late at the door. And this attention to what is before you is a matter of habit and discipline. You should determine that you will only do in church what you go to church for, and adhere to your determination until the habit is formed.

If you find, as a great many boys and girls do, that the sermon in church comes in as a stumbling-block in the way of this resolution, that you cannot fix your attention steadily upon it, I recommend that you try taking notes of it. I have never known this to fail.

It is not necessary to do this in short-hand, though that is a very charming accomplishment. Any one of you can teach himself how to write short-hand, and there is no better practice than you can make for yourself at church in taking notes of sermons.

But supposing you cannot write short-hand. Take a little book with stiff covers, such as you can put in your pocket. The reporters use books of ruled paper, of the length of a school writing-book, but only two or three inches wide, and opening at the end. That is a very good shape. Then you want a pencil or two cut sharp before you go to church. You will learn more easily what you want to write than I can teach you. You cannot write the whole, even of the shortest sentence, without losing part of the next. But you can write the leading ideas, perhaps the leading words.

When you go home you will find you have a "skeleton," as it is called, of the whole sermon. And,