THE QUIET ROOM.

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 86, 9 October 1915, Page 14

THE QUIET ROOM.

♦ "Few of us realise what a source of waste distraction is," writes T N. Carver in the Harvard Review. "Did you ever try to work out A difficult problem, or do any severe mental work, in a room full of noise, conversation, and confusion? If so, unless you possessed remarkable powers of concentration, you must have found it hard to get anything done. "The reason was not a lack of mental power, but the waste of that power by reason of its being scattered and spent upon other subjects -besides the right one. When you went out into a quiet room you accomplished your work without great effort. Your mind -was no better in the quiet room than it was in the noisy one, and you did not expend any more energy, probably not so much. The reason was simply that you economised and utilised your mental energy, whereas, under the distractions of the crowded room, it was scattered, dissipated, or wasted. "The individual who has not the anchorage which religion ought to give, who does not see things in their larger relations, as a religious person ought to see them, who does not have a sense of the larger values, which a religious person ought to have, is like the person in a crowded room full of distractions. He does not realise what things are really worth while, therefore he allows trivial things to occupy his attention ; he does not see the larger aspects of life, therefore the petty things worry him ; he does not feel his feet planted upon the larger truths, therefore he is blown about by conflicting winds of economic, social, and religious doctrine. ' "A sound religion gives him a sense of quiet, of poise and balance ; it enables him to enter the quiet room where problems become simple, and lessons easy. 'The peace of God which passeth all understanding' is the flist condition of the highest economy of human energy and the most productive life. To the individual who has thus freed himself from distraction, the yoke of service is easy and the burden of tfi« productive lilfi is lifihV 1 "~