WHISPERING IN CHURCH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 9, 28 February 1901, Page 15

WHISPERING IN CHURCH.

The worst of all kinds of sounds in church is that of human voices not engaged in the service ; worst in indecency, worst in moral transgression. Even religious conversation is wrong. Secular convernation is profanity. Comments on the Bervice itself, if favorable and friendly, are impertinent : if critical, are disgraceful ; if comical or calculated to provoke laughter, are infamous. For all mutual communication, that appear to be necessary, a sufficient forethought would in most instances obviate the necessity. If those who whisper would think twice, first, they would commonly see that no serious harm would come of keeping still until after the service. The insult lies against religion, against the authorities of the church, against the congregation itself. A whisper reaches farther than the whisperer imagines. And whereever it reaches, it may rightly .stir indignation. It is a form of illmanners, the more deplorable because it is scarcely capable of rebuke and suppression by any other means than a general sen»e of good behavior and a right education.