Page:Church Seats and Kneeling Boards.djvu/11

 attitude. It destroys all sense of the use and ends for which a Church exists. It is enough, if a Church seat is more easy than an ordinary chair. The old high straight-backed pew framing was absolutely uncomfortable, and yet we all know how people fought to retain it. There is no need to go to the opposite extreme, and pander to what will promote sleep and lethargy, rather than conduct more befitting the place and occasion.

I have shown the hat of each person deposited on the further side of his own kneeling-board, in full view of the person to whom it belongs, and entirely free of the possibility of its being kicked by the person to whom it does not belong. People have a habit of tucking in the hat under their own seats, which is an entire mistake. The shelf marked is intended for books when not in use, and should never be higher than the line of the seat, of which it should be a continuation, or it will come to be misunderstood, and used improperly. In countries where fixed seats obtain, as in Germany and parts of Italy, fixed kneeling-boards, although much too broad, are never absent. Too great breadth in the kneeling-board prevents a person while sitting from passing his feet over and beyond the kneeling-board, which it is often a great relief to do.

I have had to argue for this sort of Church seat and kneeling-board for the last thirty-five years, and I have never failed to convince entirely those for whom I have worked, however much in the first instance they objected to the idea. I am convinced that no other treatment will ever make kneeling general. "You have made my people kneel," is the message I have received after the system has been long enough in use. " I have become a missionary for your kneeling-boards," was written to me by the strongest objector to them that I have ever met with. But it must never be forgotten, as it is unfortunately always forgotten, that an Englishman does not know how to kneel without patient instruction of a very minute kind. Having given him the means of kneeling, he must be taught how to use it without effort, in a simple, unaffected way, keeping his eyes on a book, and not studying the ceiling. The joint in the knee should be brought to fit to the front rounded edge of the kneeling-board,