Daily Inspiration Quote by John Gresham Machen

“Afternoon classes - that evil invention!” lands like a muttered heresy in the middle of respectable academia, and that’s the joke: Machen, a theologian best known for his seriousness about doctrine, briefly sounds like a campus satirist. The line works because it inflates a petty grievance into moral language. Calling a timetable “evil” borrows the vocabulary of spiritual combat and applies it to the most unglamorous battlefield imaginable: post-lunch fatigue.

The intent is less to condemn education than to puncture the romantic idea that intellectual life is always elevated. Afternoon classes are where ideals go to get sleepy. Machen’s dash does heavy lifting, turning the phrase into a stage aside, a conspiratorial wink to anyone who has tried to think clearly while the body begs for a nap. It’s also a sly acknowledgment that institutions, even ones dedicated to truth, run on human schedules and human limits. The subtext: the mind may be willing, but the circadian rhythm is weak.

Context matters. Machen moved through rigorous academic worlds (Johns Hopkins, Princeton, then Westminster) that prized disciplined study. In that setting, a quip like this signals camaraderie and sanity, not laziness. He’s not rejecting the life of the mind; he’s admitting its friction points. It’s a miniature protest against the machinery of schooling - the way learning gets parceled into hours and rooms - and it flatters the reader with recognition. Everyone has felt the tyranny of the 2 p.m. lecture; Machen just dares to label it with apocalyptic flair.