FAMILY PRAYER.
"Hush! 'tis a holy hour,--the quiet room
Seems like a temple, while yon soft lamp sheds
A faint and starry radiance through the room
And the sweet stillness, down on yon bright heads
With all their clustering locks, untouched by care,
And bowed, as flowers are bowed with night,--in prayer.
Gaze on, 'tis lovely--childhood's lip and cheek
Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought!"
Home-sympathy will prompt to family devotion. The latter is the fruit of
the former. A prayerless home is destitute of religious sympathy. The
family demands prayer. Its relation to God, its dependence and specific
duties, involve devotion. Communion with God constitutes a part of the
intercourse and society of home. The necessity of family prayer arises out
of the home-constitution and mission. Family mercies and blessings; family
dangers and weaknesses; family hopes and temptations,--all bespeak the
importance of family worship. If you occupy the responsible station of a
parent; if God has made you the head of a religious household, and you
profess to stand and live on the Lord's side, then, tell me, have you not
by implication vowed to maintain regular family worship? Besides, the
benefits and privilege of prayer develop the obligation of the family to
engage in it. Is not every privilege a duty? And if it is a duty for
individuals and congregations to pray, is it not, for a similar reason, the
duty of the family to establish her altar of devotion? As a family we daily
need and receive mercies, daily sin, are tempted and in danger every day;
why not then as a family daily pray?
But what is family prayer? It is not simply individual prayer, not the
altar of the closet; but the home-altar, around which all the members
gather morning and evening, as a family-unit, with one heart, one faith and
one hope, to commune with God and supplicate his mercy.
Pages:
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164