Silent Influence | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 2, 1882

Silent Influence.

A FOREIGNER feels superfluous and out of place among those whose speech he does not understand. So does an undevout person in devout company. To feel at home anywhere, one must first learn the language of his surroundings.

A gentleman relates his experience in a modest religious family with whom he boarded some years ago, and the effect of humble home piety upon his character and life.

At that time—while teaching in a village academy—he was not a religious man, but the custom in the household where he lived provoked his curiosity, and in a little while awakened his serious interest.

Each morning, after breakfast, the mother withdrew to the kitchen with her children—two daughters aged nineteen and thirteen, and a little boy of ten—and there a chapter in the Bible was read in turn together. The young man sometimes overheard the reading. The rest of the service was in a lower tone.

The good woman was quiet and retiring, and was naturally timid of a gentleman who was "college-learned." For this reason she shrank from conducting her family devotions in the presence of her guest.

Finally his desire to witness the exercise in which it seemed he was not expected to share, induced him one day to ask leave to remain. Consent was given, of course, though with some little embarrassment.

He read the Bible with the rest, after which all knelt, and the mother prayed as usual for her family, and added a short and simple petition for her guest; then the elder daughter, though evidently confused by the presence of her teacher, followed with a trembling prayer; the younger daughter uttered a few words of childish worship, and the little boy repeated "Our Father."

There was a pause then. All remained on their knees. They were waiting for the teacher to pray. But the young man did not know how to pray. In no very comfortable frame of mind he silently rose and left the room. He felt that he had thrust himself in where he had no business to be.

Weeks passed, and daily in addition to the first awkwardness of being left out at prayer-time, he carried a sense of blame in keeping himself a stranger among friends.

There was no cure for this uneasiness but to learn the duty which their example had set before him. He examined the grounds of the faithful woman's belief. He was conscientious in it. The result was that he was led to pray, and when next he sought permission to bow with the rest at the family altar, he could join sincerely in their devotions as a servant of the same Divine Master whom they served.—Youth's Companion.