The Family Altar by Meade Mac Guire

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 7, 1916

The Family Altar

By Meade Mac Guire

MEADE MAC GUIRE

“The parents of little Willie were not Christians, but they were respectable people. His mother taught him the Lord’s Prayer. She also taught him, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’ Then the boy would repeat after his mother, ‘God bless papa. God bless mamma. God bless Willie, and make me a good little boy.’”

“One evening as he was kissing his mother good night, he looked up into her face, and said: ‘Do you pray, mamma?’ ‘No, darling.’ ‘Does papa pray?’ ‘I never heard him pray.’ ‘Why do you make me pray?’ ‘That you may be good.’ ‘Don’t you want to be good, mamma?’ ‘Oh, yes; I want to be good.’ ‘Then why don’t you pray, and papa pray?’ ‘We’ve got out of the spirit, I guess.’ ‘Well, mamma, maybe God will hear my prayer. But don’t you think you and papa are expecting too much of a little boy like me? Do you believe that God wants me to do all the praying for this whole family? Seems to me you and papa might help a little.’”

Much has been said and written on this important subject of family prayer, and yet how many homes there are where it is still neglected! Many professedly Christian homes are even worse off than the one in the story; for they not only do not have family worship, but they do not know whether or not their children pray. How sad it is that any parent should not heed the solemn injunctions concerning this matter found in the Bible and the Testimonies!

“If ever there was a time when every house should be a house of prayer, it is now.”

“In every family there should be a fixed time for morning and evening worship. How appropriate it is for parents to gather their children about them before the fast is broken, to thank the heavenly Father for his protection during the night, and to ask him for his help and guidance and watchcare during the day! How fitting, also, when evening comes, for parents and children to gather once more before him, and thank him for the blessings of the day that is past.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VII, pp. 42, 43.

How many children are hungry for just this kind of help in the home!

A little girl was left with her grandparents for several weeks. They were a devout old couple, and their morning and evening prayers made a deep impression

upon the child’s mind. Finally the mother returned, expecting to find her little girl lonely and eager to go home. But she was surprised and somewhat hurt to find that the child did not care to go.

“Why, Nellie,” said the mother, “don’t you love papa and mamma any more?”

“Oh, yes; of course I do,” she replied, “but you know, mamma, we haven’t any God at our house, and I love to stay in a home where they have a God.”

Amid the deadly perils to which children today are constantly exposed, what a comfort it is to know that we can provide a protection for them!

“By sincere, earnest prayer parents should make a hedge about their children. They should pray with full faith that God will abide with them, and that holy angels will guard them and their children from Satan’s cruel power.”—Ib.

Sometimes parents say they are so pressed with work they cannot get time for family worship. Here are some questions such people may well consider: Could you not manage to have worship if you knew that as a result of its omission some member of your family would be very sick? or that you would suffer heavy financial loss? or if the law of the land commanded you to do so? or if you received one hundred dollars every day it was faithfully performed?

Let us remember that the issues dependent upon family devotion are more important than mere temporal matters. They are of eternal interest. Will not all parents connected with this message give their children the help and protection of having “God in their home”?