It is with a shock that we note in religious journals to-day the discussion of such themes as “The Passing of the Family Altar.” In the New York Christian Advocate, Rev. W. J. Hampton speaks on this subject, and his statements apply with too much truthfulness to many Seventh-day Adventist homes. He says:— “Is the home life of to-day pervaded with the same Christian atmosphere as it once was, or has the commercial spirit of the twentieth century crowded out quite largely the church life in the home? We believe this is a serious question, and one which affects largely the spiritual tone of the church. We recall distinctly the home life of several years ago. All the children knew father’s wishes, and knew, too, that he wanted them respected. Father wanted none of the children late at prayers, so all were down-stairs early in the morning, ready for the family devotions. What a familiar picture!—father seated in his armchair, the well-thumbed Bible open; close by sits mother and the children. Reverently and tenderly the Holy Scriptures are read, then all kneel, while the father, the priest in the home, invokes God’s blessing on home and children. After prayers are offered, all are seated at the table; every head is bowed while the father asks the blessing on the food. How happy and cheerful everybody seems! Then come the separations for the day, each one to his work. Evening repeats the scene. The hours of the evening are enlivened with music, playing simple games, bright, animated conversation, reading books and current literature; then singing, prayers, and good nights, and the day was spent. This was church life in the home. But how different to-day! Home life to-day is almost wholly without God. In the city it has become practically a fashionable boarding-house; an apparent disposition on the part of husband and wife to agree to board together. Husband’s thoughts engrossed in business, lodges, and clubs, while the wife is immersed in dresses, social functions, and club life. The care of the children is handed over to a paid nurse girl. The modern home is run something after this fashion: at breakfast time, one by one the members of the household drop into the dining-room, and seat themselves at the table. No family altar. No blessing at the table. No thought of God. It is rumored that it has become unpopular and unfashionable to have the blessing asked at the table in the up-to-date home. A writer says of a father, ‘I have no home any more; my children have turned it into a board-house.’ Here apparently was a yearning on the part of the father for the return of that home life of which he had once had a taste.” ‘We learn to-day that young men are drifting away from the church as never before. The non-Christian influence of home life may have something to do with it. A young man walled about with family prayers from childhood will have a safeguard about him through which it will be difficult wholly to break. A thousand influences and sacred memories will hold him back when sorely tempted, and will carry his thought Godward. We have in this country to-day something like nineteen million Protestant church-members, and, counting five persons to every home, some four million Christian homes. It is estimated that only one Christian home in eight has a family altar, and most of us will agree from observation that that estimate is sufficiently high. Place these Christian homes in a row, and we would pass through three million five hundred thousand homes before we would hear the sound of a father’s voice at a family altar, and from these homes one hundred and fifty thousand young men, having reached twenty-one, go out annually, never having heard a parent’s voice in prayer at a family altar.” ‘The following beautiful scene was enacted in the Christian home of —, of Rockaway, N. J. He has a family of eight children, all Christians but the youngest, still a child. On a recent Sabbath evening the family gathered together for family prayers. The Bible was opened, and the father read the chapter which told about Absalom’s defeat and death, and the tidings brought to King David, and the wail of grief of the broken-hearted father over the death of the wicked son. Then he knelt, and offered a touching, fervent prayer. As the result of that service held in that Christian home—for it was nothing short of that—a man, once a schoolteacher, was converted, and the next Sabbath presented himself at the altar of the church, and the writer received him in the church on probation. Is it not possible for this to be duplicated in every Christian church in our country? Instead of the passing of the family altar, may there be a return to the church life in the home! May the broken family altars be set up again! If this is done, we believe a different spiritual atmosphere will prevail in all our Christian homes, the chill will be removed from many a prayer-meeting, and the altars of the church will soon feel the effect, and be baptized with the tears of penitents coming home to God.’