p. 15 | Family Prayer

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 29, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 38.

Family Prayer

We would like to ask what some church-members and professedly religious men, heads of families, with children growing up around them, are thinking about when they pass day after day, week after week, month after month, without family prayers? Do they think they are doing their duty—discharging their obligations and meeting their responsibilities? Do they expect that the divine Saviour, who looks upon their hearts and life, will approve their course and at last say, “Well done, good and faithful servant”? Do they think such neglect will be at all likely to impress the minds of their children with a sense of the importance of religion or a practical religious life? Or have they not reason to fear that some time or other in their history it may happen to them as it is said to have happened to a wealthy worldly man in North Carolina, whose only child, a lovely and loved daughter of some eighteen summers, was told by the physician, about midnight, that she could not live until daylight? “Call pa,” she exclaimed of her father, who, after long and anxious watching, was seeking a little rest. “Call pa.” It was done. He went to the bedside. “What is it, darling? What can I do for my child?” “O pa, the doctor says I can not live until morning, and you never taught me to pray. What shall I do? What shall I do?” She shrieked—and died.—St. Louis Christian Advocate.