p. 53 | Family Prayer by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 28, 1873

Family Prayer.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

The following article on this subject meets my mind exactly. Though a little lengthy, I see no place to shorten it, so give it all.

D. M. Canright.

FAMILY WORSHIP AT MR. LYMAN’S.

We gathered, after breakfast, in the parlor, or sitting room they call it, for the Lymans have no “best room” that is too good for their own daily use. The September morning was just damp enough to warrant the flame of a few kindlings in the grate. Little Mary chose her seat on the floor, between Emily, the hired girl, and the fire. Seven-year-old Ned stood beside his father’s chair, with his father’s arm around him. The aspect of the circle was not specially solemn, but it was altogether pleasant. An air of anticipation, as if they expected to enjoy the exercises, was noticeable for its contrast to the uninterested resignation with which children so often go through the formality of family prayers.

“Well, mamma,” said Mr. Lyman, after all were in place, “what did we read about yesterday morning?”

“How Christ cleansed the poor leper, and cured the centurion’s servant,” replied Mrs. Lyman.

“And somethin else,” interposed little Mary.

“What was that?” said her father.

“About the woman—that was real sick—and when Jesus come in—and took hold of her hand—he made her well—right off—and she got the dinner,” was the reply, scanned off with deliberate earnestness.

“Well, Bessie,” said her father, “you may tell us about the leper.” And Bessie, a little hesitant because of the company, briefly told, in her own words, what a dreadful disease it was, and how the poor man was healed by the Saviour. Then Ned, in his turn, gave the story of the centurion, an officer “who told his soldiers to go just where he was a mind to.”

The reading of the last half of the chapter, the eighth of Matthew, followed. The children were as attentive as if it were the bed-time story. As he went along, Mr. Lyman explained the harder words and obscurer expressions, bringing out, here and there, with little touches of comment, the lesson of the incidents narrated; Mrs. Lyman dropped, now and then, a suggestion as to meaning or application; Emily and the children interposed whatever questions occurred to them—Mary’s sometimes being slightly irrelevant; and Mr. Lyman closed with a little incident of army experience illustrative of faith in God in times of peril. This was followed by three stanzas of “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” Mrs. Lyman leading at the organ, and the children joining heartily in the singing. Then came Mr. Lyman’s prayer—brief, and free from much-worn phrases, reverent and fervent in adoration, but almost conversational in expression, thankful for home mercies, and especially for the Saviour, of whose works of love they had just been reading, not forgetting the needy world, but chiefly concerned with family wants. That Emily escaped with such slight injury in her fall the day before; that Johnny might not for a moment forget to be true to the right amid the temptations of his school associations that day; that they were having such a pleasant visit with the friends who had come to see them; that the Blakes, over the way, who had just lost their baby, might find comfort in looking to the Lord, and that this sorrow might win the father from his intemperate life; that the Sunday-school concert passed off so pleasantly the night before—each formed the subject of petition or thanksgiving. All joined in the Lord’s Prayer in closing.

The whole service charmed me by its naturalness, its heartiness, and its freshness. I told Mr. Lyman as much, as we leisurely walked down to the bank that morning, and that it had given me some hints that I should try to work up at home. “But I shall not expect to make it as interesting as you do,” I added, “for you evidently have a special knack for it.”

“Thank you!” he replied with a smile; “but you are mistaken, I think, if you suppose that I have any more talent in this line than most people. The secret of the ‘knack’ in this case,—as in many matters, I suspect, where knack gets the credit, is preparation. When we began housekeeping, we fell into the routine style of family worship,—a chapter each day, in inexorable course, with a book-mark to keep the place lest we should forget which chapter we read the previous morning, and a prayer which went the usual round of stereotyped petition. We were not heartless in it, by any means, though it seems almost heartless now, as I look back on it and think how much more heart we might have put into it. But as the children grew up to an age when they ought to take some interest in it, I woke with a sort of start, one day, to the fact of what a listless, innutritious exercise it was to them. I saw that Johnny’s thoughts were generally somewhere else, and that my amen brought a welcome release to the body that had not been able to wander with them.

“One night, we talked it over, my wife and I, after we went to bed. It seemed to us that family worship ought to be made more interesting to little folks than it was to us when we were children; than it had been to our children. And, little by little, we have felt our way into our present method. First, I determined to see what I could do to make our Scripture reading more interesting. I decided that it was just as well worth while to ‘prepare’ for the chapter I read at family prayers as for the lesson I taught at Sunday school. At first, it seemed impossible to do this seven times in a week; and for a while I made floundering work of it, until I hit upon my present practice.

“I keep my Bible on my desk at the bank, and I find enough snatches of leisure, in the busiest day, by looking out for them, even if none of them are more than two minutes long, to familiarize myself with the portion to be read the next morning. Then, as I go to and from my meals, I turn it over in my mind. If there are points that I am not clear upon, I take down my commentary for a few moments after supper or before breakfast, and post myself. I keep an eye out during the day for any incident that may illustrate any part of it for the children, or try to recall some fact from my reading or past experience that may serve the same purpose.”

“I am busier than most men, but I have no difficulty, by watching my opportunities, in finding time for all this. And the difference in the relish with which I take up the Bible at family worship, after such preparation, is more than any one can imagine who has not tried it. To have the word near me as the reserve topic of thought in the intervals of business, I find a great gain, also. It keeps me in just the spiritual atmosphere that I need; and time and again has it happened that the truth in the chapter for the day has come to me in some exigency of temptation, or some opportunity for Christian service, as if God had spoken it for that very hour. I feel as if I could not afford to get along in the old way at all. Besides, if it were not for some such plan as this, I should be apt to let the months slip by with almost no systematic study of the Bible whatever.” Mrs. Lyman does much the same thing during the day, as she has opportunity, and she selects beforehand the hymn that we shall sing. Sometimes we sing the tunes the children have learned in Sunday-school; but more often the good old church tunes that wear so well, and that the children quickly learn to love full as much as the galloping Sunday-school music. I wish they were used in Sunday-school more than they are.”

“Do you read the Bible right through in course?” I asked.

“Oh, no! I should almost as soon think of taking a hotel bill of fare in course at dinner, day by day, until I had finished it. We are reading the Gospels in course now; but I shall hardly think it worth while, on the children’s account, to go through the Epistles in that way. I have thought of taking up the Old Testament history by-and-by; reading the portions they could grasp, and threading together what I skip in a few words of my own, as we go along. I find it quickens their interest greatly to question them briefly on what we read the day before, especially to let them put the story into their own words. It is twice as much their own then as it was before. But I guard specially against tiring them with long exercises. We never sing more than two or three stanzas, and never read a whole chapter. Indeed we pay very little attention to those arbitrary divisions any way,—as if one could expect to find the natural stopping places in a story by measuring it off by the yard!”

“Nevertheless,” I protested, “all this preparation must take a good deal of time, and more than some busy men could find for it, I think.”

“It pays to take the time, and it is easier to find it than any one supposes till he tries. We let our minds run vagrant more than we think. I have occasion to go to the grocery to-night: if I have no special topic on my mind as I walk, my thoughts are chasing about in all sorts of idle speculations, without even the advantage of a healthy rest for the brain. It is easy, and better every way, to train them to run on some pleasant but helpful errand like this. I have concluded that it is little short of irreverence to rush into the presence of God in prayer without some consideration beforehand of what I am to say to him. While I am dressing in the morning, or hoeing in the garden, or filling the furnace, as the case may be, I run over in my mind the appropriate subjects for thanksgiving and supplication that day. I often say to myself, as I kneel down, ‘Now do not let me utter a word that I do not feel.’ I dread to get into a rut of phrases, where a prayer may run smoothly with so little heart in it.”

Just then we reached the bank, and the conversation closed. But the more I think about it the more it seems to me that Mr. Lyman is nearer right in this matter than most of us.

—Chr. Union.