FAMILY PRAYER | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 21, 1877

FAMILY PRAYER.

READER, are you at the head of your family? If so, do you have prayer in your family? He who does not read the Bible and pray with his family, sacrifices two of the most precious privileges ever given to man.

There are multitudes of men, we fear, who never read their Bibles at all during the day, except the brief portions read in their family devotions. A much larger portion should be read daily, but the very little that is read is infinitely better than none at all. The prayers offered round the family altar, while they are a source of exquisite blessing upon the heart of him who prays, react in the most happy manner upon the family.

I am not surprised that many children of professedly religious parents have so little regard for religion, and go to the bad as rapidly as they do. Their religious retrospect at home is a dreary blank. They have no faith in the religion of their parents, because they never pray with them. As they look back over life, from their young manhood or womanhood, there is not one religious act in their family that they can recall. There has been nothing fixed or pleasant in their religious—if it can be called religious—training.

As they go out into the world to fight life's battles for themselves, they have no cheering retrospect of the hour for family prayer at home. They cannot sing, when far away, when the hour arrives:—

“There is a scene where spirits blend, Where friend holds fellowship with friend; Though sundered far by faith they meet Around one common mercy-seat.

And having no ties of a family or a social nature to bind them to morality or religion, it is not surprising that they frequently run into vice.—Sel.