Family Prayer by Canon Liddon

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 22.

Family Prayer.

By Canon Liddon

THERE is one mark of a household, in which God is known and loved, which is too often wanting in our day—I mean the practice of family prayer. Depend upon it, the worth of a practice of that kind can only be measured by its effects during a long period of time, and family prayers, though occupying only a few minutes, do make a great difference to any household at the end of a year. How, indeed, can it be otherwise, when each morning, and, perhaps, each evening too, all the members of the family, the old and the young, the parents and the children, the master and the servants, meet on a footing of perfect equality before the Eternal, in whose presence each is as nothing, or less than nothing; yet to whom each is so infinitely dear that he has redeemed with his blood each and all of them?

How must not the bad spirits that are the enemies of pure and bright family life flee away—the spirits of envy and pride and untruthfulness and sloth, and the whole tribe of evil thoughts—and make way for his gracious presence in the hearts of old and young alike, who, as he brings us one by one nearer to the true end of our existence, so does he, and he alone, make us to be "of one mind in a house" here within the narrow presence of each home circle, and hereafter in that countless family of all nations and kindred, and tongues, and peoples, which dwell with him, the universal Parent of all eternity.—Canon Liddon.