FAMILY PRAYERS by Christian Work

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 9, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 32.

FAMILY PRAYERS.

By Christian Work

SOME of us have positive convictions on the subject. We have memories that confirm us. Whatever other people do now, or did once, we know what our fathers did. Twenty years of family prayer, morning and evening, was likely to leave an impression on the children.

What if they did "not like it" because it was "tiresome," or because they had "no taste for it"? What if they occasionally wished that "father would forget it some mornings"? What if, when they visited other homes where prayers were omitted, they wished that at their house they could have the same freedom from the restraints of religion? What if they did resolve not to bind their own children by any such invariable custom when they should become heads of families?

When at last father died, they missed the usual service, and as they looked into the thin face and remembered how those lips, now silent, had faithfully called on God every morning and every evening, they were glad that this record had been made by the departed saint, and they quietly resolved to make the same record. Prayer may interfere with business plans now and then for five or ten minutes in the morning, but no one ever regrets it when the last morning has come, and the coffin is in the parlor.—Christian Work.