p. 12 | Family Prayer by Canon Liddon

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 28, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 13.

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 practise of family prayer. Depend upon it, the worth of a practise of that kind can be measured only by its effects during a long period of time; and family prayers, tho occupying only a few minutes each day, make a great difference to any household at the end of the 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 by His blood every one of them? How must the bad spirits, that are the enemies of pure and bright family life, flee away — the spirits of envy, pride, 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 kindreds, and people, and tongues, which shall dwell with Him, the universal Parent to all eternity! — Canon Liddon.