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The Building of a Home

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 29, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 5.

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The Building of a Home

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

The Family Altar.

THE best medicine in all the world is prayer. I was reading the other day a prescription for insomnia by a famous physician. What was it?—Morphia, or opium, or patent medicine? Did he prescribe air, or sunshine, or electricity, or water?—No; something which he declared was better than all or any of these,—simple, earnest prayer. Prayer calms the nerves, rests the brain, invigorates the body, and elevates and strengthens the soul.
When everything else failed, prayer added fifteen years to the life of Hezekiah. There is nothing too hard for it to accomplish. Leprosy, that loathsome horror of the East, can not stand before it: “Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.” “I will; be thou clean.”
Enough. No long, tedious convalescence after that. No feverish anxiety as to whether that prayer will avail. Prayer brings the almighty Spirit of the Eternal, the most tremendous agency in the universe. Before its all-prevailing power, empires and kingdoms submit themselves. Kings, lords, and potentates are as nothing, and even the very devils in their home of darkness tremble. Prayer has resisted the power of wild beasts; “chained the mouths of lions,” stilled the raging waters of the deep, and robbed the fiery furnace of its prey. Even the monster Death has been forced to open his insatiate maw at the pleadings of the simple prayer of faith.
But I have only mentioned a few of the wonders which have been accomplished by the agency of prayer. There are no heights too vast for its voice to reach; there are no depths so abysmal, so unfathomable, that they can not be penetrated. Neither the boiling deep nor the belly of the whale prevented the prayer of the despairing and repentant prophet from reaching the ear of the Eternal.
Well, since prayer is such a mighty factor, since in the mouth of the righteous it is all-prevailing, would it not be a good thing if at the beginning and at the close of every day we should assemble our sons and our daughters, our man servants and our maid servants around the family altar to thank our heavenly Father for past blessings and to ask help for the future?
The influence of family prayer is greater and more enduring than can be calculated. Nothing will take its place with the same results. Not even secret prayer should supersede it. How many noble sons have been saved by the memory of the earnest fireside prayer from the lips of a godly father or a tender mother; how many promising daughters have been brought to repentance by the sweet remembrance of the morning and evening prayers of a Christian home, eternity alone will reveal.
The other day I saw a workman clinging fast to a long ladder firmly attached to the ridge-board of the house he was repairing.
“Aren’t you afraid?” I asked.
“O no,” came the confident reply, “O no; you need not be afraid as long as you have a firm hold above.”
Tears came to my eyes as I replied: “That is right, my friend; if we only have a firm hold above, we have no need to fear.” O how sad that so little time is spent in securing a firm hold on the Arm of strength that never fails! More hours spent in prayer, mean fewer hours and days in nerve-racking worry and feverish anxiety. The firm assurance that our anchor “within the veil” holds firmly is worth more than anything else in the world; that amid the worry and moil of this feverish life may come the blessed assurance like a benediction of peace, that, altho the bottom rung of the ladder may rest amid the slime and the mud of earth, the top reaches even to the throne of the Eternal.
“But,” objects some busy, care-worn father or mother, “there are so many chores to do in the morning; the children must be washed and dressed and prepared for school as soon as breakfast is over; baby is peevish and takes extra care, and really it does seem as if the morning is the very busiest time of the whole day. If we attempt to have prayers before breakfast, the food becomes cold and not fit to eat, standing so long; while if we wait until after breakfast, it seems so hard to collect the family. So when our cares began to increase, we thought we would be entirely excusable to omit morning worship.”
Ah, my poor friend; you stopped praying just when you most needed the strength and help prayer would bring. The burden of care increased, and so you decided to bear the weary, crushing weight on your own weak shoulders. What worse than folly! Martin Luther used to say that whenever he had a hard day’s work before him, he gave extra time to prayer.
I suppose, my brother, that on account of this lapse in the morning, you give all the more time to evening worship? When the cares of the day are all over, how fitting and how restful to commit the soul to the keeping of that Eye which neither slumbers nor sleeps.
“Yes, that’s so. We used to have evening prayer always when we were first married, and we belong to the church now; but, you see, after supper, the children want to go to bed, wife is tired and nervous, and I feel actually too weary by the time I have finished the daily paper to lead in worship. I suppose we ought to, but we’ve excused ourselves, because—”
Ah, yes, I see. But I am afraid that some day the Master may excuse you, too,—excuse you from entering the city of gold; excuse the angel from writing your name in the Book of Life; excuse you from wearing a golden crown, and from joining in the song of Moses and the Lamb around the great white throne. Some day the Master, whom you have so neglected and whose proffered love and aid you have so scorned, may say to you, “Excused from heaven.”
Ah, think of it! too tired to spend a few moments in prayer, but not too tired to spend an hour reading the appalling, sickening, disgusting records of crimes and sensationalism and folly with which the pages of the daily newspapers are defaced!
O, the saddest words which were ever spoken to mortal man were spoken to the professed people of God: “Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone.”