FAMILY PRAYER.

'A HIGH and solemn duty rests on every father of a family to present himself, morning and evening with his family at the throne of grace. God commands it-duty requires it-gratitude for daily mercies enforces it. Such a duty cannot be habitually neglected without great danger of incurring the displeasure of God, and bringing his deep frown on the family that does it. Could the causes which have ruined so many children and youth, and rendered them a grief and living affliction to their parents and friends be traced to their true source, it would doubtless be found in habitual negect of family prayer. The silent and solemn judgments of God rest on such familes, because of this neglect to call on his name. "Pour out Thy fury on the nations that know Thee not, and upon the families that call not upon Thy name." Jer. 10: 25 is the affecting language of Jehovah, and may help to explain the waywardness and ruin which comes upon many an otherwise promising youth. The fact that a father of a family is not a professor of religion, furnishes no valid excuse for the neglect of family prayer. He ought to be a Christian and a praying man. His duties and relations to God and to his children require it.

On the other hand, what a beautiful spectacle is family piety. At the appointed hour, see the father, like the high priest of his household, assemble his family and conduct his children to the throne of heavenly grace, commending them to his Father and their Father, and to his watchful providence amid all the dangers and temptations which beset their daily path in life. It secures a daily and increasing confidence in the superintending care of that great and good Being whose protection they need while they live, and whose presence and support when they come to die. The duty of family prayer is enforced by every consideration of temporal and eternal good.

'Family prayer ought to be regarded by Christians not so much as a duty which they ought to perform, as in the light of a privilege which they are permitted to enjoy.

The case is this. God gives a man the permission to come to Him at all times with all his cares, and hopes, and interests, and promises to hear and grant his petitions. He places also under

his care a family, and connected with this family are almost all his worldly enjoyments and hopes. He must find peace and happiness here, or he must be perpetually miserable. His children must be protected from the temptations and dangers which beset them, or else they must, by their sinful courses, make his latter years of life a grievous burden, and bring down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. He has domestics, apprentices, or workmen in his household, to continue in sin or be for ever lost-or to come and give themselves up to the service of God. Now he has the permission to come with this household every day before God, and commit them to his care, and bring them under the subduing, softening influences of prayer. Can he, if he really has any love to God himself, hesitate? We trust not. He will not need to be driven to family prayer as a duty-he will cling to it eagerly, as to a privilege. If he does not, there is strong evidence that he does not understand the feelings of a true child of God.

1. Family prayer ought to be regular. There ought to be a regular time for it-a regular signal; and it would be better that each member of the family should have his regular, appointed place at the fireside. These things are of no importance in themselves, but they are of great importance as means of influencing hearts so under the control of circumstances and associations as ours are. If a little bell is struck at an appointed time, and the members of the household gather at once, each to his appointed seat, as arranged, perhaps, by an older child, and the service is commenced regularly and in order, the moral effect will be vastly greater, and more pleasant, and more salutary, than where the household are called together at any hour when they happen to be ready, sometimes before breakfast, sometimes after, and sometimes not at all; summoned, perhaps, by several messengers sent in opposite directions, and seating themselves in disorder, wherever they can find chairs, and moving to accommodate one another. Let no one say in reply to this that our family is so large and heterogeneous that we cannot be regular; it is in precisely such a family that order and method is most indispensable, and it is always possible to secure it. A college and a cotton factory are families with hundreds of inmates, and they are as regular as clock-work. If a large family is not regular, then it is owing not to its size, but to the habits or example of the head of it; at least, so far as family prayer is concerned, see to it that all things are done decently and in order.

2. The Bible should be read and explained at family prayer. Christians are seldom aware how ignorant their children and the various members of their household are of the truths and duties of religion, and even of the narratives and history of the Bible. These every master of a family can explain. He can, on the sabbath, read several chapters, with Scott, or some other commentary, and then, in the course of the week, read them to his family, a part of a chapter at each exercise, repeating the substance of the explanations and thoughts which he obtained from the commentary, and

also making other remarks which may occur to him. These explanations should be adapted to the youngest children present, and often addressed directly to them. By this means, the master of the family will increase his own knowledge of the Bible in the best possible way, and fix it in his mind. and he will awaken and concentrate the attention and the interest of all his family. For every one must have observed how immediate an effect a remark thrown in, in reading the Scriptures has in arousing and fixing the attention of all present. Even if the explanatory remark expresses nothing in itself very new or valuable, it is of great importance for the purpose of keeping the audience interested and attentive.

3. Family prayer should be short, simple, varied and appropriate. Many of the members of the household are persons of uncultivated minds, unaccustomed to long mental effort, and others are very young, and it is better to secure good attention for a short period, than weariness and restlessness for a longer time. Hence the prayers should be short. These minds, too, are unable to grasp what is abstruce or general, or lofty in sentiment or diction; therefore they should be simple. The circumstances of a family, too, are constantly varied; the morning and evening prayers should vary too. The petition should not be always the same-it should be the simple, heartfelt expression of the desires of the head of the family, for the time being: and he should bring the wants of his household before God in simple and minute detail.

4 The head of a family, in conducting family prayer, should not have in mind its effects upon his household, but upon God. That is, he should not be thinking, while at prayer, of influencing, by means of it, the minds of his family, but should take the attitude of simple supplication before the throne of God, asking him for favors which he only can bestow. There is, indeed, a very great direct effect produced in a family by the influence of the morning and evening petition; but this effect is not what ought to be in the mind of the speaker. To be acceptable to God, prayer must be really what it pretends to be, honest, heartfelt supplication for the blessings which the heart desires. The heart, therefore, must be on God, and not on the hearers around.

The duty of family prayer, thus performed, will have a vast influence upon the character and happiness of the household.

1. It will have an immense influence in softening and soothing all the irritating passions so likely to creep into a family. If a father calls together his children and domestics, and reads and explains a portion of the Bible, and offers a simple and heartfelt prayer in their presence, one that they can understand, and appreciate, and join in, what an influence it must have upon them during the day. The father will be more kind and patient, the mother more considerate for those employed by her, the children more peaceful and accommodating; and all this will take place as a natural effect of the exercise, independent of any direct agency the prayer may have in bringing the influences of the spirit upon their minds. If a man does not thus recognize the hand of God in the government of his

household, the members of his family have nothing to remind them of their accountability to any higher power. From Monday morning to Saturday night there is nothing to bring before them their relations to God, and their need of salvation. They are thus trained up for the world, and worldly influences will, of course, have control.

2. The practice of family prayer will bring down the blessing of God upon the children as they grow up and go out into the world. "In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." Such is the promise; and if we habitually and heartily acknowledge God in our households, He will direct us in training them up for Him. He will guide us in all our plans and arrangements for them, and order everything for them in this world in such a way as to promote their best good. A man who brings up his children without the fear of God, cannot possibly expect to have them prosper in the world. Nothing is more common in a business, mercantile community, than for a man to neglect the worship of God in his household, in order that he may devote his whole time to his plans for making money; and then he finds at last, as his children grow up, their moral habits neglected, and destitute of all religious principle; they are utterly incapable of preserving or enjoying what their father made a slave of himself to procure for them; and the fortune, to procure which he neglected God and ruined his soul, they scatter to the winds in dissipation and vice as soon as they get possion. Ah, there is no gain in the end of any sort in attempting to live without God!

3. Family prayer is the most ready and efficient of the means of securing the salvation of the souls of our children. This service, if the parent is honest and sincere in it, has a steady and constant influence in keeping religious obligation before the minds of children, and in preparing their hearts to be affected by other means.'

A PROFITABLE SPENDING OF THE SABBATH.

'In the first place. Watch and pray, as you value your souls, against a spirit of carelessness and indifference in religion. Remember that the life of a Christian is a life of self-denial. It is a race-a pilgrimage—a warfare! Its exercises are described by wrestling, striving, watching, and the like. And of all the drones in the world, drones in God's hive are the least deserving the approbation of the Church, and the most under the frown of Heaven. The Scripture probably contains no expression of displeasure more impressive than that which is addressed to the Laodiceans, on this very subject-"So, then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold or hot, I will spurn thee out of my mouth." Yet it is astontonishing how soon we may be beguiled into such a frame of mind. The commonness of religious exercises-the attractions of the world-and, above all, the corruption of depraved nature, have a

constant influence to produce this awful indifference. And few greater evidences can be afforded of it than the neglecting the worship of God in his sanctuary, or carelessly trifling with the morning of a Lord's day.

2. Rise early. Your enjoyment of the Sabbath and your attendance upon the worship of God in the morning of it, greatly depend upon this. If you have much to do before you can unite with God's people in his house, the time of your rising must be arranged accordingly. A lazy, sluggish professor, who can satisfy himself with consuming the best part of the morning in bed, is but ill prepared for the service of his Maker in the course of it. And scandalous it certainly is to any one who names the name of Christ, that a man who would rise for a sixpence, at almost any hour or any other day in the week, should shut his ears on the morning of a sabbath, when God is calling to him from Heaven, and be lulled by the devil to sleep.

The conduct of the wicked, who can rise at any time to unite in a party of pleasure; the conduct of heathens, who are waiting the rising of the sun, in order to pay the earliest adorations to him as soon as he makes his appearance; in a word, the conduct even of Satan himself, who is always on the alert, to destroy, if possible, the comforts and souls of men, is a sufficient reproof to such individuals.

3. Endeavor to enjoy a good Saturday evening. It was a custom with the Jews to have a season of preparation, previous to the duties of the sabbath. Their sabbath began at six in the evening; and at three in the afternoon began the preparation. God grant us that anxiety for the enjoyment of the sabbath, which will lead to a preparation for it, as far as we are able; and a good frame of mind on a Saturday evening will seldom lull a person to sleep, or make him indifferent about the worship of God on a sabbath morning.

4. Think of the rapid approach of death, and endeavor to realise to yourselves the views and feelings you will then have of what you have been, and what you have done, and what you have left undone, when you are just going to give in your account unto God. It is a lamentable fact, there are not a few in our churches and congregations, who are all their lite long planting thorns in that pillow upon which at last they must lie down and die; and none are doing this more effectually than the careless and the slothful. "Ah," says one on a death bed, "that I had been more actively engaged in the service of God!" "O" cries another, in the anguish of his soul, "that I could but live my time over again! What a different person would I be! O, the sins I have committed-the duties I have neglected-the sabbaths I have murdered!" But it is in vain! He is just on the borders of eternity; and all the wealth of worlds can neither purchase him a respite from death, nor afford him an opportunity of retrieving his conduct for ever! "O, that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!"