Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1882-03-22
Household Prayer.

The president of Harvard College in his
last annual report tells us: early in the
year lS80-lSSl, circular was sent to the
parents and guardians of the eight hundred
aud twenty.eight undergraduates, asking if
they held daily family prayers in their house
holds. The number Of replies received was
seven hundred and forty-ope, of which two
hundred and eleven, or two.sevenths, an
swered yes, and five hundred and thirty, or
tve-sevenths, answered no. The object of
the inquiry was to ascertain how much sup
port morning prayers at college had in the
habits of the families from which the stu
dents came. 1t is bit Of religious statis-
tics which is more than usually trustworthy,
and deserves the very earnest attention of
the heads OF Christian households and the
ministers and people of Christian congrega-
tionsD The time is quite within the remem-
brance of many of us when such returns
would have shown very much larger mi
nority, to say the least, of homes in which
family worship is maintained and perhaps
it is not very long since the yeas would have
been in the majority. The figures are rep
resentative, suggestive, and instructive.
They may have discouraging look but
none the less they are to be bravely faced, as
sooner or later all facts must be; and, so
iiVet ehoy VIII pub bilt uttu Oh new
discipline and new methods answering to
the new circumstances of our swiftly.chan-
ging modern life. The fact is that much of
this decline of religious usages is to be
traced directly to the want of repose in our
modern life, our hurrying this way and that,
our dividing Of the whole year, and even of
each day, between town and country our
preference of gaslight and the electric light
over sunlight, the whirlpool which has sue
ceeded to stagnation, the perpetual crossing
and recrossing of the ocean, the living in
apartments, and even hotel parlors, where
devotions are scarcely possible except for the
Mohammedan, who will spread his prayer
rugs at MONDAY in the public squares, the
temptation to take for much needed sleep
the moments that were once appropriated to
morning devotions. The travelling priest
still brings out his breviary in the morning
train; but the Protestant is absorbed in his
newspaper, or watching for the messenger
from the office of the telegraph. If you ask
your boy TO remain for prayers, he says that
it will make him late at the counting.room,
aud tho girl will most Ekaly only roach her
school in time, as it is. Those who in our
day undertake to do anything are almost
compelled to do good deal, and with our
continual running hither and thither it is
hard TO retain even two or three in one place
with any regularity. We need, then, to be
on our guard if we would keep, will not say
alive, but clear and bright, the lamp of our
true life; we need to hedge about the church
in the house, and to insist even with a GER
tain precision and Stiffness of our ancestral
Puritanism that few moments, at least,
shall be sacred to recognition of him who
sets the solitary in families. Let this, too,
be taken into account as a prime necessity,
part of our success in the world, so far as
this success is real, and not rather a tempta.
tion and snare. Refuse to be forever hur-
ried. Let the world wait moment OF
the fourteen hundred and forty minutes that
make up the day, can we not give five or ten
to the common prayer of the household and
its recognition of the hidden wisdom aud
love Of One with whom are the issues of i,y
and sorrow, and life and death2 Shall the
only prayer ever offered in the house be a
funeral prayer2-Dr. ELis, in Christian Req.
isier (Unudridn.)