The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-03-31
RELIGION AT HOME.
Discourse by Rev. T. Dewitt Tall
mage In Chicago.
The Importance and Value of Religion IN
the Home Circle Effect OF
Family Prayer on the
Daily Life.


Ing recent visit to Chicago. 1t was
based on the text:
AS for me and my house, we viii serve the
/ Lord.
In enlarginR on this theme the preach
er said:
Absuard, Joshual You will have no
time for family relIgioni you are mill
itary character, and your time will be
taken up with affairs connected with
the army; you are a statesman, and
your time will be taken up with public
affairs; you are the Washington. the
| Wellington, the Mcmahon of the Israel
itish host; you will have a great many
| questions to settle; you will have no
time for religion. But Joshua, with the
same voice with which he commanded
the sun and moon to halt and stack
arms of light on the parade-ground of
| the heavens, says: "As for me and my
house, we will serve the Lord"
Before we adopt the resolution of
this old soldier we want to be certain
it is a wise resolution. If religion is
| going to put my piano out of tune, and
| clog the feet of children racing through
the hall, and sour the bread, and put
/
in the house. / once gave six dollars to
hear Jenny Lind warble. have never
| given n cent to hear any one groan.
win this religion spoken of in my text
DO anything for the dining hall, for the
nursery, for the parlor, for the sleep
| ing apartment?
| 1t is a great deal easier to invite a
disagreeable guest than to get rid of
him. If you do not want religion you
had better not ask it to come, for after
coming it may stay great while
Isaac Watts went to visit Sir Thomas
and Lady Abney at their place in The
obold, and was to stay a week, and
stayed thirty-five years; and if religion
once gets into your household the prob
ability is that it will stay there for
ever.
Now the question 1 want to discuss
is: What will religion do for the house
hold? Question the first What did it
do for your fathers house, if you were
brought up in a Christian home?
That whole scene has vanished, but
it comes back to-day. The hour for
morning prayers came. You were in
vited in. Somewhat fidgety, you sat
and listened Your father made no
pretension to rhetorical reading, and he
| just went through the chapter in a
| plain, straightforward way. Then you
all knelt. 1t was about the same
prayer morning by morning and night
after night, for he had the same sins to
ask pardon for. and he had the same
blessings for which to be grateful day
after day and year after year. The
prayer was longer than you would like
to have had it, for the game at ball
was waiting, or the skates were lying
under the shed, or the school books
needed one or two more looking at the
lessons. Your parents, somewhat
rheumatic and stiffened with age,
found it difficult to rise from their
kneeling. The chair at which they
knelt is gone, the Bible ont of which
they read has perhaps fallen to pieces,
the parents are gone, the children scat
tered north, east, south and west, but
that whole scene flashes upon your
memory to-day.
Was that morning and evening exer-
else in your fathers house debasiug or
elevating? Is it not among the most
sacred "reminiscences? You were not
/
bers of your fathers house who were
lSneeling with you at the time, and you
did not bow your head as closely as
they did, and you looked around and
you saw just the posture your father
and mother assumed while they were
kneeling on the floor. The whole scene
is so photographed on your memory
that if you were an artist you could
draw it now just as they knelt. For
how much would you have that scene
obliterated from your memory? 1t all
comes back to-day, and you are in the
homestead again. Father is there,
mother is there, all of you children
are there. 1t is the sa me old prayer,
the same thanksgiving. The family
prayers of 1910, 1850 as fresh in your
memory as though they were uttered
Yesterday. The tear that starts from
your eye melts all that scene. Gone,
is it? Why, many time it has held
you steady in the struggles of life. You
once started for place, and that
memory jerlxed you back, and you
could not enter.
The broken prayer of your father has
had more effect upon You than all you
ever read in Shakespeare and Milton
and Tennyson and Dante. You have
gone over mountains and across seas.
You never for moment got out of
| sight of that domestic altar. Oh, my
friends! is it your opinion this morning
that the ten or fifteen minutes sub
tracted from each day for family devo-
ton was an economy or a waste of time
in your fathers household? / think
some of us are coming to the conclusion
that the religion which was in our
fathers house would be very appro-
pirate religion for our homes. If fam
ily prayers did not damage that house
hold there is no probability that they
will damage our household.
lis God dead?" said child to her
father.
NO" he replied; "why do you ask2''
"Well, she said. when mother was
living we used to have prayers, but
since her death we haven't had family
prayers, and I didn't know but that
God was dead, too.
A family that is launched in the
morning with family prayers is well
launched. Breakfast over, the family
scatter, some to school, some TO house.
hold duties, some to business-' During
the day there will be thousand per-
lis abroad-perils of the street car. OF
the scaffolding. of the ungoverned
horse, of the misstep, of the aroused
temper. of muititudinous temptations