Baxter Springs news. [volume] (Baxter Springs, Kan.) 1882-1919, 1893-03-25
RELIGION AT HOME.
touching Discourse By Rev. T. De
Witt Talmage.
Experience OF Youth aud It's Eject and
i, Eueace The Home Religion of
IA Rough Frontiersman
Family Prayer.

Sapo ItcV. L. DcNltt IalmaTe dis
eourscd upon the subject of Religion
at Home" His text was from Joshua
xiv. -: LAS for me and my house, we
will serve the Lord" In enlarging up
on this thcmc, DR. Talmagc said:
Absurd. Joshua. You will have no
fimc for family religion; you are u mil
itary character, and your time will be
taken up with affairs connected with
the army: you are Il statesman, and your
time will be taken up with public uf-
fairs; you are the Washington, the
Wellington, the Mcmahon of the Israel
itish host: you will have great many
questions to settle: YOU will have no
time for religion. But Joshua, with the
same voice with which he commanded
tho 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
IL is a wise resolution. If religion is
going to put my piano out of tune, and
clog the feet of children racing through
Grape on the door bell, | do not want it
In my house once gave So to hear
Jenny Lind MARBLE. ! have never given
n cent TO hear any one groan. viii
this religion spoken of in my text do
anything for the dining hall, for the
nursery, for the parlor, for the sleeping
apartment?
IL is Il great deal easier to invite a
disagreeable guest than to get rid Of
him. If you do not want religion you
had ttctter not ask it to come. for after
coming it may stay n great while.
Isaac Watts went to visit Sir Thomas
and Lady Abney at their place in Theo-
bald, and was to stay Il week, and
stayed thirty-tive years; and if religion
once gets into your household the prob
ability is that it will stay there for
ever.
Now the question 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 Christian home?
That whole scene has vanished, but
morning prayers came. You were in
vit.d in. Somewhat fidgcty. you sat
and listened Your father made no
prctcnsions to rhetorical reading, and
he just went through the chapter in
plain, straightforward way. Then You
all knelt II was about the same
prayer morning by morning and night
l.t- fo,. ha h,I hn @,I
ask pardon for and he had the same
blessings for which to be grateful day
sitter day and year after year The
prayer was longer than you would like |
to have it, for the game Mt ball was
waiting, or the skates were lying under |
the shed, or the school books needed |
one or two more looking at the lessons
-Four parents, somewhat rheumatic and
sfiffened with age, found it difficult to
rise from kneeling. The chair ut which
they knelt is gone, the Bible out of
which they read has perhaps fallen to
pieces; the parents are gone, the child |
rem scattered 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 debasing or
f4evating? Is it not among the most |
Hacred "reminiscences? You were not |
rs devotional as some of the older men, |
bers of your fathers house who were |
knecling with you at the time, and you |
did not bow your head as closely as |
tshcy did, and you looked around and
Sou saw just the posture your father
and mother assumed while they were |
kpceling on the floor The whole scene |
Is so photographed on your memory |
that il 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 same old prayer, open
ing with the same petition, closing with |
the same thanksgiving. The family |
prayers of 1S40 1850 as fresh in your |
aemory as though they were uttered |
yesterday. The tear that starts from |
yoar eve melts all that scene. Gone, is |
it7 Why, many time it has held You
steady in the struggles of life. You
once started for place, and that men,
ory jerked 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 a moment got out OF
sight of that domestic altar. o my |
friendsl is it your opinion this morning |
that the ten or fifteen minutes sub
trarted from each day for family devo-
ton was an economy, or n waste OF
time, in your fathers householder /