Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-03-24


being Josh ua, 24:l5. las for me and my
house we will serve the Lord
Absurd, Joshua! You will have no
time for family religion; you are a
military character, and your time will
be taken up with affairs connected
with the army; you are statesman,
and your time will be taken up with
public affairs; you are the Washing
ton, the Wellington, the Mcmahon of
the 1sraelitish 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
il is a wise resolution. If religion is
going to put my piano out of tune, and
clog the feet OF the children racing
through the hall, and sour the bread,
and put Grape on the door-bell, l do
not want it in my house. i once gave
six dollars to hear Jenny Lind MARBLE.
have never given cent to hear any
~
in my text do anything for the nurs-
cry, for the parlor, Tor the sleeping
apartment?
1t is 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 alter
coming it may stay great while.
Isaac Watts went TO visit Sir Thomas
and Lady Abney at theirplace in Iheo-
bald, and was to stay week, and
stayed thirty-tive years; and If religion
once gets into your household the
probability is it will stay there for
ever.
Now the question want to discuss
is: What will religion do for the
household? Question the first. What
did il do for your father house, If you
were brought up in a Christian home?
That whole scene has vanished, but
il 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
by 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 out
of which they read has perhaps fallen
to pieces, the parents are gone,
the children scattered North, East,
South and West: but that whole
scene flashes upon your memory
to-day. Was that morning and even
ing exercise in your fathers house de-
basing or elevating? Is it not among
the most sacred "reminiscences? You
were'n not as devotional as some of the
older members of your fathers n Duse
who were kneeling 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 ar
fist you could draw it now just as they
knelt. For how much would you have
that scene obliterated from your mem
ory? 1t all comes back to-day and you
are in the homestead again. Father is
there, mother is there, all of you chill
dren are there. 1t is the same old
prayer, opening with the same petition,
closing with the same thanksgiving.
The family prayer of 1s40, 1850 as fresh
in your memory as though they were
uttered yesterday. The tear that starts
from your eve 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 jerked you back and you could
not enter.
i The broken prayer ofyour 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. o my
friends! is it your opinion this morning
that the ten or fifteen minutes alb
stracted from each day for family de-
votion was an economy, or 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 a very
appropriate religion for our homes. If
family prayers did not damage that
household there is no probability that
they will damage our household.
"Is God dead?" said child to her
father. mo-" he replied, ''why do you
ask that?" "Well," she said, ''when
mother was living we used to have
prayers, but since her death we haven't
had family prayers, and ] didn't know
but that God was dead, tool" A family
that is launched in the morning with
family prayers is well launched. Break
fast over, the family scatter, some
TO school, some to household du-
ties, some 10 business. During the
day there will be a thousand
perils abroad-perils of the street car,
of the scaffolding, of the ungoverned
horse, of the misstep, of the aroused
temper, of multitudinous temptations
to do wrong. Somewhere between :
o'clock in the morning and 10 o'clock
at night there may be moment when
you will be in urgent need of God.
Beside that. family PRAYERS will be n