The Atlanta constitution. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1885-19??, 1893-03-21
/" RELIGION A HOME. "
THE DOMESTIC altar, WHAT 1T
WILL DO FOR THE HOUSEHOLD,
And Those Who Serve the Lord, Discussed
by DR.. TalmaRe-Scenes of Our Child
hood Recalled to Memory.

Chicago March 19.-(Special.) REV. Dr.
Talmage, who is now in the city on brief
visit, did not preach today. He prepared for
the press, however, the following discourse
on Religion at Home" the text selected
beng Joshua, 81: Is. ''As for'me and my
house we will serve the Lord"
Absurd, Joshua! You will have no time
for family religion you are military char
acter, and your time will be taken UP with
affairs connected with the army; you are u
statesman and your time will be taken up
with public affairs; you are the Washing
ton, the Wellington, the Mcmahon of the
Israelitish 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,
las 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 the children racing through the
hall, and sour the bread, and put Grape
on the doorbell l do not want it in my
house. I once gave So to hear Jenny Lind
any one groan. Will this religion spoken
of in my text do anything for the dining
hall, for the nursery, for the parlor, for the
sleeping apartments?
1t is Il great deal easier to invite dis
agreeable guest than to get rid of him.
If you do not want religion you had bet
ter not ask it to come, for after coming
it may stay a great while. Isaac Watts
went to visit Sir Thomas and Lady Abney
at their place in Theobald, and was to
stay Il week, and stayed thirty-five years;
and if religion once gets into your house
hold the probability is it will stay there
forever.
Now the question I want to discuss is
What will religion do for the household?
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 today. The hour for morn
ing prayer came. You were invited in.
Somewhat fidgety, you sat and listened
Your father made no pretension to rhet-
orical reading, and he just went through
the chapter In 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
IL,
for the game at ball was waiting, or the
skates We're lying under the shed, or the
SchOObOOkS needed one or two more look
ings at the lessons. Your parents, some
what rheumatic and stitfened with age,
found it difficult to rise from their lneel
ing 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
h,%
ing and evening exercise in your fathers
house debasing or elevatlng? Is it not among
the most sacred "reminiscences! You were
not as devotional as some of the older mem
bers of your. fathers house who were
kneeling with you at the time, and
YOU did not bow your head as closely rs
they did, and you looked around and you
y, ota,c, S" Aler and mother
floor. The whole scene is so photographer
on your memory that if you were an artist,
For how much would you have that scene
obhterated from your memory? 1t all
comes back today, and you are in the home
stead again. Father is there, mother is
there, all of your children are there. 1t is
the same Old prayer, opening with the same
petition, closing with the same thanks
giving. The family prayers of 1910, 1850
us 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
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. Oh, my friends! is it
yclr or,iniDu this mornjno thot tho ton or
fifteen minutes subtracted from each
day for family devotion was an economy,
or waste of time, in your fathers house
hold? / 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 fam
lily prayers did not damage that household,
there is no probability that they will dam
age our household.
father, No he replied, "why, do you ask
that:" well" she said. when mother
was. living we used to have prayers. but
since her death We hayn't had family
prayers, and | 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 scat
ter, some to school, some to household du
ties, some to business. During the day
there will be a thousand perils abroad-per
lis of the street ear. of the scaffoldng, of
the ungoverning horse of the misstep, of
the aroused temper, Of the multitudinous
temptations to do wrong. Somewhere be-
tween I O'Clock i'll the morning and 10
O'Clock at night there may be a moment
when you will be in urgent need of God.
Besides that, family prayer will be a secu-
lar advantage. A father went into the
war TO serve his country. His children
stayed and cultivated the farm. His wife
prayed. One of the sons said afterwards,
Father is fighting, and we are digging, and
mother is praying" "Ah!' said some one.
praying and digging and fighting will bring
us out of our national troubles" We may
pray in the morning, Give me this day our
daily bread" and sit down in dleness and
starve to DEATH but prayer and hard work
will give livelihood to any family. Family
religion pays for both worlds. Let us have
an altar in each one of our households. You
may not be able to formulate a prayer. Then
there are Philip Henrys prayers, and there
are McDuff's prayers, and there are Phil
lp Doddridge's prayers, and there are the
Episcopal church prayers, and there are
scores of books with supplications just suit
ed to the domestic circle.
OH says some man, Il don't feel COM
petent to lead my household in prayer"
Well, | do not know that it is your duty to
lead. | think perhaps it is sometimes bet
ter for the mother of the household to lead
She knows better the wants of the house
hold. She can read the scriptures with q
more tender enunciation. She knows more
of God. / will put it plainly and say she
nr1yS better Oh. these mothers decide