The Bossier banner., 1893-05-04
RELIGION AT HOME.
Discourse by Rev. T. Dewitt Tai
mago in Chicago.
The Importance and yaIue of Religion In
the Home Circle - Effect OF
Family Prayer OH the
Daily Life.

Iho following discourse on the SUD-
!ect Of Religion at Home was deliy-
cred by Rev. r. Dewitt Talmage dur
ing a recent visit to Chicago 1t was
based on the text:
AS for me and my house. We will serve the
Lord.
In enlarging on this theme the preach
er said:
Absuard, Joshua! You will have no
time for family religion; you are mil
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 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 p battle-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
1t is n 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
Grape on the door bell, do not want it
in the house. ! once gave six dollars to
hear Jenny Lind warble. / have never
given cent to hear 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 sleep
ing 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 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 week, and
stayed thirty-fivc 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
1t comes back to-day. The hour for
morning prayers came You were in
vited in. Somewhat fidgcty, you sat
and listened. Your father made no
prctensioD to rhetorical reading, and he
just went through the chapter in a
plain, straightforward way. Then You
all knelt. 1t WIS about the same
prayer morning by morning and night
after night, for he had the same sins to
nslS pardon for. and he had the same
blessings for which to be grateful dav
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 living
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
lSnelt is gone, the Bible out 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 debasing or
elevating? 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 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 Won could
draw it now just as they Snelt. 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.
the same thanksgiving. The family
prayers of 1910, 1859 as fresh in vour
memory as though they were utterei
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 a place, and that
memory ierlSed you back, and YOU
could not enter.
The broken prayer of your father has
had more effect upon you than all Won
ever read in Shakespeare and Milton
and Tennyson and Dante. You have
gone over mountains and across seas
You never for moment got ont of
sight of that domestic altar. Oh. my
friends! is it your opinion this mornino
that the ten or fifteen minutes sub-
tracted from each day for family deyo-
zion 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 onr
fathers house would be very appro- |
pirate religion for our homes. If fam
lily prayers did not damage that house
hold there is no probability that thev
will damage our household.
is God dead?" said a :h1ld 70 b.-
father.