The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1893-03-25
RELIGION AT HOME.
Touching Discourse By Rev. T. De
Witt Talmage.
Experience of Youth and Its Effect aud
Influence The Home Religion of
n Rough Fronticrsman-
Family Prayer.

xiv. 10: "As for me and my house, we
will serve the Lord" In charging up
on this theme, DIR. Talmnge said:
Absurd, Joshua! You will have no
time for family religion; you are IL 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 af-
fairs; You are the Washington, the
Wellington, the Mcmahon of the Israel
itish host; you will have IL great many
questions TO settle; Won will have no
time for religion. But Joshua, with the
same voice with which he commanded
the sun and noon 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 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 my house. ! once gave So to hear
Jenny Lind MARBLE. | have never given
a 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 sleeping
apartment?
1t Is n great deal easier to invite a
d~isagreeable 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 a great while.
Isaac Watts went to visit Sir Thomas
and Lady Abney at their place in Theo-
bald, and was to stay a week, and
stayed thirty-ive years; and if religion
one 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 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
~pretensions 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 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 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 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
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
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 same old prayer, open
ing with the same petition, closing with
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, i.
it? Why, many a time it has held yor
steady in the struggles of life. You
ono started for a place, and that mem
DRY jerked you back, and you could moi
enter.
The broken prayer of your father ha.
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 n moment got out O.
sight of that domestic altar. o 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 o
time, in your fathers household?
kl..-Ix - g .e o.,o no,-;.- - @Io oon
clusion that the religion which was il
our fathers house would be a very ap
propriate religion for our homes. /
family prayers did not damage tina
household there is no probability tina
they will damage our household.
us God dead?" said n child to he
father.
mo" he replied; "why do you ask?
"Well," she said, "when mother wa
living we used to have prayers, bu
since her death we haven't had famil
prayers, and / didn't know but tina
God was dead, too"
A family that is launched in tn
morning with family prayers is wel
launched. Breakfast over, the famil
scatter, some to school. some to house
hold duties, some to business. Durin
the day there will be a thousarS peril
abroad-perils of the street car, of tn
scaffolding, of the ungoverned horse,
the mlsstep, of the aroused temper, {
the multitudinous temptations to d
wrong. Somewhere between 7 o'clocI
in the morning and 10 o'clock at nigh
there may be q moment when you wit
- -, ,o zaol 80 n4IM Dzuf7-t|I<4
family prayers will be . seelflar I'D
vantage. A father Hsnt ip'.p sva
to serve his e;ssryS. HIS hildrel
Stayed n9e6nlt5pafed the farm. Hi
HHe pet9ra arepfzthe sons said al
t34sfwnfd: t<Eaather Is Fighting, and. W,
are digging. and mother is praying.
"Ah" said some one, praying and dig
ging and fighting will bring us out o
our national troubles"
"Oh!" says some man, II don't fee
competent to lead my household ii
prayer" Well, l do not know that
is your duty to lead. l think perhap
it is sometimes better for the mother o
the household to lead. She knows bet
ter the wants of the household. Sh
can read the Scriptures with 4 NOR
tender enunciation. She knows NOR
of God. l will put it plainly, and So,
she prays better. Oh! these mother
! decide almost everything. Nero
mother was a murderess. Lord Byron
, mother was naughty and impious. 70
!, might have guessed hal from thei
/ children. Walter SCOTS mother wa
fond of poetry. Washington's mothe
was patriotic. Samuel Budgets mothe