The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-03-31
RELIGION AT HONE.
Touching Discourse By Rev. T. De
Witt Talmage.
Experience OF Youth and Its Eject and
L nuerce The Home Religion OF
a Rough FroutIersman
Family Prayer.

In a recent sermon preached at Chi
cago Rev. 7. Dewitt Talmage dis
coursed upon the subject of Religion
at Home" His text was from Joshua
xiv. Is: Gas for me and my house, we
will serve the Lord" In charging up
on this theme, Dr. Talmage said:
Absurd, 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 statesman, and your
time will be taken up with public az
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
the sun and moon to halt and stack
arms of light on the parade ground of
the heavens, says: "As for me and nv
house, we will serve the Lord"
Before we adopt the resolution of
this old soldier we want to be certain
1t is a wise resolution. If religion is
going to put my piano out of tune, and
clog the feet of children racing through
the hail, and sour the bread, and put
Grape on the door bell, do not want it
in my house. l 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 hail, for the
nursery, for the parlOr, for 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 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-fve years; and if religion
once gets into your household the prob
ability is that it Will stay there for
ever.
Now the ques ton I 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
it comes back to-day. The hour for
Oorning prayers came. You were in
vited in Somewhat fdgety, 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 Il was about the same
prayer morning by morning and night
by night, for be 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
20 have it, for the game 1T 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 1t difficult to
rise from kneeliug The chair at which
they Snelt is gone, the Bible out of
which they read has perhaps fallen to
pieces; the parents are gone, the child
ren scattered north, east, south and
west, but that whole scene flashes upon
your memory to-day.
Was that morning and evening exer-
else IL your fathers house debasing or
elcvatinC? IS it not among the most
sacred "reminiscences? You were not
as devotional rs some of the older mem
bers Of yoUr fathers house who were
Bnecliug with you at the time. and YOU
did not bow your head rs closely as
they did, and you looked around and
you saw just the posture your father
and mother assumed while they were
lIneeling on the floor. The whole scene
is SO photographed on your memory
that if You were an artist you could
draw It now just as they l5nelt. 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 meits 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 men,
ory jerlled 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
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 of
time, in your fathers household?
think some of US are coming to the con-
clusion that the religion which was in
our fathers house would be very ap-
propriate religion for our homes If
family prayers did not damage that
household there is no probability that
they will damage our household.
rs God dead?'' said a child to her
father.
NO" he replied; why do you ask?''
"Well," she said, when mother was
living we used to have prayers, but
since her death we haven't had family
prayers, and 1 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
scatter, some to school, some to house
hold duties, some to 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 miss tep, of the aroused temper, of