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"The Experience of a Sinner," The Gospel Messenger vol. 14 no. 4 (Apr. 1892)
Both I and my wife being members of the church, I thought it my duty as well as privilege to hold family prayer, and we often held it morning and night. My custom was to read a chapter in the New Testament and at times comment upon it, especially when our children grew large enough to be present. My wife often on Sunday had the little fellows to read a chapter or two, reading as in a class, one a verse and the next the next verse until the chapter was gone through, she at times explaining to them as they read. At such times I was generally off from home, and she told me from time to time how eagerly the least ones would listen to her and try to understand what she was saying. They appreciated the fact that she loved them and was talking to them in love.
There is nobody who understands the child as the mother does, and nobody can take the place of a godly mother in the moral training of children. It has been said, and with a degree of truth, that the parent is for the time being in God’s stead to the ungrown child, because God has put in the parent that love for the child that protects, provides for and cares for it under all circumstances, and without which it would die; and thus, in a sense, God does it himself for the child.
I believed it was right to have our children present at family worship, because they could bow with us before God as his creatures, if not as regenerated believers, and I could, in their behalf, acknowledge his goodness to us as his creatures, and implore a continuance of his temporal mercies upon us. In this way I read the Testament through many times to them, reading chapter after chapter in the order they came in the Testament. It is true, no doubt, that it was at times burdensome to the children, for it was to me, but it was training us all in self-denial, order and method, and, therefore, a good thing that far if no farther. I always found it profitable to keep it up, and that it was good to resist the deadness, indolence, coldness, unfitness and unbelief that combined to make me put it off and neglect it; because these things were enemies and of Satan, and, therefore, not to be yielded to; and that in times of deadness, indolence and unbelief it was more needful to engage in this service than at any other time, more needful to strive even in prayer to God at such times instead of neglecting it. And more than once I have gained strength in morning prayer to get through the day with, when feeling in the morning that my faith would fail, and that I could not hold out through the day.
And I believe that if Christians would more persistently engage in prayer and family worship that it would be much better for their peace and spiritual growth. The humility and fear and trembling of my father at family prayer is one of the most pleasant and sacred remembrances I have of him. He did not keep it up regularly, nor did he engage in it at all until he was getting somewhat advanced in years, and after being many years a member of the church, but that he did it at all is a consolation to me in my declining years. |
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