Family Prayer Honours God.-We are far too apt, all of us, to leave out of sight this object of worship. We ask, and we do well to ask, What can I get by prayer? How can I make it most profitable to my own soul? What shall I have therefore? And prayer is meant to do us good to bring back an answer; an answer direct, personal and substantial. But this is not all; and perhaps I might say, this is not the highest office of prayer. The Lord's Prayer itself begins with three petitions concerning God, His name, His kingdom, and His will, before it says one word of our wants; of daily bread, of forgiveness, of deliverance from evil. It is a very great and a very high object to keep up the remembrance of God upon the earth; to see that each member of every family, however much he may neglect private prayer, shall yet be reminded of God's reality and of God's truth every day to provide that in every home (if it might be so) in a particular parish or town there should be, as it were, an altar built to no unknown God, and the fire of a periodical sacrifice kindled upon it in the sight of all who dwell therein. Family worship is an honour due to God from those who are living together upon His bounties, and who, collectively as well as individually, have a state and a life before Him. When the bell rings for worship at the appointed time, breaking off other occupations, and silencing other sounds, we recognise in it a voice which says to us, God is, and is your God; Christ is, and is your Lord and your Saviour; the Holy Spirit is, and is your Sanctifier and your Comforter. Thus, if not otherwise, twice in each day, is the call of conscience made audible to the careless, and the reality of things unseen proclaimed to men tied and bound by the material and the temporal.

C. J. VAUGHAN, D.D., Lessons of Life and Godliness, p. 102.

Family Prayer, its Benefits to Heads of Families.-The practice of family worship may be expected to have a most beneficial influence on the character and conduct of the heads of families themselves. He who statedly invites others to be witnesses of his devotion, invites a peculiar inspection of his behaviour; and must be conscious to how much observation and contempt he lays himself open, should he betray a flagrant inconsistency between his prayers and his conduct. That parent who, morning and evening, summons his family to acts of devotion, is not perhaps distinctly

aware of the total amount of the influence this circumstance has upon his mind. It will act as a continual monitor, and will impose useful restraint upon his behaviour. He recollects that he is about to assume an awful and venerable character in the eyes of his domestics-a character which must set the indulgence of a multitude of improprieties in a most glaring light. Is he in danger of being ensnared into indecent levity, or of contracting a habit of foolish talking and jesting? he recollects he is soon to appear as the mouth of his family in addressing the blessed God. Is he surrounded with temptations to an immoderate indulgence of his fleshly appetites in meats and drinks; should he yield to the temptation, how would he bear in his family to appear on his knees before God? Is he tempted to use harsh and provoking language to his children? he recollects he is in a few hours to bear them in his arms before the Lord. Is he to commend his companion in life to the Divine mercy and protection? how then can he be "bitter against her?" The case of his servants is to be shortly presented before God in social prayer: under such a recollection, it will surely not be difficult for him to forbear threatening, reflecting that he himself has a Master in heaven. Knowing that in the hearing of all his inmates he is about to bewail the corruptions of his nature, to implore pardon for his sins, and strength to resist temptation; will he not feel a double obligation, on this account, to struggle against corruption, and anxiously to shun temptation? The punctual discharge of the duty we are contending for will naturally strengthen his sense of the obligation of domestic duties, forcibly remind him of what he owes to every member of the domestic circle, and cement the ties of conjugal and parental affection. Rev. ROBERT HALL, M.A., Works, vol. iii., p. 256.

Family Prayer, its Benefits to Children.-Nothing is more certain than that whatever we wish others to practise, we must exemplify in our conduct as well as enjoin. . . . Your wish, we take it for granted, is to train up your children in the fear of the Lord, and, as a necessary branch of this, in the practice of prayer. Is it likely you will succeed in that wish while you neglect to afford them an example of what you wish them to practise? What, under the blessing of Divine grace, is so calculated to impress them with

a conviction of the importance of prayer, as the being called, at stated intervals, to take part in your devout supplications to God? While they witness your constancy, fervour, and assiduity in this exercise, they cannot fail of acknowledging its importance.

May I not appeal to you who have enjoyed the blessing of being trained up under religious parents, whether you do not often recall with solemn tenderness what you felt in domestic worship; how amiable your parent appeared interceding for you with God? His character appeared at such seasons doubly sacred, while you beheld in him not only the father, but the priest over his household; invested not only with parental authority, but with the beauty of holiness. Where a principle of religion is not yet planted in the hearts of the young, family prayer, accompanied with the reading of the Scriptures, is the most likely means of introducing it. Where it already subsists, it is admirably adapted to cherish, strengthen, and advance it to maturity; in the latter case, it is like the morning and the evening dew at the root of the tender blade. Rev. ROBERT HALL, M. A., Works, vol. iii., pp. 252 and 255.

Family Prayer, its Blessedness.-No sweetness of life is so indispensable to a family, brought up thus, in the open state with God, as to have all the cares, affections, partings, sicknesses, afflictions, prosperities, marriages, deaths, and all kinds of works, habitually blessed by the sense of God appealed to and consciously witnessing in them.

HORACE BUSHNELL, D.D., Christian Nurture, p. 378.

Warning and Counsel regarding Family Prayer.- Life is short: . . . soon at the latest, soon whatever be the notice, soon you shall die and not live. Do not have on your conscience any neglected, or (which is much the same thing) any postponed duty. It will lie very heavy on you then. Do not have to feel then that, in addition to any personal sins you may have to answer for-slackness in private devotion, acts of injury to your own soul, secret or open— you have also to excuse yourself for an habitual neglect of the souls of your family, for having starved them by a denial of the means of grace, whether as ministered in the congregation, or as provided by yourself at home. These are thorns in dying pillows: take heed lest yours be strewn with them.

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I anticipate many blessings from an increase of this family religion amongst us. I do not, indeed, confuse the terms family prayer and family religion. . . . Personal religion is a distinct thing, in some senses, from family religion; we can imagine a family in which its separate members served God in secret, but which nevertheless had no public recognition of Him. . . . But how improbable is that supposition ! It is very easy for a careless master to say, I have no family worship, but I hope we all serve God equally well in private. Has that master ever seriously reflected upon the opportunities which his household enjoy of serving God in secret? Has each child, has each apprentice, has each servant, his place for private worship, and his time for private worship? Are you ignorant that in many cases there may be interruptions offered, by other inmates of the same chamber, to the exercise of individual worship? that in all cases there are temptations, strong temptations, to neglect it,—work beginning at an early hour, and hours of rest too short already to leave much margin for secret prayer night and morning; and, when the day has once begun, and the tasks of the day have set in, and each one is hurrying to and fro to discharge household duties, or is a close prisoner in the shop or in the counting-house, with scarcely leisure so much as to eat, it is a mockery to talk of moments being spared for devotion, unless the piety, unless the charity, unless the humanity of the employer secures them for all by making it a rule o the house that at certain times all shall assemble for worship. C. J. VAUGHAN, D.D., Lessons of Life and Godliness, p. 108.

Forms of Prayer in Family Worship.-Excellent forms, expressive of the wants and desires of all Christian families may be obtained, which, supposing the inability alleged to be real, ought by all means to be employed. We, as Dissenters, for the most part use and prefer free prayer. But God forbid we should ever imagine this the only mode of prayer which is acceptable to God. We cannot doubt that multitudes of devout persons have used forms of devotion with great and eminent advantage. To present our desires before God in reliance on the atonement of the Mediator, is the real end of prayer, and is equally acceptable whether it be offered with or without a preconceived form of words. Rev. ROBERT HALL, M.A., Works, vol. iii., p. 258.

XIV.

Public Prayer.

But as for me, I will come into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy and in Thy fear will I worship toward Thy holy temple.

Psalm v. 7.

O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.-Psalm xcv. 6.

I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. Psalm cxxii. I.

Even them will I... make joyful in My house of prayer; . . . and Mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.-Isaiah Ivi. 7. From one Sabbath to another shall all flesh come to worship before Me, saith the Lord.—Isaiah lxvi. 23.

And the whole multitude of the people were praying.-Luke i. 10.

And He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath-day.—Luke iv. 16. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.-Matthew xviii. 20.

These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication.

Acts i. 14. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in prayers.—Acts. ii. 42.

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Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for him.-Acts xii. 5.

And on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made.-Acts xvi. 13.

And we kneeled down on the shore, and prayed.—Acts xxi. 5.

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men.—I Timothy ii. 1.