it.  Hence both natural affection and Christian faith should suggest its establishment.  Parents are bound to do so by their covenant vows, by the obligations of baptism, by all the interests and hopes of their household.  They have dedicated their children to God, and pledged themselves to educate them for Him, and to train them up in His ways.  Tell me then, can you be faithful to these vows and obligations without family prayer?  Can you fulfil your covenant engagements, hope to receive your reward, and see your children grow up in the nurture of the Lord’s vineyard, without rearing up a family altar?

The promised blessings of family prayer show that every faithful Christian home must have its family altar.  These are unspeakable.  It is a sure defence against sin; it sanctifies the members, and throws a hallowed atmosphere around our household.  The child will come under its restraining and saving influence.  A mother’s prayer will haunt the child, and draw it as if by magic power towards herself in heaven: 

  “He might forget her melting prayer,
  While pleasure’s pulses madly fly,
  But in the still, unbroken air,
  Her gentle tones come stealing by,—­
  And years of sin and manhood flee,
  And leave him at his mother’s knee!”

It affords home security and happiness, removes family friction, and causes all the complicated wheels of the home-machinery to move on noiselessly and smoothly.  It promotes union and harmony, expunges all selfishness, allays petulant feelings and turbulent passions, destroys peevishness of temper, and makes home-intercourse holy and delightful.  It causes the members to reciprocate each other’s affections, hushes the voice of recrimination, and exerts a softening and harmonizing influence over each heart.  The dew of Hermon falls upon the home where prayer is wont to be made.  Its members enjoy the good and the pleasantness of dwelling together in unity.  It gives tone and intensity to their affections and sympathies:  it throws a sunshine around their hopes and interests:  it increases their happiness, and takes away the poignancy of their grief and sorrow.  It availeth much, therefore, both for time and eternity.  Its voice has sent many a poor prodigal home to his father’s house.  Its answer has often been, “This man was born there!” The child, kneeling beside the pious mother, and pouring forth its infant prayer to God, must attract the notice of the heavenly host, and receive into its soul the power of a new life.

  “Who would not be an infant now,
  To breathe an infant’s prayer? 
  O manhood! could thy spirit kneel
  Beside that sunny child,
  As fondly pray, and purely feel,
  With soul as undefiled. 
  That moment would encircle thee,
  With light and love divine;
  Thy gaze might dwell on Deity,
  And heaven itself be thine.”

And yet the neglect of family prayer is a very general defect of the Christian home.  No home-duty has indeed been more grossly neglected and abused.  Some attend to it only occasionally; some only in times of affliction and distress, as if then only they needed to pray to God; some only on the Sabbath, as if that were the only day to commune with Him.  Some perform it only in a formal way, having the form without the spirit of prayer, as if God did not require the fervent, in order to the effectual, prayer that availeth much.