Notwithstanding the repeated checks of conscience that followed this sinful omission, the calls of a flourishing business concern and the prospect of an increasing family appeared so pressing, that he found an easy excuse to himself for this unjustifiable neglect of an obvious family duty.  But when his conscience was almost seared as with a hot iron, it pleased God to awaken him by a peculiar though natural providence.  One day he received a letter from a young man who had formerly been an apprentice, previous to his omitting family prayer.  Not doubting but that domestic worship was still continued in the family of his old master, his letter was chiefly on the benefits which he had himself received through its agency.

“Never,” said he, “shall I be able to thank you sufficiently for the precious privilege with which you indulged me in your family devotions!  O, sir, eternity will be too short to praise my God for what I have learned.  It was there I first beheld my lost and wretched estate as a sinner; it was there that I first found the way of salvation, and there that I first experienced the preciousness of Christ in me the hope of glory.  O, sir, permit me to say, Never, never neglect those precious engagements.  You have yet a family and more apprentices.  May your house be the birth-place of their souls!”

The conscience-stricken tradesman could proceed no further, for every line flashed condemnation in his face.  He trembled, and was alarmed lest the blood of his children and apprentices should be demanded at his hands.  “Filled with confusion, and bathed in tears, I fled,” said he, “for refuge in secret.  I spread the letter before God.  I agonized in prayer, till light broke in upon my disconsolate soul, and a sense of blood-bought pardon was obtained.  I immediately flew to my family, presented them before the Lord, and from that day to the present, I have been faithful, and am determined, through grace, that whenever my business becomes so large as to interrupt family prayer, I will give up the superfluous part of it and retain my devotion.  Better lose a few dollars than become the deliberate moral murderer of my family and the instrument of ruin to my own soul.”

Now this experience is highly instructive and admonitory.  It proves how much good may be doing by family worship faithfully observed when we little know it, and the importance, therefore, of always maintaining it.  It proves the goodness of God in reproving and checking his children when they neglect duty and go astray.  And it shows the insidious way in which backsliding begins and grievous sin on the part of God’s people.  May the engagements of business never tempt any parent that reads this article to repeat the tradesman’s dangerous experiment!  But if there be any that have fallen into the same condemnation, as it is to be feared some may have done, may God of his mercy admonish them of it, and bring them back before such a declension, begun in the neglect of family religion, shall be consummated in the decay and loss of personal religion, and the growing irreligion both of your family and your own soul.