"Child, amidst the flowers at play,
While the red light fades away;
Mother, with thine earnest eye
Ever following silently;
Father, by the breeze of eve
Called thy warmest work to leave;
Pray!--ere yet the dark hours be,
Lift the heart and bend the knee."

The duty thus to establish family prayer is imperative. It is a duty
because God commands it, and the mission of home cannot be fulfilled
without it. It is a duty because a privilege and a blessing, and the
condition of parental efficiency in all other duties;--because the moral
and spiritual growth of the child depends upon it. It is one of the most
effectual means of grace. All the instructions, all the discipline and
example, of the parent will be in vain without 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 softe