By:
Edited by Heyman Wreford
WHILE traveling, no matter where, we overtook a sprightly lad, and soon were on terms of intimacy with him. We asked him if he loved God.
“Oh, no,” said he; “we don’t have any God at our house!”
But God is everywhere present, and must be at your house as at other places.”
“No,” said he; “I know that He is not there, for father never prays, and mother never says anything about Him.”
And was it true that there was no God in that family? Did those parents so live that their children had good reason to suppose that their house was without a God? We read of those who “had no hope and were without God in the world,” and, alas! many families are now in the same wretched case. They have no family altars, no voice of prayer ever directs the young hearts to Him who loves and blesses all; no words of counsel drawn from that Book which speaks of God and heaven; no mention of the tact that God made us, and that every blessing comes from Him, and that we owe Him gratitude, obedience, love. The high and sacred truths which should distil upon the plastic hearts of children in all their home-life, uniting the love of father, mother, and home with “Our Father who art in heaven,” are all unknown and unrecognized there. The every-day intermingling’s which ought to be fragrant with divine reminiscences, are wholly barren and worldly. Among all the thoughts which drop into the opening mind of childhood, not one suggests a God, or an eternal world. All of that silent attrition of modest, homelike, unobtrusive piety which infuses itself into the inner life, the elemental culture of the spirit, is lost, and those spiritual chords which are so essential to the harmony and bliss of the soul are left wholly undeveloped, so that through the entire journey of life and in eternity they may yield no response to the touch of the finger of God.
That child who grows up in a family where prayer is not a daily service is most unfortunate. His loss cannot be repaired by inheritance of gold, or large estates. All the wealth and glory that can be thrown into his hands will never compensate for the loss of culture, and the leavening power of prayer, upon the heart. His external riches can never mitigate the evil of internal poverty. If there is no God in the family, it is more than likely there will be none in the hearts of the children. They will have no God when they marry; none in their family circle; none to shield them from the snares of sin; none to comfort them midst scenes of sorrow; none to stand by them in the hour of death; none to welcome them to the world of light. “Without hope and without God!” And all because those parents had no God in their family! Many generations sink to woe because those parents had no family altar. Professed Christians, too, and no God in the house!