Family Worship

John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides, tells how as a boy he used to crouch outside his father’s bedroom to hear him pray. God was so real to his father that he became real to the boy listening outside also. Paton says that if everything else in religion were by some accident blotted out, his soul would go back to those days of reality.

He tells us that for sixty years his father kept up the practice of family prayer. the bone; and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I have often brought to my mind the thought of the hardships, miseries, and wants my poor family will be like to meet should I be taken from them. Especially my poor blind child, who lies nearer my heart than all else. The thought of what my blind one may undergo almost breaks my heart to pieces.”

“None of us,” he writes, “can remember that one day passed unhallowed thus. No hurry for business or market, no arrival of friends or guests, no trouble or sorrow, no joy or excitement ever prevented us from kneeling around the family altar while our high priest of-