O Lord, how many are my foes..... On thee, each morning, O my God.. On wings of faith, mount up, my soul, and rise. PRELIMINARY ESSAY ON FAMILY PRAYER. TO PARENTS: you I WISH, in this Preliminary Essay, to make a candid appeal to parents on the duty of family prayer. In doing this, I shall assume but one thing as a conceded point a thing which may commonly, at least, be assumed without danger of error. It is, that feel a deep interest in the welfare of your children; and are willing to make use of any proper means to promote their happiness. This point I assume, because the God of nature has so constituted us, that as a great universal rule parents will love their children; and because no small part of their exertions are called forth with express, and almost sole reference to their present and future bliss. You who are parents, will instantly run over in your minds, many most tender and affecting scenes of watchfulness, care, anxiety, sleeplessness, and toil, to provide for their wants, alleviate their pains, defend them from danger, and train them for future respectability and happiness. The tenderest emotions in your bosoms now, relate to them. Your deepest interest is to see them virtuous, amiable, happy. You would run to their relief in danger, and deny yourself of ease to alleviate their pains in sickness. Your brightest visions of future bliss in this world are connected with their welfare. The loveliest view in the future, is when they stand forth, pure and happy, in bold relief,single, or in lovely groups. The chief solace in the prospect of your future trials; in the anticipated days of feebleness and pain, and in the imbecility and weariness of advancing age; is that a son will live to bless you by his toil, or to cheer your last days by his virtues; or that a daughter, lovely and tender, shall come around your bed, and mingle her tears with yours, and catch your last breath, and with a gentle hand close your eyes as you sink into the long sleep of death. I wish to show you that family prayer will be one of the most important helps in meeting your wishes in regard to your children. And in doing this, I invite your attention, in the 1st place, to the design of the family organization. God might have fitted up a world of independent individuals, bound by no common sympathies; cheered by no common joys; impelled by no common wants. All that is tender in parental and filial affection; all that is mild, bland, peaceful in love; and all that is sympathetic in sorrow, and in joy; might have been denied us. Solitary beings, we might have wept alone, rejoiced alone, thought alone, died alone. The sun might have shed his beams around our lonely rambles, and not a mortal have felt an interest in our bliss or wo. Man might have lived unbenefited by the experience of his ancestors; and with none to shed a tear around the bed of moss on which he would recline in disease, and where unwept he would die. But this is not the way which he has chosen. He has made the race one great brotherhood-and we feel some interest at least, in the obscurest man that seeks a shelter beneath a rock, or that finds a home in a tent, or in a cave. "I am a man, and I regard nothing pertaining to man as unimportant to me" was the language of an ancient dramatist, and a heathen theatre rang with plaudits at the noble sentiment. This great brotherhood God has broken up into communities of nations, and clans, and tribes, and fami |