Family Prayers

If, as one of the younger generation has remarked, ‘Religion is the spiritual stream in which we are all floating or swimming or struggling or sinking,’I can only observe that the temperature of the stream is pleasantly tepid in these days, and that it wanders languidly through a flat and uneventful country. It has come a long way from the icy mountain streams and blue lakes that were its source. Back in my boyhood days, in Brierly, it flowed more swiftly, and the water was colder. Some courage was required to plunge into it, and some agility and skill to keep one’s head above the current.

I am reminded of a recent statement made, one Sunday morning, by my sister Tryphena, to the effect that in her youth little boys did not play marbles on the Sabbath; and of the crisp note in the voice of my brother Edward’s youngest son — aged seven — as he stood on tiptoe to reach his bag of marbles from the playroom shelf, and answered; ‘Well, Aunt Tryphena, you see things have changed.'

True. Things have changed. Edward is a good, Christian father, and he goes to church every Sunday morning, when it is too warm or too cold or too wet on the links. He does his duty by his children, but I can’t imagine him kneeling down by Jack and praying, with tears in his eyes, for light and strength and guidance for them both, and then supplementing prayer with a hickory switch, the way father did when John, who was twelve at the time, and a member of the church, profaned the Sabbath and outraged all Brierly traditions by wearing his new baseball suit on Sunday morning.

Of course, it was a particularly vivid suit. The trousers were red-and-white striped, and the jacket blue with white stars. And John, who knew only too well the result if he were caught in such a costume on the seventh day, climbed out of the window of his room and down over the woodshed roof, to show himself to Frances and Caroline, who were washing breakfast dishes in the kitchen. But one of the neighbors saw him, and strolled over to the front gate to chat with father; and father appeared at the woodshed door — an avenging Nemesis, with the hickory switch in his hand —

Yes, things have changed. There is still plenty of religion abroad in the land, but the faith that most of us hold nowadays is a milder, more comfortable variety than the sort that permeated Brierly when we were growing up. It seems to consist mainly of a vague optimism, combined with a gentle tolerance of all differing creeds that might be mistaken, by a skeptic, for indifference.

We were n’t gently tolerant of other creeds in Brierly. The details of salvation were desperately vital. Baptism and confirmation were ordeals of tremendous significance. Frances ran away when she was seven years old, to attend a Methodist revival, and was converted. On reaching home, she lay awake all night, from joy that her sins were forgiven; and though the older boys and girls, who had just joined our church, felt this to be an unparalleled piece of uppishness on her part, and father and mother insisted on her attending worship with her own family, no one questioned the depth or reality of her experience.

Things have changed, indeed; and who can doubt that they are changing for the better? Yet there was much beauty and sweetness in the religious life of those days, and many memories dear to us older ones that the present generation will never know. Edward’s children are being brought up much as we were, with this difference: their badness is transformed into goodness because they love their parents and fear punishment, while our lives were regulated by the fact that we loved God and feared the devil — a very different thing in reality, although it seems to bring about much the same result.

Not that we had any lack of love for our parents. They stood as a firm bulwark between us and the devil, and as intermediaries between us and God. Father made public intercession for us with the Almighty every morning at prayers, and three times daily at grace before meals; and I know that mother’s private devotions were unceasing. I never heard her pray aloud except once, when a visiting minister called on her unexpectedly to lead the Wednesday evening service, in prayer. That night she rose, said simply, ‘God bless this meeting,’ and quietly resumed her seat. I always felt that her silent petitions went fully as far as father’s; but he was the nominal head of the family in matters religious. Every morning, directly after breakfast, he gathered us together in the parlor for family prayers,

We came from the laughter and fun of the breakfast-table into another atmosphere. Father, usually the merriest of us all, was suddenly grave and silent as he took the big family Bible in his hands. The hush that fell over us was accentuated by our being in the parlor; for we lived and played and studied in the ‘sitting-room,’ and the parlor was reserved for occasions of state. There was, moreover, a constraint born of our uncertainty whether our record for the past twenty-four hours would bear the sight of heaven and the family.

First, each child had to repeat a verse from the Bible. Next, father read aloud from the Scriptures, and then led us in prayer, each of us kneeling before the chair he had previously occupied. Mine was a small carved rosewood one, with a hard haircloth seat. I shut my eyes tight and laid my cheek against it, and tried not to see Edward snuggling into his green tufted cushion.

Father’s prayers were really wonderful. In all the time we lived at Brierly, I am sure I never heard him say the same thing twice. And there was more to recommend them than their versatility. They were simple, direct, eloquent. He began by thanking God for the blessings of the day and night that had passed. Next he prayed for the conversion of the Jews, and for the ten tribes of Israel. These duties disposed of, he entered upon the real business of the day. One by one, he took his children by the hand, and led them before the throne of Grace. Our little triumphs were mentioned and our virtues extolled, — though this was always done guardedly, and accompanied by a petition that we might remain free from pride; — and our secret shortcomings were brought unflinchingly to the light. Frances once told me that she knew the Bible meant father when it said, ‘There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed’; and I remember thinking that she was the only one of us who would have dared to say it. But it was with mingled emotions of reverence and relief that we rose from our knees at the close of father’s long prayer, and gathered around mother at the piano.

The music was best of all — partly because we all loved it, and partly because it came as a relaxation to minds and muscles after the prayer. On week-days we were limited to one hymn, on account of time; but on Sundays we frequently stood around the piano for an hour, while one ‘Gospel Carol’ followed another. Sometimes we selected our hymns from mixed motives. Once, after John had been sent upstairs to make his hands fit to be seen, Caroline chose to sing ‘Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow’; and on the morning after the twins were born, my irrepressible Frances suggested: ‘More and more, More and more, Still there’s more to follow’; but was silenced, for once, by a look from father. Each of us had his favorite, and to this day certain tunes bring back those Sunday mornings with startling clearness, and the singing faces of those boys and girls.

‘Pull for the shore, Sailor,’ — and I see Gerald and Charlie, one on each side of the piano-stool. ‘Stand up, stand up, for Jesus!’ — John and Arthur, with their heads close together, singing bass and doing their best to ignore the other parts. ‘Rock of Ages,’ and Tryphena’s face shines out of my memory, sweetly serious, and framed in smooth brown braids. ‘Count your blessings’ means Caroline’s laughing blue eyes and clear soprano, with Edward trying to sing alto and not quite doing it; and whenever, in a Methodist church, I hear ‘There is a fountain filled with blood,’ I see Frances, true to the creed of her adoption, singing with all her might. ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ is father, with the baby on his left arm, beating time with his right hand; and whenever I hear

I see the light shining through the east window, across the old square piano, upon mother’s face.

The more I think of it, the surer I am that Edward’s children are missing something.