"Never," said he, "shall I be able to thank you sufficiently for the
precious privilege with which you indulged me in your family devotions!
O, sir, eternity will be too short to praise my God for what I have
learned. It was there I first beheld my lost and wretched estate as a
sinner; it was there that I first found the way of salvation, and there
that I first experienced the preciousness of Christ in me the hope of
glory. O, sir, permit me to say, Never, never neglect those precious
engagements. You have yet a family and more apprentices. May your house
be the birth-place of their souls!"

The conscience-stricken tradesman could proceed no further, for every
line flashed condemnation in his face. He trembled, and was alarmed lest
the blood of his children and apprentices should be demanded at his
hands. "Filled with confusion, and bathed in tears, I fled," said he,
"for refuge in secret. I spread the letter before God. I agonized in
prayer, till light broke in upon my disconsolate soul, and a sense of
blood-bought pardon was obtained. I immediately flew to my family,
presented them before the Lord, and from that day to the present, I have
been faithful, and am determined, through grace, that whenever my
business becomes so large as to interrupt family prayer, I will give up
the superfluous part of it and retain my devotion. Better lose a few
dollars than become the deliberate moral murderer of my family and the
instrument of ruin to my own soul."

Now this experience is highly instructive and admonitory. It proves how
much good may be doing by family worship faithfully observed when we
little know it, and the importance, therefore, of always maintaining it.
It proves the goodness of God in reproving and checking his children
when they neglect duty and go astray. And it shows the insidious way in