The Personal Touch | Page 9

foundation from a building
or depriving the arch of its keystone. Better sacrifice everything than
this spirit and practice of prayer in the home.
It is barely possible that because of conditions family prayers may not
be conducted to-day as in other days, but there is at least time for a
verse of scripture and a prayer out of a full heart, and the influence of
even so brief a service will keep the members of the household from
many a failure.
Church attendance is not what it once was. The old-fashioned family
pew is a thing of the past in too many cases. In other days the father,
the mother, and the children attended divine worship in the house of
God. They sang the hymns of the church together; they worshipped
God with the same spirit of devotion; they listened to the minister's
preaching and they came forth from such a service clothed with a
power that made them able to stand against the mightiest influences for
evil. Because the family pew is out of date many boys are wandering,
and many girls have gone astray.

With the beginning of the fourth chapter of Nehemiah there is a change
in the story as told by the Prophet. There is a ring of triumph when he
announces: "So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together
unto the half thereof; for the people had a mind to work," Nehemiah iv.
6. And the completeness of his work is described when he says: "Now
it came to pass when the wall was built, and I had set up the doors, and
the porters and the singers and the Levites were appointed ..."
Nehemiah vii. 1. I am sure it is quite true that out from all the despair
which sometimes appals us, we shall come into the same complete
victory. But if we are to win others to Christ and if our work is to be a
work of prevention, so that our children shall not go astray and our
friends may not wander, then it will be essential that we should, like
Nehemiah of old, begin to build everyone over against his own house.
It is a sad thing to find so many people in the world who are a public
success and a private failure. Great superintendents of Sunday Schools,
and poor fathers; experienced Sunday School teachers, and inconsistent
in their own homes; eloquent preachers and poor illustrations of the
spirit of Jesus; famed for piety as revealed to the public eye and quite
as famed for lack of piety, when living out of the lime light, in the
common round of daily duties with those who know us best and ought
to speak of us most highly.
If our work is to be as God would have it where shall it begin? By all
means let it begin with ourselves. There is a text of Scripture which
every Christian must say over and over. He might begin the day with it
and it might not be amiss for him to say it over before he closes his
eyes in sleep. "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and
know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me," Psalm
cxxxix. 23, 24. It is quite unnecessary to study the methods of men if
we cannot bear the test of God's searching eye.
We must be right in our own homes. In a meeting conducted recently in
Wales a gentleman rose to say: "I came to the meeting on Friday
afternoon and made a covenant with God that I would speak to
someone about Christ. It laid so hold of my heart that I went home and
spoke to my little girl. I asked her if she loved the Lord Jesus Christ,
and she said, 'Yes, I do.' I said, 'Will you accept Jesus as your personal

Saviour?' 'Yes, I am willing to' she said. I went to the steel works, and
had been praying that God would use me. I asked the young man with
whom I was working if he were a Christian. He looked black at me, but
I asked him to be honest before God. In a moment his face changed as
he said without hesitation, 'I will accept Jesus as my Saviour now.'
"I was working during the night, and it came to food time, so I asked
several of the men if they would come into the smith shop and have a
word of prayer. There was a young man there whose little boy I had
spoken to. This young man came to me at three o'clock in the morning
to tell me that he would accept Jesus as his personal Saviour. I asked
some of