Every thing depends on the way you begin your new life in your own new home. The household altar is a supreme necessity. No hesitation or timidity should be allowed to prevent family worship. If both of you are members of the Church, the holding of a brief family worship need not be a serious trial. The difficulty will be when only one is a Christian, and still greater will it be if neither is a Christian. What is to be done under such circumstances? Must the having family worship be postponed until the religious life be commenced? That is uncertain, and it may be years before a household altar is established. The only safe way is to begin at once by holding a short service. Simple it may be. It was the daily custom of President Hayes, during his presidential term of office, to convene his family for daily worship. The prayer consisted of only the Lord's Prayer. But it was enough. The minds of the household were directed toward spiritual things. The help of God was sought, to bear whatever burdens the day might bring.

However great the embarrassment in the face of this great duty, let it not prevent the brief domestic worship. Begin—begin immediately. A short Scripture reading, followed by prayer, even only the Lord's Prayer, will be sufficient. There are good forms of prayer, some of which I have used to advantage. Fletcher's Family Devotion; Sturm's Family Devotions; Morison's Family Prayers; Cumming's Daily Family Devotion; Family Worship, by one hundred and eighty clergymen of the Church of Scotland; Cassell's Family Devotion; Dale's Domestic Liturgy; Thornton's Family Prayers; Thompson and Spurgeon's Home Worship and the Use of the Bible in the Home; and Jay's Morning and Evening Exercises, are good books for this purpose. The works of Fletcher, Thornton, and the Home Worship of Thompson and Spurgeon are worthy of special commendation. Even when one is accustomed to extemporaneous prayer, the use of one of the above books will, nevertheless, be of great service in preventing stereotyped phrases and trains of thought. I have often found that my own needs, and I believe those of my family, have been better and more exactly described by others than by myself. It is best, however, to get into no fixed form. Let the extemporaneous prayer, or the printed form of prayer, be used judiciously, as circumstances require.

Care should be taken that the home worship may not be made tedious, and thus become a burden. I have always found it best to use the Bible for the Scripture selection rather than the selections made in the books containing forms of prayer. It is well to read the Bible in course, and to have the same copy of the Bible from which to read brief selections, without being governed by the divisions in chapters. Your one and the same Bible, being used every day in family worship, becomes very precious with the growing years. It will be associated with all the tenderest memories of the home life. I have occasionally used a different copy of the Bible in my own home for family worship, but none is half so dear as the plain, old, and well-worn copy with which I began, when I established my own home altar, far back in the years.

But, besides worship together at the family altar, there should be private prayer. Every one should have a place where he can worship God alone. Our Lord saw the necessity that each of his disciples should be alone with him. Hence he said: "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Begin the day by solitary communing with God. End the day in the same way, by asking God for his forgiveness for the past, for his preservation for the night, and for his care in all the time to come.

But some one may say: "Does not this attention to religious duties make the new home gloomy?" Not at all. It is the way to make it bright and cheerful. The wedding day soon passes by, and in time will come the regular domestic life, with its monotony and cares. Leave this life to God's ordering. He alone can make us strong for every hour's demands. The German poet Schirmer says a wise word, which well applies to all who begin life in the new home:

Vinet here lays down the true principle of a thoroughly good life at home: "Wherever we advance in the path of marriage and of life, with eyes lifted up toward a Saviour we love, with a salvation we hope for, with a spirit of prayer and supplication through which Jesus Christ constantly intervenes by his Spirit between the husband and wife—there, indeed, a marriage may be happy; nay, must be infallibly so. The union between two converted hearts is necessarily sweet and unutterable; without this there is no security." The new home consecrated by prayer—daily prayer—will become what that beautiful home of Sir Thomas More was—"a school and exercise of the Christian religion."