is a good thing to have, and a father wants his wife and children to have all the good things in the world, and the next thing you hear from him he will be leading in prayer and demonstrating his religion in his family, and they will fall into line with him. Brother, if you don't pray in your family, you go home and begin tonight. Do you hear that? You begin to-night. Here you are now, wondering why Jones didn't institute his inquiry-room, and think I had ought to call them up about now. Call who up? Will you come, brother? Will you come? Will you go in there to-night, you

mean,

RUSTY OLD SINNER,

if I call them up? I mean you, Brother Smith, there! You never prayed in your family in your life, and you wouldn't pray in public on invitation. Will you come ? I will never let up on you until you will come, sir, or until you go home and stay there. I am going to have your hide or your seat before this thing is over. I don't believe in us Christian people being guilty of neglect of duty and doing just like we please, and let the poor sinners come up and be converted. Brother, if I was to live such a life as you live I would rather my children would uever be converted at all than to come into the church and go from the heights of profession to the depths of damnation. If I must go to hell, God grant I may never go through as a professor of religion. "Pray without ceasing." How many people in this house hold family prayer and go to the theatre? How many people in this house that pray in their families, play cards in their families? How many people in this house who give wine suppers pray at night and morning with the children? Ah, brother, those things won't mix, and you

needn't tell me they will. They won't. Pray in your families. I like family prayer, and I can't get along without it at my house. I told them last summer in my town-my neighbors came to me and said, "Jones, you

are

BREAKING YOURSELF DOWN;

you have got to stop; you have got to stay at home."
"Now," I said, "I will tell you how you can get me to
stay away. You just get my wife to sign an obligation
that she won't read the Bible and pray night and morn-
ing with my children, and I am gone. Then I won't stay
a night away from them any more.
I wouldn't leave my
wife and children to go anywhere to preach to anybody
unless my wife would agree to be the priest of my home,
and keep my children in the way of life." Then, another
thing, if wife gets sick and can't get out of bed, then my
little girl will call the others in, and she will read the
Bible and pray with them. And I believe, if she didn't,
little 8-year-old Bob, if all the balance were in bed sick,
I believe Bob would call the nurse in with the baby, and,
with his little prattling sister, read the Bible the best he
could and have family prayer. I tell you, brother, I like
that line. I want to get God's old family-prayer elevator
down into my house every night, and let wife and children
get into it and all go to heaven for a few minutes, and
then come back and go to bed. And then in the morn-
ing, before the breakfast bell rings, down comes God's
old family-prayer elevator, and we will all get into it for
a few minutes and go to heaven, and come back and get
our breakfast and go to work. If I can just get

WIFE AND CHILDREN

to heaven that way a few years, they will be such children

that when they come to die they will go to heaven as naturally as they breathe. The Lord save my home. God save my home. If there is one thought that my mind dwells upon in restful, peaceful moments, it is when I am looking ahead to that happy time when I shall dwell with my wife and loved ones in heaven. And I say to you this, I am deprived of many of the blessings and privileges of my home, and it makes me sad; and when my precious little ones throw their arms around my neck and the tears drop out of their eyes, and as I pull away from them to go to my duties, no one but God knows how my heart bleeds.

Some of these days, I don't know when-my wife says two or three more years-wife will say, "You had better stop;" and I have seen the tears in her eyes as she spoke, and I have said, "Wife, how can I stop? I must finish my course. I will do my work while God lets me live;" and some of these days I will kiss wife and children goodby and go home to heaven, and when I stand at the pearly gates-for I shall never go far away from the gate of entrance to the glories of God-waiting until wife comes, and it will be a grand hour in heaven when wife comes winging her way into glory, and she will say, "I have come up through much tribulation to enjoy this heaven with your forever." And wife and I shall sit under the shade of

THE TREE OF LIFE,

and we will see an archangel winging his way rapidly toward us, and he will stop at our seat and will brush little Mary-our Mary-from under his wing, and say, "You trained her for everlasting life, and she is with you now forever," and then a few more moments will glide by, and I will see another angel winging his way

towards us, and I will whisper to wife, "There comes another angel, with another of our precious ones," and he lays his precious burden at our feet, and wife says, "Blessed be God, two are here and forever." And when the last one comes sweeping in, we will all join hands forever. Mother, children, all of us in home in heaven forever. Then will I have received pay for every lick I have ever struck for God and right on this side of the grave. God bless and save you, brethren.

I cannot go further now with this text, brethren, as I have talked over an hour; but may God bless you and save you all here and forever. Now every man that wants to be saved, and wants his precious wife and children to be saved to the better world, stand up!

A BAD BEGINNING.

MORNING SERVICE AT THE CHICAGO
AVENUE CHURCH.

This is the sixth service that I have been with you, and this is the last service I shall be with you, perchance. We concentrate our forces in the organized union effort on the South Side next week; but I shall carry many of your faces, and I trust all of your spirits, upon my heart in prayer. I want you to pray for me and pray God that I may be efficient and useful and only

USEFUL AND GOOD.

Give us your prayers that God may make this specially

a sweet service to us, and that we may have a foretaste of what we shall enjoy, not only the balance of our lives here, but with the everlasting life in the world to come. If I have done nothing more, in the few services I have been with you in this church, I trust I have engaged an interest in your prayers for me, for my home, and for my work.

We select this very familiar text to all of us as a very appropriate one, not only for this occasion, but for us to think of occasionally:

"Well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joys of thy Lord."

Everything must have a beginning. Every religious life, like every physical life, had its beginning. And there is a great deal in a good start. That old adage is the very essence of nonsense, that we frequently quote, "A bad beginning makes a good ending." It's falsefalse in philosophy, it's false in the nature of things that a bad beginning makes a good ending. It is not true of it in farming. It is not true of it in merchandising, and it is not true of it in anything; but, above all things, it is fatally untrue in a religious point.

And really, brethren, I have but to watch the beginning of any cause to determine whether it will

SUCCEED OR NOT.

For instance, I see a man beginning the year as a farmer. I see him loitering about his home during the months of January and February and March. He doesn't turn his hand to do anything; he loiters about until it's along about time for him to plant and hoe. When I see that man beginning the year that way as a farmer, I unhesitatingly pronounce him a failure and the crop he gathers, or the piece of crop he gathers that fall, will prove