THE FAMILY ALTAR

June 26.

"For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear,

but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,

Father." Rom. 8:15.

When a man adopts a poor orphan into his family, he places

it in the conditions of his own child, and endows it with all the

rights and privileges of a child. Yet how rare the man who would

adopt into his family a deformed and diseased little criminal !

But that is just what our merciful God in His surpassing love

did with us sinners when He brought us to faith in His dear

Son and endowed us with His Holy Spirit. He took us deformed

and diseased children of sin and death into the family of His

saints and made us heirs of eternal life. Now we have the right

and privilege of addressing Him by the sweet name of Father.

Have we ever realized what great bliss and happiness that right

confers on us ? Ah, we are so accustomed to repeating the Lord's

Prayer, of saying to God: "Our Father which art in heaven,"

that we grow cold and indifferent to this our great honor and

dignity. The heathen must put us to shame. When the Danish

missionaries in Malabar set some of their converts to work trans-

lating Luther's Catechism, which tells us how all believers become

children of God, one of the translators was so startled that he

suddenly laid down his pen, and exclaimed, "It is too much ! Let

me rather render it, 'They shall be permitted to kiss His feet.' '"

Abba, Father, is the first words the children in the Holy Land

and all Eastern countries learn to say. And though a man live

to be a hundred years or more, there is nothing higher or deeper,

holier and sweeter that he can learn about God than that the

almighty and everlasting God is his Father in Christ Jesus, his

Savior, and that he, therefore, in all conditions of life, in sickness,

sorrow, and death can look up to heaven with childlike confidence

and pray: "Abba, Father!"

Grant that Thy Spirit prompt my praises,

Then shall my singing surely please Thine ear;

Sweet are the sounds my heart then raises,

My prayer in truth and spirit Thou wilt hear.

Then shall Thy Spirit raise my heart to Thee,

To sing Thee psalms of praise in high degree.

For He can plead for me with sighings

That are unutt'rable to lips like mine;

He bids me pray with earnest cryings,

Bears witness with my soul that I am Thine,

Joint-heir with Christ, and thus may dare to say:

0 Abba, Father! hear me when I pray.