was forced to fight one of the cleverest of this kind, and his victory
was earned so hardly that he remembered it. "The dullest observer must
be sensible," says Washington Irving, "of the order and serenity
prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a
beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the key-note
to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony." "It
is for the sake of man, not of God," says Blair, "that worship and
prayers are required; not that God may be rendered more glorious, but
that men may be made better--that he may acquire those pious and
virtuous dispositions in which his highest improvement consists." How
can religion bear fruit so well as by daily instruction from God? How
can the family bear its burdens more easily than with God's help?