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A

FAMILY PRAYER BOOK,

AND

PRIVATE MANUAL:

TO WHICH ARE ADDED

FORMS FOR RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES AND SCHOOLS.

WITH A COLLECTION OF HYMNS.

BY CHARLES BROOKS.

NEW EDITION.

BOSTON:

JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY,

No. 134 WASHINGTON STREET.

1853.

BV

255
•876

1853

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1832. by CHARLES BROOKS,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massacnusetts.

TUFTS COLLEGE
LIBRARY.

47432.

STEREOTYPED BY LYMAN THURSTON & CO.

BOSTON.

PREFACE

'Prayer is the soul's sincere desire

Uttered or unexpressed.-'

In addition to God's command and our Saviour's example, prayer is recom mended by its reasonableness and utility.

A christian family should be a christian church. Instruction should make it a school of virtue; and piety a temple of the living God. In such a family, prayer is the very breath of the soul. They will celebrate God's perfections with reverence and joy, acknowledge his mercies with gratitude and love, confess their sins with humility and penitence, offer their supplications with piety and fervor, and intercede for their brethren with sympathy and affection. To meet the wishes and supply the wants of such a family has been my desire in composing these forms for social worship. I have aimed to make them brief, clear and comprehensive; giving to them all the diversity which was possible in the restricted forms of family devotion.

In the prayers for individuals I have wished to keep before the mind the doctrine of a Providence, the grace of the gospel, and the practical principles of religion as they stand connected with the common varieties of human character and condition; with man's wants and blessings, dangers and hopes. I nave endeavored to furnish words in which the deepest feelings of the pure and the contrite spirit may find a grateful utterance. Every thing here depends on cultivating a taste for devotion, without which prayer becomes a lifeless, ineffectual form.

In preparing this I have proceeded upon the principles adopted in the several previous editions. Of new matter one hundred pages have been added; and the rest has been so remodelled that the book may be considered a new one. It should be judged of as a whole. To write a few prayers of striking excellence is comparatively easy. The peculiar difficulty of this species of composition is felt when three hundred pages are to be furnished, and all of them

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