Home Religion by Floyd W. Tomkins, D. D.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Aug 3, 1905

Home Religion

By Floyd W. Tomkins, D. D.

Home religion is as important as personal religion, and is essential to it. And yet there is no part of practical religion so woefully disregarded. Family prayer and grace at meals are rare even among those who are earnest in church work. How seldom where I visit is the family gathered at morn or eve to hear the father read God's Word or lead in prayer. How seldom at meals are heads bowed and thanks given.

The reason why there are so many family quarrels, wandering children, divorces, and trouble with servants is that there is so little practical religion in the home. The early Christians counted God as ever with them. The apostle wrote of “the church in thy house.” The relationship between parents and children grows pure and dear when they all kneel together and ask the peace of God to rest on their home. Many of us remember the dear old days when at the family altar morning and evening prayers were offered together. I remember visiting where a husband and wife, lately married, knelt together at the same chair and held each other's hands as they sweetly solemnized their family worship,

Through the whole community the influence of a Christian home spreads. The town seems purer, the birds sing more sweetly, the flowers bloom more radiantly. Joy sings its anthems in such a home as it sings in no other place. And if this blessedness is to continue, we must shut out all unkindness, bitterness, and injustice.—Floyd W. Tomkins, D. D., in the Church Standard.