Family Worship

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Aug 25, 1904

THE family is the germ of the life of the nation and the church, because both are made up of families. The prevailing condition of the families of a country indicates the position of that country in the scale of civilization and social progress. The component parts make up the whole. If the families of a nation are distinguished for intelligence, industry, and virtue, that nation is in the van of progress. The family home is the most potent training-school for the arena of active life. There an influence is exerted that stamps itself upon the character and habits. The habits, principles, and spirit of the parents commonly reappear in the life of the children. If it is a matter of importance that the home be a place where knowledge, industry, and affection nestle, much more is it important that religious principle, integrity, and piety should be real and molding forces there. But piety can not flourish without a recognition of God, and communion with him who is the author and source of all good.

A prayerless home in which there is no family recognition of the claims of God to reverence, worship, and loving obedience, is poor soil in which to raise plants of righteousness for the garden of the Lord. On the other hand, there are peculiar beauty and appropriateness in the members of a family who are bound together by mutual love and common interests, cares, and hopes, bowing together at the throne of grace, to present their common thanks, confessions, and petitions to the great Father, in whom they live and move and have their being. Many nominally Christian families have no family worship. In the evening there are no united thanks for the mercies of the closing day. In the morning there are no petitions for help and protection in the duties and temptations of the day. In such cases the parents practically deny that there is a great and holy Being whom they should acknowledge in all their ways. The children are likely to think that the faith of their parents is nominal and unreal.

It should not be forgotten that the influence of family worship upon the minds of children depends largely upon the spirit and manner of conducting it. Long, formal prayers beget prejudice and aversion, instead of awakening religious interest. Family prayers should be simple and pointed, fervent and brief.

Every Christian household should have its family altar, on which the fires of devotion should burn continually. If there are any of our readers whom God has placed at the head of a family, who neglect this duty, we would say, do not do so any longer. Gather your little ones together in prayer, and let your acts show them that you believe that every good and perfect gift cometh down from the Father of light.—Selected.