p. 92 | Religion in the Home by Rev. S. E. Eastman

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 5, 1885

Religion in the Home.

By Rev. S. E. Eastman

THE words "house" and "household," usually the rendering of the same word, are used in the Bible to express the organic religious unity of the family, and this religious unity of the family appears plainly in Scripture to be primary both in time and in importance, while the church is an after-growth, a divine expedient for public benefit, that there may be in the community an organic religious unity like that of the family. The divine ideal church is an organization, not of religious individuals, but of religious families, —"households."

Under the error that children must grow in sin and unbelief and then be converted, a fatal mistake has been made. Christian parents have turned over to the church this work of converting their children. Let us learn again that this responsibility for the conversion, instruction, and Christian nurture of children rests primarily upon the parents, and that this very responsibility gives, or would give, if it were not rolled upon the church, definite aim and stimulus to the religion of the home.

Christian parents to-day wait for their children to be converted in the prayer-meetings of the church, or in the young people's meetings, rather than expect their conversion around the home altar, at the fireside. They seem to think the pastor's study a more suitable and safe place for the child to learn to pray than at the mother's knee. They look to the Sabbath-school for the Christian instruction of their offspring, not to the daily lesson at home in the Bible and catechism, by religious family conversation and prayer. And the zest is taken out of family religion. Family worship becomes a hollow form in which we expect nothing, as a family, and get as little as we expect. Many Christian parents have left this work of Christian training to the church, to their own sorrow and disgrace; for God has not honored their idleness and shirking, and their children remain unsaved.

The home should be to the church as the conservatory to the garden. The new life-germ, the infant soul, sheltered from the cold winds and frosts outside, and subjected to the warm, genial temperature of Christian faith, fervent Christian hope, and deep Christian love, expressed in prayer, conversation, and example, takes root, and grows until it can thrive in the colder temperature of the church, and is then transplanted into the outer garden.

It is not only our duty to uphold the services of the sanctuary, to call upon God in the prayer-meeting; not only our privilege to sit together as church members in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, but our more urgent duty to walk with God in the monotonous and beaten tracks of daily toil and care, our privilege to find God at home our high tower, our "Fount of every blessing." For old and young, religion is a matter of home cultivation and growth. You cannot take spiritual breaths long enough nor deep enough on the Sabbath to sustain you through six days of worldliness and worldly work. You grow in grace and in knowledge by means of spiritual food—the word; and spiritual air—prayer; and spiritual exercise—good works; and these used regularly and constantly.

The aim of home religion is also the conversion, instruction, and Christian nurture of the children. This is held up to Christian parents in Scripture, by law, by promise, by precept, by every kind of encouragement and inducement, and also by warnings and threatenings. It would be interesting, were there time for it, to go through the Bible and see how everywhere and in every conceivable way this aim is presented to believing parents, and also that the responsibility of the result is laid upon them, and nowhere upon the church.

How shall we judge whether our home religion has this for its aim? Is the life of the household arranged with a definite purpose to secure this result? Do the children feel that the supreme wish of their parents is that they be Christians? What is the manifest anxiety on the part of parents and elders as the child matures without deciding for Christ? If he passes his fifth year giving no evidence of change of heart, is there little concern? Perhaps it is not expected so early. But does the tenth year of the child's life find the father and mother often in earnest prayer to God for the soul of the child? Is not now the expectation and prayer for some future conversion?

The boy enters the high school, and at fifteen are his parents more anxious that he graduate with honors than that he give his heart to God? Is it not true that unless our children annoy us, bring us into disgrace by noticeable and outbreaking sins and follies, we do not feel much concern that they be changed in heart? If our daughters are loving and amiable, does it not blind us to the fact that they are unsaved? Of a child wild and willful, and bringing its home into disgrace early, a friend said, "Nothing but conversion will save that child." It was meant, of course, that nothing else would save her from earthly woe and disgrace. Do we not know that nothing but conversion will save our obedient and amiable children?

Perhaps at twenty, parents realize that their son is a man of the world, and then they fall back upon the promises in reference to their children, and look for future conversion in some revival movement of the church—promises made to them upon condition that this aim of their child's conversion be the daily supreme motive from the birth of the child unto the accomplishment of it in the life of the child.

Study the old covenant with Abraham, trace it through the history of the children of Israel, follow it in its change into their new covenant, and note how the writer to the Hebrews includes and emphasizes the place of the children of believers under the covenant, and urges the begetting and nurturing of a godly seed. Yea, follow the history of Christianity into the last century, and mark how great a proportion of converts during any great crisis in the church have been of Christian parentage, whereby it is seen that revivals are spasmodic efforts of the church to get back her own children lost by neglect of religion in the home. Mark, also, how for generation after generation certain holy families have been powerful forces in the kingdom of God, and you will conclude with me that for establishing a kingdom of righteousness on earth the "propagation of a holy seed" is the primary method in the purpose of God; and the conversion of the heathen, and of those born in sin, his secondary method. If in any Christian community the separate families would use faithfully and devoutly God's primary method; if, that is, religion in the home were vital and influential, exerting converting and nurturing power over the souls born into the home, the church would need no revival crises in her history, but would be in a continuous exercise of spiritual power.

As Bushnell has forcibly said, "If the church were unfolding the riches of the covenant at her firesides and tables, if the children were identified with religion from the first, and grew up in a Christian love of man, the missionary spirit would not throw itself up in irregular jets, but would flow as a river."

You can do almost anything you please with a little child under six years of age, provided that submission to parental authority has been taught during the second and third year of the child's life. The failure is in that we do not begin early enough to mould the yielding clay placed in our hands. But Satan loses no early opportunity, and when we waken, we find the mould fixed and hard.

As parents, we have no time to lose. Our children grow up and away from us almost before we are aware. Other impressions are being made. The child yields to evil impressions as well as to good. Let us not be half-heartedly doing our work, saying that our children yield more easily to evil than to good. That is not true. Let us see to it that sincere, whole-hearted, unmixed good is given them in our homes before we charge God foolishly. A tile from an ancient temple has been found bearing very faintly the seal of the king, and very plainly the imprint of a dog's foot. The foot of the passing animal made a deeper impression than the king's seal. Our little ones are in our keeping to put upon them the name of our king. We must impress deeply for eternal endurance when they are in early years, for soon they will go outside, and the cloven foot of the great dragon will be upon them. It is for us to determine now which shall outlast, the seal of our King or the imprint of the dragon.

Home religion can never be concealed when it is present within the walls of a house, nor can it be put on for state occasions. It is an atmosphere. Is it not the presence of the infinite Spirit, securing the blessings vouchsafed to families that forget not God?

Christian parents, we must go back again to God's plan, and do our own appointed work. The church, with its Sunday-school, its Society of Christian Endeavor, and its evangelists, cannot do it, was never intended to do it, and is failing—or, at best, but partly succeeding—in the unnatural effort.

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."—Rev. S. E. Eastman, in Christian Union.