Religion in the Home by Eliza H. Morton

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 20, 1914

Religion in the Home

By Eliza H. Morton

Is It Dying Out? Why Is This So?

THE decadence of “old-time religion” in the home is very noticeable. The time was when the family altar and grace said at the table were established customs in the home of nearly every church-member, but now one may visit hundreds of professed Christian homes and never hear the voice of prayer.

The reason for this decline in spirituality is stated in 2 Tim. 3: 1-5. That certainly is a time of peril for any church when its members go through her courts with a “form of godliness,” while at home and in the world they are “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” When card-playing, theater-going, the dance, and all the exciting follies of fashionable life, are practised by professed Christians, how can the standard of righteousness be maintained? When the church and the world clasp hands, the religious atmosphere becomes chilled, the children become “disobedient,” “unthankful,” and “unholy,” and one can not read, in the individual lives of the church-members, the sanctifying, uplifting, purifying power of the Holy Spirit.

The study of the Bible in the home circle is an old-fashioned method of cultivating the minds and hearts of the children, which has fallen into disrepute. There is a great cry, among some reformers, that the Bible should be taught in the public school; but the greater need is that it be studied in the home. Its blessed truths may be made more fascinating to young minds than the pages of the latest novel. Enthusiasm is contagious; and when father and mother take time to open the treasures of God’s word to their children, there will be a ready response, and great will be the reward.

The plea may be want of time, but time is found for other things far less important. An artist once said to a pupil who was painting the shingles of a barn in a landscape scene, “If you spend all your time doing that, you will have no time to paint the sunset.” And so also those who spend all their time on temporal matters will find no time for eternal things.

If there is genuine Christian religion in the home, it will be manifest to visitors and transient callers. The influence of Spirit-filled lives, like the aroma of flowers, can not be concealed. It often happens that God directs an individual to a home where, if the opportunity is improved, he may receive light and spiritual strength. But sad to say, the individual thus directed often goes away without the uplift God designed he should obtain.

A woman once said to a preacher: “My husband was impressed with your sermon last night, and he promised me that he would call to see you. Did he do so?” “Yes,” replied the minister, “he called and asked the price of brass.” “That was an excuse,” said the wife. “What did you say?” “I am sorry to say,” replied the minister, “that I talked brass too.”

The conversation of too many, if not actually about “brass,” is like sounding brass, when God would have it concerning the riches of His grace and the glory of His kingdom.

In these latter days, these days of reform on downtrodden truths, these days when the Holy Spirit speaks through the lips of men and women, it is meet that the home should become the very center of spiritual life.

“By the fireside read the Bible, Lift the voice in prayer, Teach the children of the Saviour, Praise Him everywhere.” ELIZA H. MORTON.