Bible Example—Domestic Worship.
The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, wherever, in the pilgrimages, they fixed on a place of residence, erected an altar to God for family devotion, and called on the name of the Lord. Joshua resolved that as for him and his family, they would serve the Lord, that is, worship him. Job practiced family worship. He sent and sanctified his children, and rose early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings, according to the number of them all. "Thus did Job continually." David, having spent one day in bringing the ark from the house of Obed-edom to the place he had prepared for it, and in presenting peace-offerings before the Lord, returned at night to bless his household, that is, to pray for a blessing upon his family, or to attend upon family devotion. Cornelius, it is said, "feared God with all his house," meaning, worshiped him with his family. The apostle speaks, in his epistles, of churches in private houses. By this phrase, he means families where religious services were observed. In the Lord's Prayer, we have a command for family devotion. "After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our father who art in heaven." The form of prayer is plural. It must, therefore, mean social prayer, and, if social, then family prayer—for a family is the most proper society to engage in this devotion. Paul, in his epistle to the Colossians, having pointed out the duties of husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, adds, "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving." The subject upon which he was speaking, and the manner of his speaking, leads us to conclude he meant family prayer. In his epistle to the Ephesians, he enjoins it as a duty, to "pray always with all prayer;" that is, to offer prayer of every kind, and in every form, and at every proper season. Family prayer must, therefore, be included in this injunction. The apostle Peter exhorts husbands and wives to live together in the discharge of the duties of conjugal affection and Christian obedience, that "their prayers be not hindered;" that nothing may occur to indispose them to social or family devotion. I was sitting by Coleridge's bedside when he said, "I do not reckon the most solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act of the reason and will. Oh, no! it is to pray as God would have us; this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice, through Christ, and verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon, this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian warfare upon earth: 'Teach us to pray, O Lord!'" And then he burst into a flood of tears and asked me to pray for him. O! what a sight was there!