WHAT can be more beautifully appropriate than the worship of God in families?
Here is a little company of human beings, joined together in the most intimate connection—dwelling under one roof, fed at one table, supplied with the necessaries of life from sources of income that are common to them all feeling themselves to have altogether common interests, common wants, and common exposures. It is granted that they all ought to worship God; is it not appropriate that they should worship him together? Each of them ought to thank God for his daily food, and daily to ask God for the needed supply. But the family take their food together. It is supplied from a common store, and spread upon a common table, and the daily gatherings around that table are the recognized symbol of their close intimacy. Is there any other scene which ought to be sanctified with prayer, if not that where a family most frequently look in each other's faces—where the responsible providers distribute the liberal provision—where parental love lavishes itself upon its tender objects—and where the children not only have their bodies nurtured, but their minds and manners cultivated?
A prayerless family meal is a most unchristian, a most ungodly thing, and seldom does that graceless spirit whose plainest name is fashion, show her impiety more plainly than when, at a social entertainment, she whispers that, as the family table would be too narrow for so numerous a company, so the family custom of giving thanks at table is too homely for so splendid an occasion: just as if the larger and costlier provision did not need the divine blessing, and did not call for thanks, as much as the ordinary meal; and just as if an unblest meal, partaken by a numerous company scattered through the ample spaces of a parlor, were any more Christian than the same thing at an ordinary table.
Nor is it only at table that families should worship. Sheltered by one roof, the family have laid them down in peace and slept, and awoke in safety, because the Lord hath sustained them. Coming from their several chambers, they meet and exchange their affectionate salutations, glad to feel, "We are all here." It is a common protection they have shared. They have together been kept from the assassin, from the fire, from "the pestilence that walketh in darkness." Should not they kneel together, and give thanks to their heavenly Guardian? They are going forth too to duties, and to dangers, and they need a common guidance; shall they not ask for it together? And at the close of the day, have they not equal reasons for united prayer and thanksgiving? They have all been led and kept by one Providence, and they all need to commit themselves to one divine Guardian. On both occasions it is appropriate, besides the prayer, to read the divine word together, and to unite, if they are able, in sacred song.
There will of course be mornings when all have not come from their chambers in the glow and the joy of health; there will be evenings when the family will sadly gather, returning from a new grave. Thenceforth, at the table and at the fireside, there will be "one vacant chair." All families may have these days of sorrow. What shall they do with this sorrow? To whom shall they tell it? On whose friendly strength shall they lay it? There is no such other place for a bereaved family to soothe and comfort themselves as their family altar. Is it the father that is gone? Nowhere else will they find such comfort as kneeling, in their tears, at the family al47tar, and pouring out their prayers from their broken hearts; through the channel perhaps of a feebler and softer voice than that to whose manly tones they were accustomed.
Or has one of the little ones been taken? The table must henceforth lack the light of his happy face—the house will no more ring to his merry laugh; but there is no sweeter memory, when you see the white hands laid together on the still breast, than that you had seen them folded on the edge of the table at the giving of thanks, or on the chair by your side at the daily worship.
In joy and sorrow, amid all the varieties of domestic experience, they who live together may most appropriately and beneficially worship together.