Christian household

“ The highest family life is that consecrated by Religion. The household where God is acknowledged, from which the members go regularly together to the house of God, within whose walls is heard the voice of prayer and praise, is the ideal Christian family. In such a family the father is the priest, daily offering up prayers for those whom God has given him, at the family altar. He makes it his duty, and regards it as his privilege to bring up his children in "the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and by personal example and teaching to train them up as members of the household of faith. ”

“ Placing the Home Under the Care of God.—There is a need of the reinstatement of the custom of family worship; the place and time where and when the family is commended to God and placed under His care. As children of the great household of God we need constantly to keep in touch with our Father. ”

“ It is a serious thing to think of families divided upon questions of religion; surely it would be better that a convert should live a consistent Christian life at home, even without baptism, than that she should break up the peace of the household by leaving her home altogether? ”

“ Abraham and Joshua, and David, acted upon this principle in their families. Let the members of the Christian home do the same, and the blessing of God will rest upon them.
God promises to reward parents in this life. We find their fulfillment in the peace, the hopes, the interests, and the pleasures of the faithful household. The members are happy in each other’s love, in each other’s virtue, in each other’s worth, in each other’s hopes, in each other’s interests, in each other’s confidence, in each other’s piety, in each other’s fidelity, in each other’s happiness. ”

“ This is seen in the typical character of the Christian family. It is an emblem of the church and of heaven. According to this, parents are called to administer the means of grace to their household, to provide for soul as well as for body, to prepare the child for a true membership in the church, as well as for a citizenship in the state, to train for heaven as well as for earth.
Parents are "priests unto their families," and have the commission to act for them as faithful stewards of God in all things pertaining to their everlasting welfare. ”

“ A penurious, close-fisted, selfish home cannot be a religious household. Family religion must be reproductive, must return to God as well as receive from Him. But as these characteristic features of the Christian home will be considered hereafter, we shall not enlarge upon them here. Suffice it to say that the mission of home demands family religion. Its interests cannot be secured without it. Let our homes be divorced from piety, and they will become selfish, sensual, unsatisfactory, and unhappy. Piety should always reign in our homes,—not only on the Sabbath, but during the week ”

“ In spite of persecution and unkindness, the new convert remains faithful. By and by another member of the family is won: sometimes the whole household is changed, and the home becomes a Christian home. ”

“ This constitutes, and these are the duties of family religion—duties which no Christian head of a family, whether father or mother, can be excused from performing. They are [Pg 49] duties which all who take upon themselves the responsibilities of the family should feel it a privilege to observe.
The duty of family prayer, especially by the one or the other head of the household, as the leading exercise of the family religion, should be performed with seriousness, order and punctuality. ”

“ They are to appropriate it and dispose of its interests according to the known law and will of their divine Master, and in this sense, yield, with their whole household, a voluntary subordination to His authority.
As a stewardship, God has entrusted the Christian home with important interests. He has committed to her trust, body and soul, talents and means of grace. He has entrusted to the parents the training of their children both for time and for eternity. These children are the heritage of the Lord; they are not at the absolute disposal of their parents ”

“ Christianity, then, not only seeks an ideal family; it makes the family the ideal social institution and order. It makes family life holy, sacramental, religious in its very nature. This fact gives added importance to the preservation and development of the ideals of family life for the sake of their religious significance and influence. It not only makes religion a part of the life of the home but makes a religious purpose the very reason for the existence of the Christian type of home. It makes our homes essentially religious institutions, to be judged by religious products. ”

“ Upon them shall be answered the prayer of Jeremiah, "Oh Lord, pour out thy fury upon the families that call not upon thy name!"
Thus, therefore, we see that the Christian home demands a family religion. The private devotion of the individual can be no effectual substitute for it. ”

“ In the family circle, too, he is to give his mother and sister precedence in all the conveniences and comforts of home life.
It is only in those nations where the teachings and example of Christ have had most influence that man has ever assumed his obligations of self-sacrificing benevolence in the family. And even in Christian communities, the duty of wives to obey their husbands has been more strenuously urged, than the obligations of the husband to love his wife “as Christ loved the Church.” ”

“ In the same way family life, if toilsome, either at home or in a new country, may be inspired by the example of the Holy Family in Nazareth; and in lonely and hard conditions, as well as in the stress of our crowded ways of living, the influence of that ideal reaches down to the foundations and transfigures the very humblest service of the household. ”

“ The true family consists of husband, wife, and children. And that the family may be a home, union and peace must dwell there. To have this, religion must be the prevailing spirit of the family. Anything and everything that tends to keep alive and promote this, should be used and encouraged, and there is nothing that has a more happy tendency in this direction than regular and stated family worship. Therefore family worship ought to be established in every Christian home. There are three different kinds of prayer that should be observed in the home. ”

“ Yes, but perhaps the "religious family" fabricated by teaching woman that her holy place is not the family which God founded, and in which every man has his own wife and every woman her own husband, may not in operation have proved a better thing than the Christian family. ”

“ As the civil and political relations of home involve the duty of parents to train up their children for efficient citizenship in the state, so its moral and religious relations involve the duty of education for the church. Hence the Christian home is churchly in its spirit, religion, education, influence, and mission.
Family religion is an element of home, not only as a mere fact or principle in its subjective form, but in the form and force of the church. In its unchurchly form it is powerless. ”

“ The Christian family is the cradle and the fortress of the Christian faith. Here its virtues shine most brightly; and by this channel its influence spreads through society and the course of generations. ”

“ The Christian family is a type peculiar to itself, not as a new institution, for it has developed out of earlier race experience, but as controlled by a new interpretation, the spirit and conception of the home and family given in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. ”

“ The family bible has given to the Christian home that unmeasured superiority in all the dignities and decencies and enjoyments of life, over the home of the heathen. It has elevated woman, revealed her true mission, developed the true idea and sacredness of marriage and of the home-relationship ”

“ Here is a test in the selection of a companion for life, from which neither parents nor children should ever depart. It evidently forbids a matrimonial union with those who have no sympathy with religion. We should make more account of religious equality than of equality of rank and wealth. Is not true piety of more importance than education, affluence or social distinction? When husband and wife are unequally yoked together in soul and grace, their home must suffer spiritually as well as temporally. ”

“ The parental solicitude, once directed to the eternal welfare of the child, is now expended in match-making and setting out in the world.
Thus does the Christian home often become adulterated with the world by its indiscriminate association with unfit social elements. That portion of society whose master-spirits are love-stricken poets, languishing girls, amorous grandmothers, and sap-headed fiction writers, is certainly unfit for a place in the parlor of the Christian family. ”

“ When the squire was quenched under the mitre of the abbot, the farmer was smothered in the cowl of the friar. Where are the parsonages and manses, homes where thought-culture is generally at the maximum, and external show often at the minimum, Christian families rooted in nature, blessed by divine ordinance, where woman is doing what the Mother of our Lord was doing at the head of her house—families holier a hundred times than the "religious" family, artificially substituted for nature and gospel? ”

“ The great want of our intellectual and moral nature is here met, and home education becomes impregnated with the spirit and elements of our preparation for eternity.
The relations of home demand family religion. These are relations of mutual dependence, involving such close affinity that the good or evil which befalls one member must in some degree extend to all the other members. They involve "helps." Each member becomes an instrument in the salvation or damnation of the others. "For what knowest, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? ”

“ Now, if it be thus in reference to an individual, how can a family be regarded as in a right state where there is no family reading, no family prayer, no family acknowledgment of God or His Word? Can we conceive a God-fearing household going on from Lord's day morning to Saturday night without any collective recognition of the One to whom they owe every thing? ”

“ Home-sympathy will prompt to family devotion. The latter is the fruit of the former. A prayerless home is destitute of religious sympathy. The family demands prayer. Its relation to God, its dependence and specific duties, involve devotion. Communion with God constitutes a part of the intercourse and society of home. The necessity of family prayer arises out of the home-constitution and mission. ”

“ Family godliness. He that hath set up Christ in his heart, will be sure to study to set him up in his house. Let every family with you be a Christian church; every house a house of prayer; every houshold a houshold of faith. Let every housholder say, with Joshua, I, with my house, will serve the Lord, and with David, I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.
First, Let religion be in your families, not as a matter by the by, but the standing business of the house. Let them have your prayers as duly as their meals. Is there any of your families, but have time for their taking food? ”

“ The entire range of nursery instruction and amusement was comprised in scripture pictures and hieroglyphics. They intermingled religion with all their home pursuits, and entwined it with their earliest and purest associations of childhood. If Christian parents would follow their example now, in these days of parental delinquency, we would not behold so many of their children grow up in religious ignorance and indifference.
The same may be said of the family altar and prayer. A prayerless family is an irreligious, godless family. Says Henry, "They who daily pray in their houses do well ”

“ But a well-governed family is an excellent help to the saving of all the souls that are in it. As in an ungodly family there are continual temptations to ungodliness, to swearing, and lying, and railing, and wantonness, and contempt of God; so in a godly family there are continual provocations to a holy life, to faith, and love, and obedience, and heavenly-mindedness: temptations to sin are fewer there, than in the devil's shops and workhouses of sin; the authority of the governors, the conversation of the rest, the examples of all, are great inducements to a holy life. ”

“ As with him the new social order was to be a family with God as its father and men as its children, so with them the church was the bride of the Lamb, and every fatherhood and family in heaven and on earth was named of that great Father before whom they daily bowed the knee. ”

“ Give the Bible the place in your families to which it is justly entitled, and then, through the unsearchable riches of Christ, many a household among you may hereafter realize that most blessed consummation, and appear a whole family in heaven. ”

“ It is upon another principle altogether that that which we call a family, or true society, is formed. It is not built upon similarity of taste, nor identity of opinion, but upon affinities of nature. You do not choose who shall be your brother; you cannot exclude your mother or your sister; it does not depend upon choice or arbitrary opinion at all, but is founded upon the eternal nature of things. And precisely in the same way is the Christian Church formed—upon natural affinity, and not upon artificial combination. “The family, the whole family in heaven and earth;” ”