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Family religion includes parental bible instruction, family prayer, and
religious education, government, discipline and example. These involve the
parent's position in his household as a prophet, priest, and king. "Thou
shalt teach my words diligently unto thy children, and talk of them when
thou sittest in thy house."
"Daily let part of Holy Writ be read,
Let as the body, so the soul have bread.
For look! how many souls in thy house be,
With just as many souls God trusteth thee!"
Thus felt and acted our primitive fathers. By every winning art, they
sought to fill their children with the knowledge of God's Word. 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; they that not only pray, but read the scriptures, do
better; but they do best of all, who not only pray and read the scriptures,
but sing the praises of God."
Besides, the religion of home implies that we "command our children and
household to keep the way of the Lord,"--that we "bring them up in His
nurture and admonition," and "train them up as He would have them go;" and
that in things pertaining to their spiritual welfare we "go in and out"
before them as their pattern and example, bidding them to "follow us even
as we follow Christ," and living in their midst as "the living epistles of
Christ, known and read" of them all.
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