Religious Education in the Family Part 12

Patterson Dubois, _The Natural Way_, sec. iv. Revell, $1.25.

III. Methods and Materials

"Pa.s.sages of Bible for Memorization," _Religious Education_, August, 1906.

Louise S. Houghton, _Telling Bible Stories_. Scribner, $1.25.

Johnson, _The Narrative Bible_. Baker & Taylor Co., $1.50.

Hall and Wood, _The Bible Story_, 5 vols. King, $2.00 by subscription.

Courtney, _The Literary Man's Bible_. Crowell, $1.25.

The above are but a few of the many collections of biblical material.

IV. Topics for Discussion

1. What are the conditions which seem to make the reading of the Bible different from other reading? Is there a sense of unreality about it as a book? What are the causes?

2. Try the experiment of reading the story of Joseph at one sitting. Try to retell this to children.

3. What biblical material stands out in your memory of childhood?

In what degree is this due to the art of the story-teller or the reader? to the character of the material?

FOOTNOTES:

[21] See M.J.C. Foster, _The Mother the Child's First Bible Teacher_.

[22] Mackie, _Bible Manners and Customs_.

Chamberlin, _Introduction to the Bible for Teachers of Children_.

Worcester, _On Holy Ground_, 2 vols.

[23] For example, Moulton, _Modern Reader's Bible_. The new Jewish renderings of Old Testament books are good, especially the Psalms.

CHAPTER XII

FAMILY WORs.h.i.+P

Family wors.h.i.+p has declined until, at least in the United States, the percentage of families practicing daily wors.h.i.+p in the home is so small as to be negligible. If this meant that a general inst.i.tution of religion had pa.s.sed out of existence the fact would be highly significant. But it is well to remember that family wors.h.i.+p has never been a general inst.i.tution. We have generalized the picture of the "Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night" so eloquently drawn by Burns; it has been applied to every night and to every fireside. Daily family wors.h.i.+p was observed in practically all the Puritan homes of New England; but there is no evidence for it as a uniform custom, either in other parts of this country or in other parts of the world, save perhaps in sections of Scotland. True, there were many families which observed the custom; but there were also many families of church members and doubtless of truly religious people in which family wors.h.i.+p as a regular inst.i.tution was unknown. This has been especially true in the type of family life which has developed under modern social conditions. Further, even so simple an exercise as grace at meals has not always been a general custom.

-- 1. PAST CUSTOMS

But the fact today is that family wors.h.i.+p is so rare as to be counted phenomenal wherever found. The instances, though not general, were common a generation ago. Many are living to whom family wors.h.i.+p afforded the largest part of their conscious and formal religious education.

Following the morning meal, or, occasionally, the evening meal, the family waited while the father, or the mother in his absence, read a portion of the Scriptures and offered prayer. In other families the act of wors.h.i.+p would be the closing one of the day, perhaps partic.i.p.ated in by the older members only, the younger children having repeated their prayers at bedside on retiring. A thousand happy and sacred a.s.sociations gather about the memories of these occasions: the sense of reverence, the feeling that the home was a sacred place, the impression of n.o.ble words and elevating thoughts, the reflex influence of the prayer that committed all to the keeping and guidance of G.o.d.[24]

-- 2. WHY FAMILY WORs.h.i.+P?

Parents need to see the values in family wors.h.i.+p. We have been insisting on the primary importance of the religious interpretation of the family as an inst.i.tution, on the power of the religious motive, and the atmosphere of religion. But wherever there is a truly religious motive and a permanent religious atmosphere these will find definite expression in acts easily recognized as religious. Love is the motive and atmosphere of the true home, but love blossoms into words and bears fruit in a thousand deeds. The life of love dies without reality in act.

Ideals are precipitated in expressive acts. So is it with religion in the home; it must not only be real in its sincerity, it must be realized, must pa.s.s over into conduct and action, as suggested above in chaps. vii and viii. And it must do this in ways so sharply defined and readily recognized as to leave no doubt as to their meaning. True, all acts may be religious and thus full of wors.h.i.+p--this is most important of all--but wors.h.i.+p expressly unites all such acts in a spirit of loyalty and aspiration.

Wors.h.i.+p is a necessity for the sake of the ideal unity of the family life. Just as the individual must not only feel the religious emotion but must also do the thing called for, so must this united personality of the family give expression to its faith and aspiration, its motives and emotions, in such a manner that, acting as a social unit, all can together put the inner life into the outer form. The social value of family wors.h.i.+p is the strongest reason for its maintenance. It is the united act of the family group, the one in which group consciousness is expressly directed to the highest possible aims. Every period of wors.h.i.+p brings the family into unity at an ideal level.

The expression of religion in definite forms is necessary for children, too, as furnis.h.i.+ng a means by which they can manifest their feeling of the higher meaning of family life. The reality of that feeling is stimulated in the daily, common life of the right family; the hour of wors.h.i.+p is one out of many definite forms of its concrete expression. It is the form which gathers up the totality of feeling and aspiration into an act of wors.h.i.+p and praise toward G.o.d, the Father of all families. It is evident there cannot be true wors.h.i.+p in the family that is irreligious in its essential qualities, in its character, in its ideals and atmosphere.

-- 3. ADVANTAGES

The period of wors.h.i.+p is a necessity in interpreting to all the spirit and meaning of a religious family. It objectifies the inner life. It makes definite, tangible, and easily remembered the general impressions of religion. It precipitates the atmosphere of religion into definiteness. In the chemical laboratory of a university there is usually a decided atmosphere of chemistry, but no one expects to become a chemical engineer by absorbing that atmosphere, nor even to attain a simple working knowledge by merely general impressions. Definiteness aids in gathering up our knowledge, our impressions.

The reading of the Bible in the home will give, when the pa.s.sages are wisely chosen, forms of language into which the often chaotic but nevertheless valuable and potential emotions of youth fall as into a beautiful mold; they become remembered forms of beauty thereafter.

Family wors.h.i.+p furnishes opportunity for direct religious instruction.

When the home life has its regular inst.i.tution, as regular as meals and play, the formality, the apparent abnormality of conversation about religion, is absent. Children expect and look forward to the period when the family will lay other things aside to think on the eternal values.

Their questions in the breathing-s.p.a.ce that always ought to follow wors.h.i.+p become perfectly natural and sincere.

Family wors.h.i.+p lifts the whole level of family life. Ideally conceived, it simply means the family unity consciously coming into its highest place. Children may not understand all the reading nor enter into the motives for all parts of the pet.i.tion, but they do feel that this moment is the one in which the family enters a holy place. They feel that G.o.d is real and that their family life is a part of his whole care and of his life. One short period of natural reverence sends light and calm all through the day. Where the home is the place where true prayer is offered, the family is the group which meets in an act of wors.h.i.+p; here and into this group there cannot easily enter strife, bickerings, or baseness. One short period, five minutes or even less, of quietness, of united turning toward the eternal, gives tone to the day and finer atmosphere to the home.

What our community life might be like without the churches, faulty or incompetent as we may know some of them to be, what that life would lose and miss without them is precisely, and perhaps in larger degree, what the family life misses without its own inst.i.tution of regular devotion and wors.h.i.+p.

-- 4. THE DIFFICULTIES

We can always afford to do that which is most worth while doing; our essential difficulty is to shake off the delusion of the lesser values, the lower prizes, to realize that, of all the good of life, the characters of our children, the gain we can all make in the eternal values of the spirit, in love and joy and truth and goodness, is the gain most worth while. We tend to set the making of a living before the making of lives. We need to see the development of the powers of personality, the riches of character, as the ultimate, dominant purpose of all being. Once grasp that, and hold to it, and we shall not allow lesser considerations, such as the pressure of business, the desire for gain, for ease, for pleasure, for social life, to come before this first and highest good; we shall make time for definite conscious religion in the life of the family.[25]

-- 5. TYPES OF WORs.h.i.+P

There are three simple forms which wors.h.i.+p takes in the family: first, grace offered at the meals; secondly, the prayers of children on retiring and, occasionally, on rising; thirdly, the daily gathering of the family for an act of the spirit. The statement of the three forms reads so as to give them a formal character, but the most important point to remember is that wherever they are true acts of wors.h.i.+p they are formal only in that they occur at definite, determined times and places. The acts have no merit in themselves. Merely to inst.i.tute their observance will not secure religious feeling and life in the home. These three observances have arisen because at these times there is the best and most natural opportunity for the expression of aspiration, desire, and feeling.

-- 6. METHODS OF FAMILY WORs.h.i.+P

1. _Grace at meals._--Shall we say grace at meals? To a.s.sent because it is the custom, or because it was so done in our childhood's home, may make an irreligious mockery of the act. Perhaps, too, there are some who even hesitate to omit the grace from an unspoken fear that the food might harm them without it. All have heard grace so muttered, or hurriedly and carelessly spoken, void of all feeling and thought, that the act was almost unconscious, a species of "vain repet.i.tion."

There are two outstanding aspects of the asking of a blessing--the desire to express grat.i.tude for the common benefits of life, and the expression of a wish, with the recognition of its realization, that at each meal the family group might include the Unseen Guest, the Infinite Spirit of G.o.d. That wish lifts the meal above the dull level of satisfying appet.i.tes. Just as, in good society, we seek to make the meal much more than an eating of food, "a feast of reason and a flow of soul," so does this act make each meal a social occasion lifted toward the spiritual. The one thought at the beginning, the thought of the reality of the presence of G.o.d, and of the nearness of the divine to us in our daily pleasures, gives a new level to all our thinking.

How shall we say grace, or "ask a blessing"? First, with simplicity and sincerity. Avoid long, elaborate, ornate phrases. It is better to err in rhetoric than in feeling and reality. The sonorous grace may soon become stilted and offensive. It is better to say in your own words just what you mean, for that will help all, even to the youngest, to mean what they say with you.

Vary the form of pet.i.tion. Sometimes let it be the silent grace of the Quakers; sometimes children will enjoy singing one of the old four-line stanzas, as