Family-Worship as a Means of Intellectual Improvement
Some there are to whom it will appear far-fetched, to aroue for this observance on the ground of intellectual improvement. Such, however, can have paid little attention to one of the great effects of grace. The influence of Family- Worship on mental culture is only a part of the general influence of religion on the mind. True piety improves the understanding. The worship of God is a means of disciplining the faculties. The domestic worship of God is a means of family cultivation, in respect to the intellectual powers. When we consider that all sanctification is by means of truth, this is no longer wonderful. The entrance of thy words giveth light: it giveth understanding unto the simple.“* ‘’ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”! No man becomes a true Christian without becoming more instructed and more wise.
It has been held by some, that the depravity of man, by reason of the fall, does not extend to the intellectual powers: but this is an error, against which genuine reformed theology has firmly protested. The change in reoreneration is a chanofe of the whole man. There is no aspect under which this renovation is more frequently set forth in Scripture than that of an illumination of the mind.f Unless we err, this point has been too much neglected. The very acts and exercises of a Christian life conduct directly to mental improvement, and are in themselves an intellectual discipline. And among these, Family-Worship has a prominent share.
Family- Worship includes the reading of the Scriptures; and this in itself is one of the
* Psalm cxix. 130. f Prov. i. 7.
I 2 Cor. iv. 4. 6. Ephes. i. 18; v. 14. Coloss. i. 9. Heb. X. 32. 1 Pet. ii. 9. 1 John v. 20.
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most valuable instruments of cultivating the powers. It is a world of knowledge in itself. The truths which it presents are the greatest and the most awakening which can be subjected to human attention. It is the voice of God. He is Light, and in him is no darkness at all; the original, uncreated, eternal, causative Light; the only source of all knowledge in creatures. He is primeval and essential Truth. Hence the subjects treated in the Bible are eminently fitted to stimulate and impress the soul. It treats of those things, concerning many of which we could not even frame an imagination, or venture a guess; the things of eternity before Q^ration, and the things of eternity after judgment; the fall, the redemption, and the destiny of man. Surely we need not prove to Christians that the perusal of the Scriptures is good for the understanding.
By means of family-reading, the Bible becomes in a manner the sole manual of the house. The ancients used to say, “Take heed of a man of one book;” meaning that such a man, by perpetual repetition and meditation of the same topics, and perpetual whetting of his mind on the same argumerits, must needs become one whom for acumen, and use of his powers, it were dangerous to encounter in argument. Family-Worship includes in a sort the daily study of one volume, which thus becomes the domestic text-book.
The history of reformed Christianity would furnish abundant instances of the discipline and information which may be attained by means of the Bible alone, especially where -proper pains are taken to compare scripture with scripture. Here we gladly avail ourselves of the judgment of a learned prelate of the Anglican church. “‘It is incredible,” says the late Bishop Horsley, “to any one who has not made the experiment, what a proficiency may be made in that knoM’ledge which maketh wise unto salvation, by studying the Scriptures in this manner, without any other commentary, or exposition, than what the different parts of the sacred volume mutually furnish for each other. Let the most illiterate Christian study them in this manner, and let him never cease to pray for the illumination of that Spirit by which these books were dictated, and the whole compass of abstruse philosophy, and recondite history, shall furnish no argument with which the perverse wnll of man shall be able to shake this learned Christian’s faith.”*
There have been Scottish mechanics, husbandmen and shepherds, who have known no book but the word of God, and who have nevertheless become able theologians, and instructed men. Indeed it may be considered whether the characteristic and proverbial quickness of the Scottish peasantry may not in a great measure be ascribed to this very source. As a triumphant example of the formative influence of the simple scriptures on even an unlettered mind, we need only mention the immortal name of John Bunyan.
Let it not be thought, because the Bible is simply heard, by the majority of a household, that it falls without effect. Hearing is study, and of the most ancient kind. Before copies of the word of God were multiplied, as in our happy day, it was by the ear, and not by the eye, that its contents were mostly received. When the manner of reading is good, it is still the most impressive method, for the ignorant and the young. By such means the Family- Worship becomes a house-
* Horsley’s Nine Sermons, p. 224.
hold school, and the tuition goes on for a lifetime. All this holds good, even when there is not a syllable of comment. But, where there are even moderate gifts, there will sometimes be thrown in a word of remark, the explanation of a hard phrase, the reference to a parallel place, the summons to special attention, the seasonable advice, or the warm entreaty. Sometimes, where time is more at command, parts of a useful commentary will be read in connexion with the word. Sometimes portions of evangelical works will be added, and sometimes the catechetical exercise, according to a venerable Presbyterian custom, will find its place by the side of the domestic worship of the Lord’s day.
In a word, we cannot think it possible for any family to enjoy, twice every day for all their lives, the privilege of hearing the Scriptures read at domestic worship, without, by that very means, rising perceptibly and greatly in knowledge and intellectual force.
The reading of the Bible, invaluable as we own it to be, is, however, but a part, and not the most essential part of Family-Worship. It remains, therefore to consider the influence of devotion. Although the subject has not been as frequently discussed as its importance deserves, we undertake to maintain ihdX praijer itself is an intellectual discipline. No man can pray habitually without thereby gaining control over his thoughts, and cultivation of his faculties.
Nothing is more generally acknowledged by all who have treated of the conduct- of the understanding, than that an indispensable condition of all right thinking and learning, is the power of fixing the attention. In nothing is there a greater difference between the civilized man and the savage, between the adult and the infant, between the philosopher and the boor. There is nothing, therefore, which is more earnestly sought in every method of judicious education. This habit of mental concentration is the result of innumerable acts, and is secured by repeatedly summoning the mind to such acts. An exercise which brings the understanding to converse with great objects, in a state of interest, under strong motives to be attentive, and with frequent repetition, is directly promotive of this habit. Such an exercise is prayer.
If prayer were a sheer formality, like the recital of unintelligible Aves and Credos, the stringing of beads on a rosary, or the revolu- 4;ion of the Tartar’s praying-machine, it might fail of any such effect. But it is an exercise in which the understanding is immediately and most actively employed. As one of the first hinderances to prayer is felt to be the wandering of the thoughts, so the very first effort of the mind which addresses itself to devotion, is the calling in of the thoughts and fixing of the attention.
Every act of prayer directs the mind towards the greatest of all possible objects. This is plainly a posture in which the faculties cannot be dormant. The connexion of thought with thought in prayer is a reasonable connexion, and so furnishes exercise to the powers. The accompanying play of strong emotions, such as are evolved in acts of supplication and praise, so far from being detrimental, is highly helpful to the intellectual process; for never does the mind make truer progress than when the moral powers are in high exercise.
Let us compare two men of equal capacity, and otherwise in like circumstances. One of these has passed a lifetime without prayer.
The other has, at stated hours, ten thousand times solemnly addressed himself to the worship of God. Is it possible to believe that such a difference in habit can be without a corresponding difference in intellectual development? Apply this to the domestic ordinance. From the moment of budding thought, all along the way of years, until the last day of life, the household have been gathered, morning and evening, for attendance ou the Scriptures and prayer; to contemplate the great God, to meditate on the best of books, to mingle in the most sacred emotions. Such an aggregate of influence, even on the intellect, can never be estimated in the present world; but we surely should violate every principle of the mental constitution, were we to deny its greatness. And this is an influence, diffused not merely among theologians and scholars, but over the common mind of a country. We all know how little there is among the mass of men, that deserves the name of thought. The minds of the multitude are diverted by company, dissipated by frivolous pursuits, or worn by daily labour. For such it is greatly useful to be called to a daily exercise which composes the feelings, breaks the worldly thread, opens connexions with eternity, and constrains to the thought of God. Such influences are ennobling. Souls cannot yield themselves so unreservedly to the flesh, nor sink so low in the scale of intelligence and morals, with these as without them. It is something gained to have, twice a day, pauses for thought. Texts and principles poured into the most careless, or we might even say, the most unwilling mind, and prayers uttered even before the undevout, wall now and then recur, as suggestions, and be owned with saving effect; and what is this, but so much additional thought, reflection, and wisdom?
If, as we maintain, Family- Worship tends directly and powerfully to the promotion of piety, we might here rest our proof of its intellectual benefits. All true piety is enlarging and elevating. It spreads its efficacy over the whole soul. It renders its subject necessarily a meditative and serious person. Evangelical doctrine, such as runs through all sound Family- Worship, is connected with chains of high argument, and embodies the most systematic truth. No where is this better exemplified than among our Calvinistic forefathers. Beside the loom, or following the plough, they nevertheless pondered on, those high points which looser systems deem too abstruse for man, but which are revealed in the Word, and are rendered matter of nourishment and exultation to many a man who earns his bread. “We have in memory a Scottish working-man, an humble dyer in a factory, whose conversation was a feast of intellectual stores. He was not only the dread of infidel sciolists, in his own circle, but was abundantly able to converse and to argue on even the minuter divisions of theological science; and he was well versed in the annals of the church. Such cases are not rare, and such men are reared among the institutions of family-religion.
A clear addition to the annual means of grace, amounting to seven hundred distinct religious exercises, is an element which we cannot exclude from just calculation. A town, a province, a country, under such influences, would be ‘’a field which the Lord hath blessed.” It would contain a population mighty in the Scriptures, and trained to masculine thought. Such a land we should pray that ours may be. It would then be “the glory of all lands.” These are among the reasons why we desire the observance of Family- Worship to be universal.