FAMILY WORSHIP
Family worship has declined until, at least in the United States, the percentage of families practicing daily worship in the home is so small as to be negligible. If this meant that a general institution of religion had passed out of existence the fact would be highly significant. But it is well to remember that family worship has never been a general institution. We have generalized the picture of the "Cotter's Saturday Night" so eloquently drawn by Burns; it has been applied to every night and to every fireside. Daily family worship 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 worship as a regular institution 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 worship 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 worship 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 worship would be the closing one of the day, perhaps participated in by the older members only, the younger children having repeated their prayers at bedside on retiring. A thousand happy and sacred associations gather about the memories of these occasions: the sense of reverence, the feeling that the home was a sacred place, the impression of noble words and elevating thoughts, the reflex influence of the prayer that committed all to the keeping and guidance of God.[24]
§ 2. WHY FAMILY WORSHIP?
Parents need to see the values in family worship. We have been insisting on the primary importance of the religious interpretation of the family as an institution, 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 pass 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 worship—this is most important of all—but worship expressly unites all such acts in a spirit of loyalty and aspiration.
Worship 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 worship 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 worship brings the family into unity at an ideal level.
The expression of religion in definite forms is necessary for children, too, as furnishing 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 worship 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 worship and praise toward God, the Father of all families. It is evident there cannot be true worship in the family that is irreligious in its essential qualities, in its character, in its ideals and atmosphere.
§ 3. ADVANTAGES
The period of worship 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 passages 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 worship furnishes opportunity for direct religious instruction. When the home life has its regular institution, 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-space that always ought to follow worship become perfectly natural and sincere.
Family worship 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 petition, but they do feel that this moment is the one in which the family enters a holy place. They feel that God 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 worship; 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 institution of regular devotion and worship.
§ 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 WORSHIP
There are three simple forms which worship 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 worship they are formal only in that they occur at definite, determined times and places. The acts have no merit in themselves. Merely to institute 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 WORSHIP
1. Grace at meals.—Shall we say grace at meals? To assent 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 repetition."
There are two outstanding aspects of the asking of a blessing—the desire to express gratitude 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 God. That wish lifts the meal above the dull level of satisfying appetites. 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 God, 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 petition. Sometimes let it be the silent grace of the Quakers; sometimes children will enjoy singing one of the old four-line stanzas, as
Be present at our table, Lord,
Be here and everywhere adored;
These mercies bless and grant that we
May feast in Paradise with thee.
One might use the first three of the following lines for breakfast and the last three at another meal:
For the new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
We thank the heavenly Father.
For rest and food, for love and friends,
For everything his goodness sends,
We thank the heavenly Father.[26]
or
When early in the morning the birds lift up their songs,
We bring our praise to Jesus to whom all praise belongs.
One especially needs to guard against the purely dietetic grace, the one that only asks that the deity will aid digestion, as that form so often heard, "Bless these mercies to our use."[27]
Should we say grace on all occasions of meals? What shall we do at the social dinner in the home? The answer depends on the purpose of the grace. Is it not that in our own group we may have the consciousness of the presence of God? When the meal is that of our own group with a friend or two, we bring the friends into the group and the act of family worship is maintained. Usually this is the case. So it will be when the group is entirely at one in this desire: the asking of grace will be perfectly natural. But when the group is a large one, when the sense of family unity is lost, or when the observance would seem unnatural, it is better to omit it. Grace in large gatherings often seems an uncovering of the sacred aspects of the home life.
2. Bedtime prayers.—What of children's bedtime prayers? Many can remember them. To many the most natural, helpful time for formal periods of prayer is in the quiet of the bedroom just before retiring. But there is a grave danger in establishing a regular custom of bedside prayers for children, a danger manifest in the very form of certain of these prayers, as
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
It is as though the child were saying, "The day is ended during which I have been able to take care of myself, the hours of helpless sleep begin, and I ask God to take care of me through the terrors of the night." For some children, at least, the night has been made terrible by that thought; they have been led to feel that the day was safe and beautiful, but that the night was so dangerous and fearful that only the great God could keep them through it, and it was an open question whether their prayer for that keeping would be heard.
One must avoid also the notion that such prayers are part of a price paid, a system of daily taxation in return for which heaven furnishes us police protection.
The best plan seems to be to encourage children to pray, to establish in them the habit of closing the day with quiet, grateful thoughts, to watch especially that the prayers learned in early life do not distort the child's thoughts of God, and to make the evening prayer an opportunity for the child to express his desires to God his Father and Friend. Having done this, as the children grow up it is best to leave them free to pray when and where they will. One may properly encourage the evening, private prayer; but the child ought to have the feeling that it is not obligatory, that it must grow out of his desire to talk with God, and, above all, that it has no special connection with the hour and act of retiring for sleep but rather, so far as time is concerned, with the closing of the day. Mothers must see far beyond the charm of the picture formed by the little white-robed figure at her knee. There is no hour so rich in possibilities for this growing life. It is one of the great opportunities to guide its consciousness of God.[28]
3. General family prayers.—It is true that, in many homes, under modern conditions of business, it is almost impossible for the family to be united at the hour when worship used to be customary, following breakfast. However, that is not the only hour available. In many respects it is a poor one for the purpose of social worship; it lacks the sense of leisure. But there are few families where the members do not all gather for the evening meal. It is not difficult to plan at its close for ten minutes in which all shall remain. Without leaving the table it is possible to spend a short time in united, social worship. Or, by establishing the custom and steadily following it, it is possible to leave the table and in less than ten minutes find ample time for worship in another room.
Really everything depends at first on how much we desire to have family worship, whether we see its beauty and value in the knitting of home ties, in the elevation of the family spirit, and in the quickening of the religious ideas. We find time to eat simply because we must; when the necessity of the spirit is upon us we shall find time also to worship and to pray.
Next to the will to make time comes the question of method. First, determine to be simple, natural, and informal. A stilted exercise soon becomes a burden and a source of pain to all. In whatever you do, seek to make it possible for all to have a share by seeing that every thought is expressed within the intelligence of even the younger members, that is, of those who desire to have a share. This does not mean descending to "baby-talk." Just read the Twenty-third Psalm; that is not baby talk, but a child of seven can understand what is meant up to the measure of his experience; the language is essentially simple though the ideas are sublime.
Secondly, insure brevity. For that part of worship in which all are expected regularly to unite, ten minutes should be ample. Some excellent programs will not take more than half this time. Family worship is not a diminutive facsimile of church worship. Doubtless the experiment has failed in many families because the father has attempted to preach to a congregation which could not escape. Keep in mind the thought that this is to be a high moment in each day in which every member will have an equal share.
Thirdly, plan for the largest possible amount of common participation. This is to be the expression of the unity of the family life. Children enjoy doing things co-operatively and in concert.
Fourthly, treat the occasion naturally in relation to other affairs. Proceed to the worship without formal notice, without change of voice, and without apology to visitors. Take this for granted. At the close move on into other duties without the sense of coming back into the world. You have not been out of it; you have only recognized the eternal life and love everywhere in it.
4. Suggestions of plans.—There are given below seven outlines of plans of worship. They are plans which have been in use and have been tried for years. Their only merit is simplicity and practicability; but they are at least worthy of trial. There is no special significance in the arrangement of the days and this may be changed in any way desirable. Further, all plans should be elastic; there will come special days, such as festivals and birthdays, when the program should be varied. For example, on a birthday the child whose anniversary then occurs should have the privilege of making the choice of recitation or reading or of determining the order of all the parts of this brief period of worship.
MONDAY
1. A short psalm repeated in concert.
2. A brief, informal petition by father or mother.
3. The Lord's Prayer, in which all join.
Before attempting even this simple plan, prepare for it by first selecting several suitable psalms. The following should be included: the 1st, 19th, 23d, 24th, 100th, 117th, 121st, and a part of the 103d. You would do well to memorize one of these yourself, so as to be able to lead without reading from the book. Next, think over with some care the things for which you may pray, the aspirations which your children can share with you. Few things are more difficult than this, so to pray that all can make the prayer their own. Let it also be a prayer of love and joy, not a craven begging off from punishments, nor a cowardly plea for protection and provision. We can pray over all these things with gratitude and with confidence toward the God of love. Do not try to preach in your prayers. Many prayers have been ruined by preaching, just as some preaching has been spoiled by praying to the people. Usually four or five sentences will do for the one day. Better a single thought simply expressed than the most brilliant attempt to inform the Almighty on all the events of the world that day.
A prayer in which all can join is always desirable. The Lord's Prayer never wearies us nor grows old. Children enter into it with some new meaning every day; it covers all our great, common, daily needs.
TUESDAY
1. A few favorite memory verses repeated by all (from either the Bible or other literature).
2. Read a very brief passage from the Bible.
3. Prayer, ending with the Lord's Prayer.
Many excellent selections will be found in Dr. Dole's book mentioned at the end of this chapter. Encourage children, however, to make their selections from the poems and passages they already know.
The passage of the Bible selected to be read should be one which first of all incites to worship, and should be chosen for its inspiration and literary beauty. A few lines from the great chapters of Isaiah (e.g., chaps. 35 and 55), from the Psalms (e.g., Pss. 61, 65, 145), from the Sermon on the Mount, from 1 Cor., chap. 13, from the parables of Jesus, will be suitable.
The closing prayer may be extemporaneous or may be read from one of the books of prayers. Many of the prayers in the Episcopal Prayer Book are especially beautiful and quite suitable. Of course in families of the Episcopal church the collect for the day would be the right prayer to use. It is sometimes necessary to use prayers prepared beforehand; some persons never acquire the ability to pray aloud, even in their own families. But halting sentences that are your own, that your children recognize as yours, may mean more to them than the finest flowing phrases from a book. Use the prayers from the book, not as a substitute, but as an addition.
WEDNESDAY
1. A good poem from general literature.
2. Prayer.
There are so many good collections of the great and inspiring poems that one hesitates to recommend any collection. Remember that a poem may be religious and imbued with the spirit of worship, helpful to the purpose of this occasion, even though it contains no allusions to Scripture and makes no direct references to religious belief. "A House by the Side of the Road"[29] is thoroughly human, popular, and could not even be accused of being a classic; but it has a helpful motive and is likely to lead the will toward the life of service and brotherhood. Some would prefer to read a part of one of the great hymns.
THURSDAY
1. A brief reading or recitation from the New Testament.
2. A few moments' conversation on the reading.
3. A very brief prayer followed by a song.
The only apparent difficulty here is in starting the conversation. Do not ask formal questions; rather put them something like this: "I wonder whether people would do just the same on our street today." Make the conversation as general as possible; do not slight, nor scoff at, the contribution of even the least in the group.
FRIDAY
1. A few verses in concert.
2. Read a parable or very brief narrative.
3. The Lord's Prayer.
The reading had better be from one of the paraphrases if it is a narrative from the Old Testament.[30] Even in reading the New Testament one can at times use with advantage the Twentieth-Century Bible or the Modern Reader's Bible.
SATURDAY
1. A period of song.
2. Closing prayer, with the Lord's Prayer.
Perhaps only one song can be sung. It need not be a hymn; that should depend on the choice of the children. Help them to put together all the good songs, including the hymns, in one category in their minds.
SUNDAY
1. Ask: "What has been the best we have read or repeated in our worship this week?"
2. Ask: "What shall we learn for memory repetition this week, what psalm or other passage for our concerted worship?"
3. Read the psalm selected.
4. Closing prayer.
5. Period of song, lasting as long as desired.
This exercise evidently permits of extension in time and should be arranged in accordance with the program for the day.
I. References for Study
George Hodges, The Training of Children in Religion, chaps. viii, ix. Appleton, $1.50.
The Improvement of Religious Education, pp. 108 to 123. Religious Education Association, $0.50.
Mrs. B. S. Winchester, "Methods and Materials Available," Religious Education, October, 1911. $0.50.
II. Further Reading
Koons, The Child's Religious Life. Eaton & Mains, $1.00.
Hartshorne, Worship in the Sunday School. Columbia University, $1.25.
III. Methods and Materials
A. R. Wells, Grace before Meat. U.S.C.E., $0.25.
C. F. Dole, Choice Verses. Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts. Privately printed.
F. A. Hinckley (ed.), Readings for Sunday School and Home. American Unitarian Association, $0.35.
J. Martin, Prayers for Little Men and Women. Harper, $1.25.
S. Hart (ed.), Short Daily Prayers for Families. Longmans, $0.60.
G. A. Miller, Some Out-Door Prayers. Crowell, $0.35.
Oxenden, Family Prayers. Longmans, $1.50.
George Skene, Morning Prayers for Home Worship. Methodist Book Concern, $1.50.
W. E. Barton, Four Weeks of Family Prayer. Puritan Press, Oak Park, Ill.
Abbott, Family Prayers. Dodd, Mead & Co., $0.50.
Prayers for Parents and Children. Young Churchman Co., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, $0.15.
IV. Topics for Discussion
1. What are the causes for the decay of the custom of family worship?
2. What influences us most: public opinion, popular custom, economic pressure?
3. How have the changes affected the religious influence of the home?
4. What features of the older customs are most worth preserving?
5. Recall any of childhood's prayers which you remember. How many maintain the custom of bedtime prayers in mature life?
6. What should be the central motive of "grace" at meals?
7. Would there be advantage in occasionally omitting the "grace"?
8. Give reasons for and against "grace."
9. Criticize the proposed plan of evening family prayers.
10. Describe any plans which have been tried.
11. Why is it desirable to maintain family worship?
[24] For a study of children's worship see H. H. Hartshorne, Worship in the Sunday School; "Report of Commission on Graded Worship," Religious Education, October, 1914.
[25] "Parents who give up such a practice as family prayers mainly because they know of many other people who have done the same are just as much the slaves of public opinion and ignorant cant as the narrowest Lowlander who forbids his children secular history on Sunday."—Lyttleton, Corner-Stone of Education, pp. 207-8.
[26] Quoted by W. S. Athearn, The Church School.
[27] A number of good poems are given in A. R. Wells, Grace before Meat.
[28] W. B. Forbush gives a number of poetic forms of prayer for children in The Religious Nurture of a Little Child, pp. 12, 13.
[29] By Samuel Walter Foss.
[30] One handy form is The Heart of the Bible, prepared by E. A. Broadus; another, The Children's Bible.