A Lamp to the Path / Or, The Word of God in the Heart, the Home, the Workshop and the Market-Place

by W. K. Tweedie

If the Holy One has given us rules for the guidance of all, these rules form the standard from which there can be no sinless swerving, and the first principles of holiness have yet to be learned where God’s will is not thus paramount.

THE ONE WILL SUPREME.

And, moreover, his household as well as his children, were to be controlled by the patriarch. He is not one of those who forget that their dependants[T-3] or domestics have souls, and therefore take no interest in them as immortal beings. He did not act as if there were one God for the master and another for the servant; one rule for the superior, another for the inferior; one way for the lordly, and another for the lowly. THE
ONE WILL
SUPREME. Nay, the father of the faithful, combining faith and works in their proper places, “will command his household;” will take the control of it, and see that everything there is done decently and in order. There will be no tampering with a servant’s conscience, and as little conniving at his transgressions. The ten commandments were not yet given; but the spirit of them was a part of Abraham’s believing nature, and he sought to have duty done wherever he had influence, alike by superiors, inferiors, and equals. In a word, like Cornelius after him, he feared the Lord, with all his house.

And farther: the rule, the standard at once for master and servant, is given, “They shall keep the way of the Lord.” Every other path is that of the destroyer; it tends to death, for “the curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked.” The question which we should ask in regard to our home religion is not, What is done by others? What do men think? What will the world tolerate? What will be most conducive to present ease or peace? but, What has God said? When that has been ascertained, every departure from it is just a wandering into the way of sorrow. Neither parent nor child, nor any member of a household, need expect to prosper in any path except the way of the Lord; and to anticipate prosperity or peace in any other, just shows that reason is still eclipsed, that conscience is still seared or dormant, that the mind of God is not our mind, that we are still doing as Adam did when he sought happiness in wandering from his Maker.

THE EASTERN PRINCE.

Such, then, are the principles which lie at the foundation of all family rule; these would make our homes a Bethel, and our hearts a shrine. Wherever such fear of God reigns in the soul, accompanied with the love of Christ, there will be peace and holy joy; but every other principle will leave our hearts and homes unblest. Tacitus tells us that “many find it a harder task to govern a family than to rule a province;” and it may be so where God’s law is not known or not regarded. But that law itself is abundantly clear, and the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. Every family that calls on the name of the Lord should spread out his Word before them, and ask, What has God said? for that is the rule from which neither waywardness on the part of children, nor engrossment on the part of parents, can warrant our departure.—THE
EASTERN
PRINCE.It is computed that the household of Abraham could not contain less than a thousand souls. Living as he did in the rank of an Eastern prince, his retinue was such as we can scarcely understand; and yet, concerning him and his household, Omniscience says: “Commanded by Abraham, they will keep the way of the Lord.” Like Joshua while placed at the head of a migrating nation, and burdened with the care of millions, his resolution was, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Religion was to be planted in the heart of society, that is, in the sacred circle of home; and thence, like the banyan tree, was to spread, and spread, till it had covered or encircled the whole.

EDUCATIONAL INFIDELITY.

EDUCATIONAL
INFIDELITY. And here, as we pass along, it may serve as a warning to some, if we glance at that infidelity which characterizes the schemes of some pretended friends of education and the young. They would divorce religion from education. They would let children grow up without any training in the fear of God. They would develope mind. They would impart secular knowledge; but the knowledge of salvation, of sin, and of redemption from its woe, its bondage, and defilement, they would not name. Passion may grow rampant; the world may be ascendant in the heart, the mind, and all the powers of man, yet youth is to be left unchecked by any heavenly warning, untaught by any heavenly lesson! Now, waiving every other objection to this scheme, we say that it is unequivocally and utterly infidel; it should on that account be branded with the reprobation of all who love the rising race, on the one hand, who know their perils on the other, and who, moreover, feel assured that nothing but the truth of God can either make man savingly wise or keep him so. If God’s favour be a dream, and man’s soul only organized matter, destined to pass away as other matter does, it is needless to be very zealous for one scheme of training in preference to another. But if man be immortal, and if his immortality can be blessed, only by having his mind in harmony with God’s, then the training of the young in the good way of the Lord is a matter of solemn obligation. Man has no choice here. To neglect that way in training, is to arrogate a wisdom superior to God’s, and the man who does that is perhaps blindly and unconsciously, but not the less certainly, evading God’s truth and perpetuating the misery of man’s soul.

But we are too general. Ere we can plant and foster religion in our homes, we must descend into more minute details.

THE SACRED CIRCLE.