RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Evening Star, Issue 20149, 13 April 1929, Page 16

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

[By Forward.] “ TJie cm! of nil religious nurture is Cliristi.su diameter, which expresses itself adequately in all of life’s relationships.” I WOULD HE TRUE. Howard Arnold Walters, who wrote these verses, was a Sunday sdiool hoy who afterwards went to India as a missionary. He wished to send a special Now Year’s message to his mother, but was far away from any place where greeting cards could be purchased. He wrote these verses as his message. He gave his life for others during the great epidemic. 1 would be true, for there arc those who trust me, I would be pure, for there are those who care; I would be strong, for there is much to suffer, I would be brave, for there is much to dare. I would he friend of all—the foe, the friendless, I would bo giving, and forget the gift; I would ho humble, for I know my weakness; I would look up, and laugh, and love, and lift. WHY FAMILY WORSHIP SHOULD HE MAINTAINED.

There arc two ways of breaking a friendship. The first is deliberately to kill it; the second is to do nothing either for it or with it. In order to blind a man it is not necessary to employ hot irons. Place him in a dark room where he cannot us© Ins eyes and ultimately you will accomplish the same effect. Unexercised powers quietly but remorsefully slip away from us, like the vestiges of unused arms now tucked away under the skin of whales. Donothingism is as destructive as dynamite. The greatest danger of religion is not the attack of enemies, but the neglect of its friends. Now worship is one name for the heart of religion. Creeds are good, but, as the writer of the Epistle of James reminds us, the devils also believe and shudder. Rites and ceremonies are needful, but they may degenerate into empty forms. The one indispensable thing is to share that

sense of oneness with God and with man which wo feel supremely in Jesus, and to order life according to it. Professor William Brown has put the matter succinctly. “To worship is the most important thing a Christian can do, and the most difficult. In its simplest and most fundamental meaning it is the practice of the presence of'God. It means .by deliberate and intelligent effort to make explicit to consciousness the supreme fact of religion—namely, the reality and nearness of God—to the end that God may be able to do for us, in us, and through us. and so for the world at large, what He desires.”

Non-, the indisputable fact is that multitudes of homes, even those of nominal Christians, are barren of all expression of worship. If the divine spark still glows in the hearts of fathers and mothers, it gives out so little beat that the children do not recognise it, and it has no effect whatever upon the religious temperature of the world. All too often where the outward forms are kept up, they arc barren and ineffective. The grace at meals becomes a kind of table fetish. With no preliminary to the feast.. M ith no training and no preparation the children literally “ say ” their prayers instead of praying them, and come to class them with washing their faces and brushing their teeth. When family worship is , attempted, it is carried through in the needless hurry of the morning or the weariness of the evening. Fathers fail to prepare themselves, and so fumble and bungle with the task. The result is that the situation becomes awkward and abnormal. There is a sense of unreality and of embarrassment. The brief_ period of what is meant to be devotion ends in a desert dullness.

Now the neglect of family worship in sapping the life of the church. _ It is undermining the foundations oi true religion. It is weakening the reign of Christ in the very places where the mind of Jesus should be most vigorous and_ strong. First of all, in Ihc home, for home was the first church. The father was the first priest, the hearth the first altar, the mother and children the first congregation, and the structure which sheltered them the first sanctuary. Jn tiro nurture and expression of religion its place is primary and unique. To take conscious worship, then, out of the home is to strike a blow at the world’s Holy of Holies. Ami the home needs it. Few things will do more to unify and uplift the life oi the family. It sweetens and controls tempers rasped by petty annoyances. It makes unselfishness natural and easy, dignifies drudgery, makes it not only endurable, but even joyous, frees the table conversation from bickering and trivialities, gives strength to meet the daily round of trials and temptations. The hour of worship on Sunday will no more suffice for these things than the Sunday dinner will suffice for Monday. The home needs worship every day. To recognise God there makes worship simple and natural everywhere. Otherwise it is apt to seem queer, faddish, not especially practical, and useful so far as the real work-a-day lift; of the world is concerned. For family life “ the church in thy house ” is perhaps the most important of churches. So long as worship abides in Christian homes the church is safe.

For, in tlwj .second place, without worship in the home the historic church is sorely handicapped and weakened. One reason why so many church members cither fail to participate in the service or else repeat words without intelligent and devotional appreciation is that they have not trained themselves in the art ot worship. Literally they do not know how. ’Furthermore, they have made no preparation for worship, and one cannot hurry from the breakfast table and the newspaper through a church door and hope to be lilted miraculously into the conscious presence of God. Hero, as elsewhere, wo get in proportion t.s we give The blessings which we shall receive depend upon the open-mindedness any spiritual appreciation which we or mg The Jamil/ which worsiiips at noine. will cnt,v into the church service with joy and helpfulness. Ji has meiv'y merged t< individual existence into the greater family of God. Last of all, the neglect of family worship helps to make the church m the world impotent and blind, it is on week-days that it is hardest to livo the Christian life. Sunday is easy, lb is in the strain of work and ot play that wo need the power of religion to guard our souls. In the crowded thoroughfares and highways, where we meet many unattractive and disagreeable people; in the offices and shops, where a Christian must mark his goods and balance his books and treat his clients as a son of God; in the fiery furnace of sorrow and bitter loss; in the excitement of hectic play; in the strange cities, where temptations beat upon us ■ —it is there, and not alone to church, that wc need to carry this of the presence and nearness of God. 'Jim father and mother and. children Irom a home which knows no worship may forget the experiences of Sunday, however high and holy, and fall; but those who carry into the hurly-burly of veal life the uplilt of the morning may meet all that the day ran bring without faltering and without iear. Tyndall, whom timid Christians one* regarded as the most formidable opponent of prayer, once wrote: “It is not my habit of mind to think otherwise than solemnly of the feelings which prompt to prayer. Often unreasonable, even contemptible, in its purer lorms, prayer hints at disciplines which few of ns can neglect without moral loss.’’ Even IJertraml Ilnsscll, who lias no belief in God, eagerly desires to perpetuate the values of that belief. “ Them arc in Christianity,” he writes, “ three elements which it is desirable to preserve, if possible—worship, acquiescence, and love.” He who deliberately neglects worship in the family is certainly in danger of undermining the health and jeopardising the prosperity of the church of the Living God.