A Guide to Family Worship by Harold M. Robinson

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God is to be worshipped every where in spirit and in truth; as in private families daily, and in secret each one by himself (WCF 21.6; Mal. 1.11; Tim. 2.8, John 4.23-24; Matt. 6.11; Jer. 10.25; Deut. 6.6-7; Job 1.5; 2 Sam. 6.18, 20; 1 Pet. 3.7; Acts 10.2).

In 1923, Harold McAfee Robinson (1881-1939) published a helpful guide to family worship. It summarizes and give practical counsel regarding the three main features of worship in the family circle: the reading and study of the Holy Scriptures, prayer and song.

After providing reasons for the gathering of the family unit specifically to praise God, as well as summarizing leading principles that guide Biblical family worship — including such matters as focusing on the needs of the youngest children as well as older persons present, and what time of day to hold family worship — Robinson, in How to Conduct Family Worship, distinguishes the proper acts that constitute such a service.

The Cotter’s Saturday Night by William Kidd

The Cotter’s Saturday Night by William Kidd

What are the acts of family worship?

The acts of worship most appropriate to the family are the use of Scripture, prayer, and song. There are other acts of social worship, such as the sacraments and the bringing of offerings, which are not appropriate to the family. There are also other acts of worship which may be appropriate to the family, but these three acts are the most common and the most appropriate.

Regarding these three elements of family worship, Robinson devotes a chapter to each, which contains useful material to consider.

In the chapter on song, he encourages music in family worship, meaning hymns (he does not recommend the singing of psalms). Suggested material includes Louis F. Benson’s The Best Church Hymns.

Citing Robert M. M’Cheyne, who said, “You read your Bible regularly, of course; but do try to understand it, and still more to feel it. . . . Turn the Bible into prayer,” Robinson encourages families to read the Bible together in portions suitable to the abilities of the hearers, and to take what is read as seeds for prayer.

Finally, prayer is encouraged on the basis that the Word of God spoken to us should lead to a return of words spoken, sincerely, briefly and according to the needs and capacities of the family, back unto God. The matter of Scripture reading, the particular occasions which might call for particular prayers, and the general tenor of all family prayers are addressed.

There are several generally recognized elements in complete and orderly prayer. These are: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, petition, intercession, and submission.

There is much that is good in this handy little volume on family worship. Consider this manual as you and your family gather to praise God daily as we are commanded to do.

Sabbath Poems by David Brainerd

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April 25, 1742 - It was the Lord’s Day. David Brainerd wrote in his diary that he spent two hours early in the morning engaged in private worship. The spiritual blessings he experienced on that special Sabbath day he described in prose and in verse, and his words in turn have inspired many.

Lord’s-Day, April 25. This morning spent about two hours Hours in secret duties, and was enabled more than ordinarily to agonize for immortal souls; though it was early in the morning, and the sun scarcely shined at all, yet my body was quite wet with sweat. Felt much pressed now, as frequently of late, to plead for the meekness and calmness of the Lamb of God in my soul: through divine goodness felt much of it this morning. O ‘tis a sweet disposition, heartily to forgive all injuries done us; to wish our greatest enemies as well as we do our own souls! Blessed Jesus, may I daily be more and more conformed to Thee. At night was exceedingly melted with divine love, and had some feeling sense of the blessedness of the upper world. Those words hung upon me, with much divine sweetness, Ps. lxxxiv.7. They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God. O the near access, that God sometimes gives us in our addresses to him! This may well be termed appearing before God: ‘Tis so indeed, in the true spiritual sense, and in the sweetest sense. — I think I have not had such power of intercession, these many months, as I have had this evening. I wished and longed for the coming of my dear Lord: I longed to join the angelic hoses in praises, wholly free from imperfection. O the blessed moment hastens! All I want is to be more holy, more like my dear Lord. O for sanctification! My very soul pants for the complete restoration of the blessed image of my sweet Saviour; that I may be fit for the blessed enjoyments and employments of the heavenly world.

Brainerd then found his muse.

Farewell, vain World; my Soul can bid Adieu:
My Saviour’s taught me to abandon you.
Your Charms may gratify a sensual Mind;
Not please a Soul wholly for God design’d.
Forbear t’entice, cease then my Soul to call:
’Tis fix’d, through Grace; my God shall be my All.
While he thus lets me heavenly Glories view,
Your Beauties fade, my Heart’s no Room for you.

Returning to prose, Brainerd goes on:

The Lord refreshed my soul with many sweet passages of his Word. O the New Jerusalem! My soul longed for it. O the Song of Moses and the Lamb! And that blessed song, that no man can learn, but they that are redeemed from the earth! And the glorious white robes, that were given to the souls under the altar!

And then in one final poetic effusion, Brainerd expresses his burning desire for sweet communion with his Lord.

Lord, I’m a Stranger here alone;
Earth no true Comforts can afford:
Yet, absent from my dearest One,
My Soul delights to cry, My Lord!
Jesus, my Lord, my only Love,
Possess my Soul, nor thence depart:
Grant me kind Visits, heavenly Dove;
My God shall then have all my Heart.

May these Sabbath meditations from almost 300 years ago by a Presbyterian missionary richly bless your Sabbath day today.

HT: Tom Sullivan

Out of the closet grows the temple: William Aikman on family religion

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In 1870, the Rev. William Aikman published a volume titled Life at Home: or, The Family and Its Members — with the aim “to bring, if possible, the blessed light of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ into the family circle” — which includes a chapter on “The Altar in the House,” from which today’s post is drawn.

Here Aikman speaks of the trajectory of spiritual life from the inward soul to its outward expression in the social sphere of the family home.

Religion is a matter of the heart and belongs to a man’s unseen existence; it is also a matter of the outward life and belongs to his public walks. If man were simply a spiritual essence, all that relates to God and his own thoughts and feelings might be confined to that realm in which solitary and alone he lives — his own soul. But he has a corporeal being, he lives in a world of seen things, and is in immediate and perpetual contact with persons and things as substantial as himself. His religion, then, like himself and because it belongs to his whole nature, reaches out and touches all around him. It cannot, it must not be confined to the secresy of his own bosom.

Every one who takes a broad or accurate view of man, must acknowledge that there ought to be some public recognition of God by any one who professes to believe in Him. This needs to be stated only, not argued. He who never in any form makes an acknowledgement of God, who does not at times before men take the posture of devotion, or show, by some seen act, that he recognizes the fact of God's existence and his own relations to the Infinite One, can make no claim to the title of a believer.

Since religion is more than a matter of the heart, it demands an outward manifestation. How long, think you, were every form of public religious service to be withdrawn, would it be before all religion would be gone from the earth? Were every church to be not only closed but removed, so that not even crumbling walls or deserted precincts should speak of Him who was once worshipped there; were there to be no assemblings for prayer and praise, no voice heard calling on God; were religion, all over the earth, to be shut up in each man's bosom, a generation would scarcely have gone by before the very idea of God had vanished from the apprehension of men.

The instincts of man, however, make such an inward limitation of religion impossible. The heart within, confined and imprisoned, breaks forth at the door of the lips in prayer and adoration; the man in his complex personality cries out, I must show forth what is within; my soul unseen worships the Unseen God; but this eye looks out upon His works, this body lives among the visible things of His hands ; there are other men who with me live and have their being in Him; before them and with them I must worship God. No command is needed; public worship of God goes hand in hand with the recognition of God.

In this way it comes to pass that all thinking persons acknowledge the importance of outward religion — of public divine worship. To a Christian man it becomes a necessity. He must have his closet, a secret place, in whose retirement he may tell the story of his wants and his cares in the ear of a compassionate and sympathizing Father; but he must also have the goodly assemblings of his brethren, in whose company he may sing the songs of Zion, and with whom he may call upon the name of Zion's King. He has a God whom he acknowledges, and whose favor he seeks when alone; that God he must honor and worship in the presence of other men. He has a private religion; he has also a public religion. He cannot be satisfied to worship Jehovah only where no eye can see him; his heart craves in all humility and sincerity that, abroad and with his fellow-men, he may bring his tribute, lowly though it be, of gratitude and love. So out of the closet grows the temple. The one is as necessary as the other. The one is the place where a lone soul holds intercourse with an unseen God; the other where the man with men looks upward to the Creator, Preserver and Lord of them.

Between these two there is a sphere of thought and of influence, more important, perhaps, than either —The Family. It stands midway between the secret and the public life of a man, and vitally affects them both. Here a man spends a large part of his life; from it he derives the chiefest good of earth; here are his highest joys; here are his profoundest sorrows; here are his hopes and fears; here the fountain whence flow streams which make pleasant or weary his way; here are his loved ones; here those in whom and for whom he lives; here those whom he is set to guard and guide, whose destiny he shapes for the eternal years.

In this way, Aikman helps the reader to understand that in the trajectory of spiritual life, the family stands between the individual soul and the public, social and corporate expression of religion. Between the private and the public is the home, where spiritual life is cultivated, as in a nursery, building roots, before it comes into open view. “So out of the closet grows the temple.” And thus God is to be glorified in all spheres — private, family and public.

G.M. Giger on Religious Retirement

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The busyness of a 24/7 news cycle, the pressing demands of work, the noise of children and neighbors - and much more - all conspire, it seems, to crowd out the quiet times that are so necessary to spend with God, and to gain peace of mind and enrich our souls. Just as the body needs sleep at periodic intervals, so the soul needs time apart from the cares of the world, even the necessary ones, to commune with God in prayer, to be fed by God’s Word, and to ponder deeply the things most needful to be considered in life.

Christ Himself shows us by example the great importance which we ought to place upon such times apart from the noise and bustle of the world: “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1:35).

Preaching from this text, George Musgrave Giger (most famous for translating Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology) reminds us of the value of Religious Retirement, that is, the need to be alone with God for purposes of prayer, study and meditation. This sermon, published in John T. Duffield’s The Princeton Pulpit (1852), while warning against the opposite extreme of monastic-like separation from the world, emphasizes the following motives to and benefits of such religious retirement.

  • Christ’s own frequent and habitual example;

  • Christ’s precept regarding private worship that “when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly” (Matt. 6:6);

  • God’s creation of day and night, and times of action and stillness;

  • The example of Old Testament saints, such as David and Daniel, who sought out and regularly kept times of private devotion;

  • The example of early Christians who sought sanctuary for prayer away from their persecutors;

  • The cases of John Milton and John Bunyan, for example, whose times of private devotion in the study and in the prison cell led to such rich spiritual writings by which the Church and the world have been blessed;

  • Private devotion, apart from distraction, provides the best means for the study necessary to gain religious knowledge, which is key to our spiritual life and sanctification;

  • Religious retirement provides the opportunity for profitable self-examination, which is needful for correction in life and the amendment of our ways, and necessary for daily confession of sin and repentance before God;

  • Times apart from the world help us to get perspective on the world and its cares by viewing temporal concerns through the light of an eternal lens; and

  • Contemplation of eternal things stirs our affection towards and increases our attachment to heaven.

While the 21st century world encourages a “coming out of the closet,” Giger’s 19th century message to return regularly to the closet for private devotion is a reminder needed more now than ever. We all need such times apart from the cares of this world to commune with our God, and to enrich our souls through prayer and study and meditation. Read his full message here and be encouraged, especially as a new year approaches, to follow the example of Christ and regularly seek out religious retirement.