Chapter VIII: Part 8

Where such appreciation is found, true help will not be wanting. Helpers to the church will go forth from the household, well trained to further the various offices of general piety and charity. Every true family will take due account of its own numbers, means, and gifts, to give its just share of co-operation in every good word and work. Care for the poor, light for the benighted, counsel for the young, strength to the wavering--all will be duly given, and even the accomplishments that with the worldling are means of giddy dissipation, or vain show, with the Christian will be means of edification and comfort, so that winning manners shall win souls to God, and voices tuned to melody shall breathe a harmony not of this world, and give to the songs of Zion all the beauty of holiness. The spirit of antiquated error shall feel the wholesome renovation, and the fresh life of the church in the house shall go out into theological schools and conventicles, purging away old superstitions and carrying every where the catholicity of practical wisdom, wholesome sensibilities, and earnest good-will. Thus it is that in the later ages fountains of new power have been opened, and pure, genial home principles and affections have done more than Luther's theses or John Knox's sermons to drive monkery and all its brood of spectral charms and horrors from the church visible, and the prospect of the church invisible, and thoroughly to reform the creeds of men touching earth and heaven and hell. The end is not yet, and a truer, more earnest and affectionate Christianity is to carry out the great reformation and bring on a truer catholicity than the world has ever seen.

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Thus we meditate upon the church in the house, its necessity, its true character, its help to the church universal. The topic is itself its own personal application. The great point is this, that at home we are to live as members of a spiritual kingdom, and strive to infuse the spirit and carry the order of that kingdom into the feelings and habits of the household. Take this thought seriously to heart, cherish it in meditation and prayer, how can it remain idle? By paths seen and unseen, the heavenly grace earnestly sought, will enter into the economy of the family, and save its peace from the war of hostile tempers and the inroads of a domineering world. Wise, and kindly, and devout habits will be formed, which make religion at once a spirit and a law, free without being wilful, orderly without being mechanical, like the waters of Siloa that flowed sparkling in that regular channel so framed by God from rock, and made sweet will of their obedience to Him who holds the waters in the hollow of his hand.

Such a household will have influences and associations peculiar to itself. The sons will be manly and tender; the daughters will be gentle and strong: parents and children in their mutual affections shall bring out the finer harmonies of human life, that show God's goodness even more deeply than the chants of the psalmist's choirs. As changes come, and the years pass, treasured remembrances shall fill the home with images sacred as the tablets and pictures of ancient chapels, and hopes more living than monumental marble can record in solemn church-yards, shall proclaim the resurrection and the life over the dead; the absent ones of the family will in thought always, and, when they can, in person, make reverent pilgrimage to the old hearth-stone; and they who die of that family, wherever they close their eyes, will have in the cherished ministrations of that church in the house the mightiest of all proofs of the eternal home. The house made with hands opens into the eternal spheres, and its own life repeats Christ's assurance of heavenly mansions. It will have a ministry seen and a ministry unseen, one seen in gentle charities, the other known by unseen influences.

"Uttered not, yet comprehended
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from those lips of air."

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Transcriber's note:

Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

The following misprints have been corrected:
"themseves" corrected to "themselves" (page 20)
"diguise" corrected to "disguise" (page 107)
"may" corrected to "many" (page 107)
"unostentations" corrected to "unostentatious" (page 111)
"chidren" corrected to "children" (page 241)
"intepretation" corrected to "interpretation" (page 262)

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