The Bible in the Home ANY people desire practical suggestions for the use of the Bible in the home in ways which will make it familiar to the children. M FAMILY PRAYERS 1. "Family prayers" should be considered as an ideal in every Christian household. If the hours of labor, or any other circumstance, make it difficult to have prayer and the daily reading of the Bible in the family, that should be regarded as a misfortune to be remedied. The family altar is worth some sacrifice. We often let it fall away too easily. In those cases where circumstances make united family devotions impossible during the week, let those members who can do so set aside a time to worship together daily, and on Sunday let the entire family unite. A finer home-atmosphere will be found where this custom is kept. 66 An old man told his grandson how, when a young man, he built with his own hands the home to which he planned to bring his bride. One day," he said, "I knelt down on the unfinished floor and promised God that as long as we lived in that house there should be family prayers every day; and there were." It is not surprising that every child in that family was an active Christian. "WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?" 2. In the home the Bible should be used more often than it usually is for moral and religious teaching. If a question of morals arises it ought to be the most natural thing to ask, "What does the Bible say?" To be sure, that implies some knowledge on the part of parents as to where to find appropriate sections. For example, if it is a question of deceit, the story of Achan in Joshua tells how the people, even at that early time, regarded theft and its concealment. See 2:350. If it is a question of standing by a promise, Psalm 15:4 shows that God approves of the man "who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not." Parents may well make the habit of referring to the Bible familiar and natural. 3 THE VARIED INTEREST OF THE BIBLE 3. Somewhat kindred to this is the custom of finding out what the Bible says on various subjects. Children have a natural healthy curiosity. It is easy to arouse it in the interest of Bible study. Do you know what the Bible has to say about ostriches, or Orion, or the star Arcturus, or what giant slept on an iron bed? Do you know what kind of a lunch a boy carried in Jesus' time, or where a town-clerk quelled a mob? Do you know whether the Bible says that Eve ate an apple, or that a whale swallowed Jonah? Do you know what Jesus said about flowers, or what Paul said about armor? None of these things is of the highest importance, but they will serve to illustrate how wide a variety of subjects may be used to make the Bible a book of interest. THE GREATEST LITERATURE IN THE WORLD 4. Cultivate a taste for the Bible as literature. Too often young people go out even from Christian homes with no conception that the Bible contains some of the finest literature in the world. Their parents may have been interested in helping them appreciate Shakespeare or Dickens or Thackeray, but often the suggestion that the Bible contains notable literature comes to them as a surprise. It ought not to be so. Every child in a Christian home ought to be at least familiar with the fact that the Bible contains literature of the highest order. If one asks, "How may the taste for it be cultivated?" the answer must be in another question: "How do you cultivate a taste for any other literature?" No one can answer that fully without knowing the child. In any case, the beginning will be the recognition that here is literature worth reading. Job is great poetry, the Psalms are beautiful songs, the prophecies of Isaiah are magnificent orations, the stories about Abraham and Joseph and Gideon and David and Elijah, to mention only a few, are fine stories, the parables of Jesus are literary jewels, the visions of Revelation are splendid imagery. Do not say that young people to-day cannot appreciate the literature of the Bible. They can, and often do. All teachers of the Bible in college know that students respond to the literature of the Bible as easily as to any other. Young people occasionally discover it for themselves. One boy of seventeen read the Gospel of John through with eagerness, because, as he said, "it was such a fascinatingly written book." READING THE BIBLE IN A PURITAN HOME By Edwin A. Abbey (1852-1911) Copyright by M. G. Abbey. From a Copley print. Copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts THE Puritan minister is earnestly reading the Bible in a Puritan home. Study the faces of each of the hearers. Is he reading a sweet and gracious passage or one that is solemn and stern? What is the attitude of the hearers? Is the little girl alarmed by the minister's earnest manner? Notice the simple furniture, the pewter plates on the wall, the flowers the young woman has dropped from her lap. |