The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1901, Page 35

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Vhe Lutheran Pioneer.

(For the LUTHERAN PIONEER.)

The Beauty of a Christian Home.

We have never heard or read a sermon on
family religion which impressed us more
deeply than the following simple narrative of
the religious home life of an humble Scotch
family. It is taken from the first chapter of
the ‘‘Autobiography’’ of John G- Paton, mis-
sionary to the New Hebrides:

‘*And so began in his early life that blessed
custom of family prayer, morning and even-
ing, which my father practiced, probably with-
out one single omission, till he lay on his death-
bed, 77 years of age; when, even to the last
day of his life, a portion of Scripture was read,
and his voice was heard softly joining in the
Psalm, and his lips breathed the morning and
evening prayer, falling in sweet benediction
on the heads of all his children, far away,
many of them, over all the earth, but all meet-
ing him there at the Throne of Grace. None
of us can remember that any day ever passed
unhallowed thus; no hurry for market, no rush
to business, no arrival of friends or guests, no
trouble or sorrow, no joy or excitement ever
prevented at least our kneeling around the
family altar, while the high priest led our
prayers to God, and offered himself and his
children there.

**And blessed to others, as well as to our-
selves, was the light of such example. I have
heard that, in long after-years, the worst
woman in the village of Torthorwald, then
leading an immoral life, but since changed by
the grace of God, was known to declare that
the only thing that kept her from despair and
from the hell of suicide was when in the dark
winter nights she crept close up underneath
my father’s window, and heard him pleading
in family worship that God would convert ‘the
sinner from the error of wicked ways and pol-
ish him as a jewel for the Redeemer’s crown.’
I felt,’ said she, ‘that I was a burden on that
good man’s heart, and I knew that God would
not disappoint him. That thought kept me
out of hell, and at last led me to the only
Saviour.’

“Each of us, from very early days, consid-
ered it no penalty, but a great joy, to go with
our father to the church; the four miles were
4 treat to our young spirits. The company,
by the way, was a fresh incitement, and occa-
sionally some of the wonders of city life re-
warded our eager eyes. A few other pious
men and women of the best evangelical type
went from the same parish to one or the other
favorite minister at Dumfries—and when these
God-fearing peasants ‘forgathered’ in the way
to or from the house of God, we youngsters
had sometimes rare glimpses of what Christian
talk may be or ought to be. They went to
the church, full of beautiful expectancy of
spirit— their souls were on the outlook for
God; they returned from the church, ready
and even anxious to exchange ideas as to what
they had heard and received of the things of

life. “I have to bear my testimony that religion
was presented to us with a great deal of in-
"| tellectual freshness, and that it did not repel

us, but kindled our spiritual interest. The
talks which we heard were, however, gen-
uine; not the make-believe of religious con-
versation, but the sincere outcome of their
own personalities. That, perhaps, makes all
the difference betwixt talk that attracts and
talk that drives away.

‘‘We had, too, special Bible readings on
the Lord’s day evening — mother and children
and visitors reading in turns, with fresh and
interesting question, answer, and exposition,
all tending to impress us with the infinite grace
of a God of love and mercy in the great gift of
His dear Son Jesus, our Saviour. The Small
Catechism was gone through regularly, each
answering the question asked, till the whole
had been explained, and its foundation in
Scripture shown by the proof-texts adduced.
It has been an amazing thing to me occasion-
ally to meet with men who blamed this ‘cate-
chizing’ for giving them a distaste to religion ;
every one in all our circle thinks and feels
exactly the opposite. It laid the solid rock
foundation of our religious life. After-years
have given to these questions and their an-
swers a deeper or a modified meaning, but none
of us have ever once even dreamed of wishing
that we had been otherwise trained. Ofcourse,
if the parents are not devout, sincere, and
affectionate—if the whole affair on both sides
is taskwork, or worse, hypocritical and false
—results must be very different indeed!

“Oh, I can remember those happy Lord’s
day evenings; no blinds drawn, and shutters
up, to keep out the sun from us, as some scan-
dalously affirm, but a holy, happy, entirely
human day, for a Christian father, mother,
and children to spend. How my father would
parade across our flag floor, telling over the
substance of the day’s sermons to our dear
mother, who, because of the great distance and
because of her many living ‘encumbrances,’
got very seldom, indeed, to the church, but
gladly embraced every chance, when there was
prospect or promise of a ‘lift’ either way from
some friendly gig! How he would entice us
to help him to recall some idea or other, re-
warding us when we got the length of ‘taking
notes’ and reading them over on our return.
How he would turn the talk ever so naturally
to some Bible story, or some martyr remi-
niscence, or some happy allusion to the ‘Pil-
grim’s Progress!’ And then it was quite a
contest, which of us would get reading aloud,
while-all the rest listened, and father added
here and there a happy thought, or illustra-
tion, or anecdote.

“Others must write and say what they will,
and as they feel; but so must I. There were
eleven of us brought up in a home like that;
and never one of the eleven, boy or girl, man
or woman, has been heard, or ever will be
heard, saying that Sabbath was dull or weari-
some for us, or suggesting that we have heard

of or seen any way more likely than that for
making the day of the Lord bright and blessed
alike for parents and for children. But God
help the homes where these things are done by
force and not by love! ‘The very discipline
through which our father passed us was a kind
of religion in itself. If anything really serious
required to be punished, he retired first to his
closet for prayer, and we boys got to under-
stand that he was laying the whole matter be-
fore God; and that was the severest part of
the punishment for me to bear. I could have
defied any amount of mere penalty, but this
spoke to my conscience as a message from
God. We loved him all the more when we saw
how much it cost him to punish us; and, in
truth, he had never very much of that kind of
work to do upon any one of all the eleven—
we were ruled by love far more than by fear.

“Our home consisted of a ‘but’ and a ‘ben’
and a ‘mid-room,’ or chamber, called the
‘closet.’ .The one end was my mother’s do-
main, and served all the purposes of dining
room and kitchen and parlor, besides contain-
ing two large wooden erections, called by our
Scotch peasantry ‘box-beds ;’ not holes in the
wall, as in cities, but grand, big, airy beds,
adorned with many-colored counterpanes, and
hung with natty curtains, showing the skill of
the mistress of the house. The other end was
my father’s workshop, filled with five or six
‘stocking-frames,’ whirring with the constant
action of five or six pairs of busy hands and
feet, and producing right genuine hosiery for
the merchants at Hawick and Dumfries. The
‘closet’? was a very small apartment betwixt
the other two, having room only for a bed, a
little table, and a chair, with a diminutive win-
dow shedding diminutive light on the scene.
This was the sanctuary of that cottage home.
Thither daily, and oftentimes a day, generally
after each meal, we saw our father retire, and
‘shut the door ;’ and we children got to under-
stand by a sort of spiritual instinct (for the
thing was too sacred to be talked about) that
prayers were being poured out there for us,
as of old by the high priest within the veil in
the Most Holy Place. We occasionally heard
the pathetic echoes of a trembling voice plead-
ing as if for life, and we learned to slip out
and in past that door at tiptoe, not to disturb
the holy colloquy. ‘The outside world might
not know, but we knew whence came that
happy light as of a newborn smile that always
was dawning on my father’s face: it was a
reflection from the divine presence, in the con-
sciousness of which he lived. Never, in tem-
ple or cathedral, on mountain or in glen, can
I hope to feel that the Lord God is more near,
more visibly walking and talking with men,
than under that humble cottage roof of thatch
and oaken wattles. Though everything else in
religion were by some unthinkable catastrophe
to be swept out of memory, or blotted from my
understanding, my soul would wander back
to those early scenes, and shut itself up once
again in that sanctuary closet, and, hearing