The Christian Home

"It was said of one that 'she looked like a prayer.' If we would make our homes truly Christian homes, our daily lives must be like our daily prayers.

If the members of the family wrangle and quarrel, the fact that the father is a minister or an elder, and the mother president of a Dorcas society or secretary of an association to send the gospel to China, does not make the home religious. If a blessing is asked at the table before the meal begins, and if then, instead of cheerful and affectionate conversation, the table-talk is made up of faultfinding with the food, of ill-tempered disputes amid acrimonious bickerings, the asking of a blessing surely does not make the intercourse Christian. If family worship is observed with scrupulous fidelity, and the members rise from their knees to violate the simplest lessons of Christian love and kindness in their fellowship as a household, the fact that there is family worship does not make a Christian home.

The prayers must be lived. The Scripture lessons must find their way into the heart and then into the speech and conduct."


- J.R. Miller (1840-1912), a Presbyterian pastor from Pennsylvania and a popular Christian author.