Worship is a necessity for the sake of the ideal unity of the family life.  Just as the individual must not only feel the religious emotion but must also do the thing called for, so must this united personality of the family give expression to its faith and aspiration, its motives and emotions, in such a manner that, acting as a social unit, all can together put the inner life into the outer form.  The social value of family worship is the strongest reason for its maintenance.  It is the united act of the family group, the one in which group consciousness is expressly directed to the highest possible aims.  Every period of worship brings the family into unity at an ideal level.

The expression of religion in definite forms is necessary for children, too, as furnishing a means by which they can manifest their feeling of the higher meaning of family life.  The reality of that feeling is stimulated in the daily, common life of the right family; the hour of worship is one out of many definite forms of its concrete expression.  It is the form which gathers up the totality of feeling and aspiration into an act of worship and praise toward God, the Father of all families.  It is evident there cannot be true worship in the family that is irreligious in its essential qualities, in its character, in its ideals and atmosphere.

Sec. 3.  ADVANTAGES

The period of worship is a necessity in interpreting to all the spirit and meaning of a religious family.  It objectifies the inner life.  It makes definite, tangible, and easily remembered the general impressions of religion.  It precipitates the atmosphere of religion into definiteness.  In the chemical laboratory of a university there is usually a decided atmosphere of chemistry, but no one expects to become a chemical engineer by absorbing that atmosphere, nor even to attain a simple working knowledge by merely general impressions.  Definiteness aids in gathering up our knowledge, our impressions.

The reading of the Bible in the home will give, when the passages are wisely chosen, forms of language into which the often chaotic but nevertheless valuable and potential emotions of youth fall as into a beautiful mold; they become remembered forms of beauty thereafter.

Family worship furnishes opportunity for direct religious instruction.  When the home life has its regular institution, as regular as meals and play, the formality, the apparent abnormality of conversation about religion, is absent.  Children expect and look forward to the period when the family will lay other things aside to think on the eternal values.  Their questions in the breathing-space that always ought to follow worship become perfectly natural and sincere.