The Dearest Spot on Earth

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE RELIGION OF THE FIRESIDE IN the last chapter, I spoke of the home as a nursery where young lives are made ready for transplanting into their own places in the great orchard of the world. But the home is more than that. It is a sanctuary. May we open the door and reverently and prayerfully enter in ? We...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE RELIGION OF THE FIRESIDE IN the last chapter, I spoke of the home as a nursery where young lives are made ready for transplanting into their own places in the great orchard of the world. But the home is more than that. It is a sanctuary. May we open the door and reverently and prayerfully enter in ? We do well to pause on the threshold to uncover our heads, for we are setting our feet upon holy ground. It is not strange that the word fireside has a religious flavour to it. It has come by it historically. In those far-away days when fire was so hard to produce and maintain, a spark was a sacred thing. The flame was preserved with jealous care on the shrines and family altars. Being so necessary to the family, it became the centre of the family life, and those who were appointed to guard it came to be clothed in peculiar reverence. The fireside became the sacred spot. Zoroaster has no disciples among us to-day, yet we continue to approach the fireside with the ancient Persian reverence. New fires burn on the hearthstone more sacred than fitful flames; there are new rites, new mysteries. New priests and priestesses guard the altar. They are not resplendent in Persian gold and colour; they wear the plain household habits of father and mother. About them, watching, working, sometimes kneeling, are the little worshippers at the shrine. The home is never given its true honour till it is known as the sanctuary. Our churches with their services, their sermons, their schools and societies, are doing the best they can to bring men and women to God, and God to men and women. But their place is secondary. The home is the greatest factor in the religious life. Religion has its birthplace in the home. It may not expand and blossom until later, but the seed is there. Occasio...