"Thoughts on Family Worship"
by James Alexander, 1847
Sprinkle Publications, 1981, Pages 211-216
"While few things are better than a timely, judicious exposition [of Scripture as it is read at family worship], nothing can be worse than the opposite abuse.... lest we should subject some poor family to the infliction of tedious, ignorant, erroneous, or overheated harangues, under the name of expounding Scripture, at family prayer....
"The manner of reading the Bible in the family is of great importance.... Half its meaning, and almost all its effect, are sometimes suffocated and lost, by a sleepy, monotonous, stupid, careless, inarticulate, drawling, or what is worse, an affected delivery....
"Particular care should be bestowed on a due preparation for this work by every head of a family.... reading over with great attention, in private, the chapter to which he is about to attend with his family... fully understanding the language, and deeply entering into the spirit of the passage.... [By this] we may keep ourselves from being intolerably bad....
"The modern Jews resemble the Papists in some things, but they... have never withheld the word of God from the laity. It has been read in every synagogue for centuries, and is so read to this hour: it is read in every Hebrew house every day. It is our hope, that the day will come when at least as much as this may be said of Christians all over the world. Let us send down the word of God to our descendants.... I cannot bear the thought that it should stop with me."
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