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In 1870, the Rev. William Aikman published a volume titled Life at Home: or, The Family and Its Members — with the aim “to bring, if possible, the blessed light of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ into the family circle” — which includes a chapter on “The Altar in the House,” from which today’s post is drawn.
Here Aikman speaks of the trajectory of spiritual life from the inward soul to its outward expression in the social sphere of the family home.
Religion is a matter of the heart and belongs to a man’s unseen existence; it is also a matter of the outward life and belongs to his public walks. If man were simply a spiritual essence, all that relates to God and his own thoughts and feelings might be confined to that realm in which solitary and alone he lives — his own soul. But he has a corporeal being, he lives in a world of seen things, and is in immediate and perpetual contact with persons and things as substantial as himself. His religion, then, like himself and because it belongs to his whole nature, reaches out and touches all around him. It cannot, it must not be confined to the secresy of his own bosom.
Every one who takes a broad or accurate view of man, must acknowledge that there ought to be some public recognition of God by any one who professes to believe in Him. This needs to be stated only, not argued. He who never in any form makes an acknowledgement of God, who does not at times before men take the posture of devotion, or show, by some seen act, that he recognizes the fact of God's existence and his own relations to the Infinite One, can make no claim to the title of a believer.
Since religion is more than a matter of the heart, it demands an outward manifestation. How long, think you, were every form of public religious service to be withdrawn, would it be before all religion would be gone from the earth? Were every church to be not only closed but removed, so that not even crumbling walls or deserted precincts should speak of Him who was once worshipped there; were there to be no assemblings for prayer and praise, no voice heard calling on God; were religion, all over the earth, to be shut up in each man's bosom, a generation would scarcely have gone by before the very idea of God had vanished from the apprehension of men.
The instincts of man, however, make such an inward limitation of religion impossible. The heart within, confined and imprisoned, breaks forth at the door of the lips in prayer and adoration; the man in his complex personality cries out, I must show forth what is within; my soul unseen worships the Unseen God; but this eye looks out upon His works, this body lives among the visible things of His hands ; there are other men who with me live and have their being in Him; before them and with them I must worship God. No command is needed; public worship of God goes hand in hand with the recognition of God.
In this way it comes to pass that all thinking persons acknowledge the importance of outward religion — of public divine worship. To a Christian man it becomes a necessity. He must have his closet, a secret place, in whose retirement he may tell the story of his wants and his cares in the ear of a compassionate and sympathizing Father; but he must also have the goodly assemblings of his brethren, in whose company he may sing the songs of Zion, and with whom he may call upon the name of Zion's King. He has a God whom he acknowledges, and whose favor he seeks when alone; that God he must honor and worship in the presence of other men. He has a private religion; he has also a public religion. He cannot be satisfied to worship Jehovah only where no eye can see him; his heart craves in all humility and sincerity that, abroad and with his fellow-men, he may bring his tribute, lowly though it be, of gratitude and love. So out of the closet grows the temple. The one is as necessary as the other. The one is the place where a lone soul holds intercourse with an unseen God; the other where the man with men looks upward to the Creator, Preserver and Lord of them.
Between these two there is a sphere of thought and of influence, more important, perhaps, than either —The Family. It stands midway between the secret and the public life of a man, and vitally affects them both. Here a man spends a large part of his life; from it he derives the chiefest good of earth; here are his highest joys; here are his profoundest sorrows; here are his hopes and fears; here the fountain whence flow streams which make pleasant or weary his way; here are his loved ones; here those in whom and for whom he lives; here those whom he is set to guard and guide, whose destiny he shapes for the eternal years.
In this way, Aikman helps the reader to understand that in the trajectory of spiritual life, the family stands between the individual soul and the public, social and corporate expression of religion. Between the private and the public is the home, where spiritual life is cultivated, as in a nursery, building roots, before it comes into open view. “So out of the closet grows the temple.” And thus God is to be glorified in all spheres — private, family and public.
