Home Service: a Manual Intended for Those Who Are Occasionally Hindered from Attending the House of God. With Sermons and a Selection of Hymns

Home Service: A Manual Intended For Those who Are Occasionally Hindered From Attending The House Of God. With Sermons And A Selection Of Hymns by William Bacon Stevens. This 1856 devotional collection is designed to assist families and individuals who cannot attend church to worship at home. The Preface explains the aim: to condense the elements of Divine Service into a single family-oriented volume, including four Sunday services with guiding liturgies, hymns, prayers, and sermons. The book provides four distinct services for Sundays, each including Scripture readings, confessions, prayers, selections from Psalms and biblical passages, hymns, and occasional sermons for family reading. Additional sections offer prayers for sickness, travel, weather, storms at sea, and thanks for recoveries, as well as meditations on salvation through Christ—the Lamb of God—and the Christian life. The sermons emphasize Christ’s loveliness, refuge in him, the need for repentance, and the brevity of earthly life. Overall, the work aims to enable worship at home in a manner consistent with Christian truth, fostering devotion, consolation, and spiritual growth when Sunday worship is inaccessible.