to carry a reasonable load?  We do but condemn ourselves.  If my church is not fit to send my children to, then I must help to make it fit.  Before falling back on the lazy man’s salve of caustic ridicule, before taking the seat of the scornful, before setting in the child’s mind an aversion to this institution, based on my opinion, let me be sure I have done all that lies in my power to better it.  True, I am only one; but surely, where so many family tables are each Sunday devoted to finding fault with the church and its services, I can find many others who will aid in at least stimulating a sense of personal responsibility for any incompleteness in the church.

The family cannot afford to take the attitude of hostile criticism, for it is thus fighting its first and most natural ally, the one other institution engaged in its own special work.  If the forces for spiritual character be divided, how easily do the opposing forces enter in and occupy!  The family needs the support of the wider public opinion of the church, insisting on the supremacy of righteousness.  The family needs the co-operation of the church in its task of developing religious lives.  The family needs the power of this larger social body controlling social conditions and making them contributory to character purposes.  The family needs the stimulus which a larger group can give to children and young people.

This does not mean that we must never criticize the church.  It is not set off in a niche protected from the acid of secular tongues and minds.  Ministers of the gospel are unduly resentful of criticism, perhaps because, after they leave the seminary, no one has a fair opportunity to controvert their publicly stated opinions.  But the church needs the cleansing powers of kindly, wise, creative criticism.  Anyone can find fault, but he is wise who can show us a better way.  This church is the family’s ally; it is our business to aid her to greater effectiveness.  The new church for our own day awaits the services of the men of today.

The purpose of the family is the basis of alliance with the church.  As in every other relation and purpose of the home, so here:  the dominant factor is the conscious function of the home and family.  If the home is really a religious institution it will seek natural alliance with all other truly religious institutions.  Ideally, what is a church but a group of families associated for religious purposes?  Is not the church simply a number of families co-operating in the ideal purposes of each family, the development of the lives of religious persons and the control of social conditions for the sake of that purpose?  Without entering into disputation as to the relationship of little children to the church, is there not just this relation to the human society called the church, that it is a grouping of families for the purpose of the divine family?

Sec. 2.  THE FAMILY IDEAL IN THE CHURCH