Would there be any question as to the naturalness of the relation of our children to the church if the family ideal so controlled our thinking as to saturate theirs?  Is not this the present need, that both family and church shall conceive the latter in family terms?  By this is meant, not simply that we shall think of what is called “a family church,” a church into which we succeed in projecting our families in a fair degree of integrity, but that we shall think of the organization and mission of the church in terms of family life and of the ideal of the divine family.  Keeping in mind the general definition already given of a family as persons associated for the development of spiritual persons, let us hold the church to that same ideal; the lives of persons associated in the broadest fellowship that includes both God and man for the purposes of spiritual personality.  The church then should be the expression of that family of which Jesus often spoke, the family that calls God Father and man brother.

Closer and more helpful relations between family and church follow where the principles of the family prevail in the latter.  The family is an ideal democracy because it exists primarily for persons.  It places the value of persons first of all.  So with the true church; it will exist to grow lives to spiritual fulness, and to this end all buildings, adornments, exercises, teachings, and organizations will be but as tools, as means serving that purpose.  As the family sees its house, table, and activities designed to personal ends, so will the church.  In an institution existing to grow lives, the great principle of democracy and of the family will prevail, viz., that to the least we owe the most.  Just as the home gives its best to the little child, so will the church place the child in the midst.  Just as the home exists for the child and thus holds to itself all other lives, so will the church some day exist for the little ones and so hold and use all other lives.

The prime difficulty of relating the children in our families to the average church lies in the fact that they are children, while the church is an adult institution.  Its buildings are designed for adults—­save in rare and happy exceptions;[46] its services are designed for adults; it has a more or less extraneous institution called a school for the children.  The church spends its money for adults; it compasses sea and land to make one proselyte and coerce him back in old age, and allows the many that already as children are its own to drift away.  It often fails to see that if it is to grow lives it must grow them in the growing period.  There still remain many churches that must be converted from the selfishness of adult ministry and entertainment to self-giving service for the development of spiritual lives and, especially, for the development of such lives through childhood and youth.  They must hear again the Master’s voice regarding “these little