s 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

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 fa