essentially spiritual.

In simplest possible terms, religious education means the training of
persons to live the religious life and to do their work in the world as
religious persons. It must mean, then, the development of character; it
includes the aim, in the parents' minds, to bring their children up to
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. It is evident that
this is a much greater task, and yet more natural and beautiful, than
mere instruction in formal ideas or words in the Bible or in a
catechism; that it is not and cannot be accomplished in some single
period, some set hour, but is continuous, through all the days; that it
pervades not only the spoken words, but the actions, organization, and
the very atmosphere of the home.


§ 3. THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

Normal persons never stop growing. Just as children grow all the time in
their bodies, so do adults and all others grow all the time in mind and
will and powers of the higher life whenever they live normally. We grow
spiritually, not only in church and under the stimulus of song and
prayer, but we grow when the beauty of the woods appeals to us, when the
face lightens at the face of a friend, when we meet and master a
temptation, when we brace up under a load, when we do faithfully the
dreary, daily task, when we adjust our thoughts in sympathy to others,
when we move in the crowd, when we think by ourselves. The educational
process is continuous. The children in the home are being moved,
stimulated, every instant, and they are being changed in minute but
nevertheless real and important degrees by each impression. There is
never a moment in which their character is not being developed either