that we are looking for mechanical evidence of a religious life instead
of for the development of a whole person. We must reinterpret the family
to ourselves and see it as the one great opportunity life affords us to
grow other lives and to bring them to spiritual fulness by providing a
social atmosphere of the spirit and a constant, normal presentation of
social living in spiritual terms.


§ 8. THE ORGANIZATION OF LOYALTY

When parents conceive the family in these terms and so organize the life
of the home, the child becomes conscious of the fact, and at once the
life of the family furnishes him with his first, his nearest, and most
satisfactory appeal to loyalty. He feels that which he cannot analyze or
express, the spiritual beauty and loyalty of family life. That life
furnishes a soil and atmosphere for his soul. It is an atmosphere made
of many elements: the primary and dominating purpose of parents and
older persons, the habitual life of service and love, the consciousness
of the reality of the Divine Presence, the fragrance of chastened
character and experience, the customs of worship and affections. These
things are not easily created, they cannot be readily defined, nor can
directions be given in a facile manner for their cultivation. They are
the elements most difficult to describe, hardest of all to secure when
lacking, least easily labeled, not to be purchased ready-made, and yet
without them religious education is wholly impossible in the family.
Without this immediate appeal to loyalty the loyalties of the child
toward higher and divine aims do not develop early; they are retarded
and often remain dormant. For us all scarcely any more important
question can be presented than this: What appeals to spiritual idealism
and loyalty does our family life present to the child? What quickening