duce the purest society and the happiest homes. If ill-mated pairs are sometimes bound together, the cure lies in a higher ethical life; to endure till death parts, and to learn to suffer, which often means to bring love out of, or, rather, in the place of an evil often temporary and often fancied.

We need to have large faith and hope in the social development going on around us under the influence of our Christian civilization, and the various social reforms now agitated. During this process woman will continue to receive larger freedom, until she stands before the law and society as man's equal. And when the novelty of her new status will have passed away, her rights all obtained, she will give full attention to her duties, and it will be found that her family life has grown with her growth and intensified with her progress. Society is more studied to-day than at any time in the past. The family shares that critical study to which every element of society is now subjected. This cannot but be helpful to its future. Every social reform now discussed will aid and purify the family-in a word, we may say, "They that be for us are more than they that be against us.”

VI. ITS RELIGION.

Two facts as old as man are given special emphasis in our times, and will exert a great influence over the religious life of the family; the one, the organic unity of the family, the other the immanence of God in all things.

Every student of society holds to a theory of its organic unity, and calls it a "social organism," whether he defines it in terms of biology or psychology. The idea is found in Plato and Paul and John, but recent studies have awakened a new interest in this analogy, which, after all, may turn out to be a psychological organization. With this explanation the phrase "social organism" may still be safely used. The family is the original social unit and generic social type. It is an organism whose parts are most intimately dependent upon each other. Because of the organic relation of parents and child, and because of the influence exerted by the former over the latter during its most impressible years, the child receives not only its life, but the elements of its character also from its parents. Says Professor Fairbanks: "The child owes his moral nature, his conscience, and the beginnings of character to the family life. The family is a moral unit; the moral life of the whole as determined by the parents is

reflected in the moral life of each member. The virtues prized by the parents, the rules of action which they lay down for themselves, the ideals which ennoble their lives and give them meaning, these are the influences which mold the moral life of the child. The more completely this ideal of moral solidarity of the family is realized, the better it fulfills its mission.

"From the standpoint of religion, the family does the same important work that it does for the moral life. A true family life cannot fail to develop a religious side. In this intimate union, the religious life finds its best inspiration; God comes nearest to his followers at the family altar, and the responsibilities and joys of the family open the heart to the divine life.

Religion also is a part of that spiritual inheritance which the child receives from its parents. At the mother's knee children learn to know God with a more vivid sense of his presence and his love than is gained in any other way; and far away as he may wander, it is to the mother's God that he returns. The divine authority and righteousness and love find their first meaning in the loving commands of a parent, and the philosopher and the theologian continue to speak of God as the Father in heaven. Sharing the religious life of the family, entering into its religious aspirations, as well as its modes of religious belief and worship, the child learns to know God for himself."

Not only by the laws of heredity, but by the spirit of the house, as an atmosphere which the child breathes, is a trend given to his life -not, however, in a fatalistic sense, for the child still has the power of choice. But the odor of the house will always be in his garments, and the internal difficulties with which he has to struggle will spring from the family seeds planted in his nature.

This organic connection of parents and child is made the ground of God's great promise to Abraham. Genesis 18: 17-19: "And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him." That is, the Lord knew what the future of the children would *Arthur Fairbanks, "Introduction to Sociology," pages 152, 155.

be, because he knew Abraham's faithfulness in his family. May not every faithful parent equally expect God's blessing upon his family? Is not the heredity of goodness as great as that of evil? Is it possible that God made these laws of heredity to transmit evil only? Is not Christ the "second Adam," the "new man," the "head of the church," the "beginning" of the new creation? Is not he able to do anything for the children of his faithful ones through the laws of heredity? What I mean is this: May not the divine life in parents give to their children a tendency or inclination to accept Christ and to receive the renewal of their natures by the Holy Spirit? Could Paul have meant less than this when he wrote to Timothy, "Having been reminded of the unfeigned faith that is in thee; which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice: and I am persuaded, in thee also” (II. Tim. 1: 5, Am. R. V.). Does he not teach the same doctrine even more forcibly in Rom. 5: 12-21? "For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one, much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous." If, then, believing parents may bequeath to their offspring a tendency towards a Christian life (and not only observation on truly godly families, but the Scriptures, also, prove this), ought not this great law to be believed and obeyed? The promise is to us and to our children, as surely as it was to the seed of Abraham.

The second great fact, a knowledge of which is being revived in modern times, and which may be made to have a great bearing upon the religious life of the family is God's immanency in the world. The psalmist tells us that we cannot go out of the presence of God. Paul teaches that "in him we live and move and have our being," and that "he is in us all, and over us all." And that Christ ascended on high that "he might fill all things." All thoughtful persons are now turning away from the notion that God dwells only off in some remote corner of space, and they are coming back to the Scripture doctrine that God is present and working everywhere. The world is not soulless, but enchanted. The universe is a revelation of God. Mountains, ocean, flowery fields, and blazing stars are but the visible garments of the Invisible.One. As our frame is animated by the spirit within it, so is this universal frame pervaded by the indwelling God.

Now, this immanent God, who is in all things, yet infinitely more than all things, is the personal, loving "God, who was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." To the Christian there are three focal points where God manifests himself in a pre-eminent manner: in the hearts of believers he is "Christ in you the hope of glory," and the mystery of personal salvation; in the church he is the governing Head and indwelling Holy Spirit, and the church is his body, and he is its new, mysterious life; in the family, which is the mysterious type of Christ in the church, as Paul puts it, he exerts his most potent influence for the creation of "the new heaven and the new earth.” The believer erects an altar in his heart, where, in secret, he worships God and has fellowship with him. He also erects a house of worship, as an altar, a public meeting-place with God, where in the presence of others, praise is offered to, and communion held with the Father of all spirits. Now, is it not reasonable that every believing parent should establish an altar of worship in his family which is midway between the secret altar in the heart and the public one in the church? Especially ought he to do this, since the family is the greatest fountain of influence on earth and ought to be sanctified by prayer and praise.

In the New Testament we find the family life recognized as the natural abode of the gospel spirit, and becoming, to use the words of Paul, "the church which is in the house." "Our Lord," said Clement of Alexandria, "said where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I. Who are these two or three, but the father, the mother, and the child?" For the investigation which we are now pursuing the passages which speak of the family, and especially those Christ uttered about the children, are the most precious in the New Testament. In our Lord's ministry we find him often in the home of some friendly family, as at Bethany, or in Cana. In the Acts and epistles the family often appears. The cases of Cornelius and of the Philippian jailor are the two most familiar instances. The promise of salvation through faith is not to the individual alone, but "thou and thy house shall be saved." In the household as described by the New Testament, we see how a family can be said to become a church. We see the Christian spirit of mutual deference and respect establishing true relations between husband and wife, parents and children, masters and servants. We have but to picture to ourselves a family living according to the apostolic prescription, and we realize in the

circle of the family what the church is meant to be: society transformed by the Spirit of Christ. We have there the kingdom of heaven taking shape before our eyes.*

The presence of the living Christ in the family, sanctifying every right relation and every proper action, and seeking to bring all completely into obedience to his will, should receive proper recognition, and call forth our largest faith. The home altar of prayer is the only sufficient recognition of God's presence and expression of our purpose to co-operate with him. Family worship means more than a mere ceremony or exercise, however helpful that might be as example and instruction; it means keeping open the best channel of divine influences between God and the family; it means, on our part, the daily consecration of ourselves, our children, and our possessions to God's service, and the fulfillment of all God's promises to us on his part. This worship should include the whole family, and should be the expression of the ideal of its true relation to God, and daily becoming its real, spiritual communion with him in all the affairs of life, as life and its prayers and aspirations should harmonize with each other and with God's purposes. The prayers will be answered in proportion to this harmony of our lives and petitions, as God seeks the widest harmony of influences through which to answer our requests. Dr. Bushnell says, "Under this great law, therefore, prayer, as a matter of fact, has been getting, and will always be getting more strength by the larger harmonies it embodies. Noah prayed alone for his very ungodly times, and could not be heard, for the blood of Abel was crying to God for justice over against him, and so were all the crimes of violence and murder in his own most bloody and cruel age. Abraham prayed for Sodom, but there were no fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, or, as far as we know, more than one righteous man to pray with him; and therefore he fails, obtaining only the safety of that godly brother's family. Afterwards Daniel, in a matter of great peril, was able, going to his house to pray, to set his three friends praying with him, and he found the light on which even his life depended. Still further on, Esther set all her countrymen in the city praying and fasting with her, and obtained, in that manner, the deliverance of her whole people, and the promotion to honor in the kingdom. And so, again, the more wonderful scene of power which inaugurates the church on the day of Pentecost, is distinguished *Freemantle, "The World the Subject of Redemption," pages 137, 138.