e will consist, not so much in external forms perhaps, still less in
intellectual statements about theology or even about his own
experiences, as in a growing realization of the great ideals, an
increasing sense of their meaning and reality within, and, on the
objective side, a steady moving of his life toward them in action and
habits and therefore in character and quality.

Sec. 7. IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

It is worth while to insist upon two important considerations. Parents
who stand as gardeners watching the growth of the tender plant of
child-character may be looking for developments that never ought to come
and will be disappointed because they were looking for the wrong thing.
First, in watching for the beginnings of the religious life of the child
in the family we are not expecting some new addition to the life, but
rather the development of this whole life as a unity in a definite
direction which we call religious. It is the first and most important
consideration that religious education is not something added to the
life as an extra subject of interest, but the development of the whole
life into religious character and usefulness. Secondly, this growth of
religious character is going on all the time. It is not separable into
pious periods; it is a part of the very life of the family. Perhaps this
increases the difficulty of our task, for it removes it from the realm
of the mechanical, from that which is easily apprehended and estimated.
It takes the task of the religious education of children out of the
statistical into the vital, and reminds us that we are growing life
every second, that there is never a moment when religious education is
not in operation. This demands a consideration, not alone of lessons, of
periods of worship and instruction, but of every influence, activity,
and agency in all the family life that in any way affects the thinking,
feeling, and action of the child. We are thinking of something more
important than organizing instruction and exercises in religion in the
home; we are thinking of organizing the family life for religious
purposes, for the purpose of growing lives into their spiritual fulness.

Perhaps the capital mistake in the religious education of the family is
that we overemphasize this or the other method and mechanism instead of
bending every effort to secure a real religious atmosphere and soil in
which young souls can really grow while we leave the process of growth