We are all acquainted with the church on the corner. There we meet for two or three services a week, and there we conduct the Sunday school. But the church is not the stone or brick or frame building, except in the lesser sense. The church primarily is the people who make this their place of worship. However, both the building and the people are important, and the influence of both reaches far. Some expect the church as an institution to do all the religious work necessary.

But Paul wrote to Philemon of “the church in thy house.” Here, then, must have been worshipers and instruction in divine things. In some homes the family altar survives. Here the Book of God is read. Here there is prayer. Here is the presence of things which add to the influence for good. Here the opposite and hindering things are out. The music and the reading and the conversation and the company which will conduce to spiritual things are in.

The church in thy house, like the church on the corner, if it is all that it ought to be will point toward heaven. Happy are the children who have had upon them the strong, heavenward pull of such a home.

— The Free Methodist.



(This article originally appeared in The Brethren

Evangelist in 1940).