“The design of the family, in God’s purpose, beyond all question, was to minister to the Church; to furnish a family, a godly seed, for himself. It is specifically his nursery, established for the training up of the immortal spirits whom he would make the heirs of salvation. It is an institute, created by the same electing love which once upon earth uttered those gracious words, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ It is a divinely constituted organism by which the Holy Spirit takes hold of and enlists the tenderest and strongest affections of our nature in the work of bringing the chosen subjects of his grace out of the corruption of their native state, by a new birth, into the new life of the sons of God.” - Joseph B. Stratton, Truth in the Household: A Sermon Preached by Appointment Before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (1857), pp. 9-10