All civilization begins in sensation and feeling. The most abstruse and abstract thought of to-day is possible because ages and ages ago men living in caves were hungry and sought food, were cold and sought warmth, felt fear and sought protection. They conquered in battle with fierce animals and neighboring tribes, and felt the joy of victory and the satisfaction of possession. The “self” sensations and feelings are at the foot of the ladder of civilization by which man, with almost infinite patience has climbed thus far. But self is not all. As the ages passed, man’s pleasure of protection included his neighbor in his feeling and thought. Misfortune evoked pity, and suffering called forth sympathy, the desire for fair play for self grew until it became a sense of justice which included the other man, and the moral sense developed and was strengthened by experience through the succeeding ages.
From the beginning “thespiritof man sought ever to speak.” At first he would propitiate the spirits of air and fire, the rulers of earth andsea, the harvest and the battle,—please them and buy their favor that he might be happy. In weird chants and dances, in feast days and fast days, by sacrifice and penance, he endeavored to appease the spirits of his gods and insure happiness for himself. Great multitudes of the human race have gone no farther. After all the progress of thought their prayers are still intense appeals for blessing upon self and self-interests, and they still keep the feasts and fasts, and bring offerings with hope of personal reward. But every century brings an increasing number so filled with the sense of another’s need that in some measure at least they forget self. Their prayers are petitions for others,—their gifts are poured out without thought of recompense; the spiritual nature within them, awakened and developed, triumphs and manifests itself in a thousand varying deeds that bless mankind.
This spiritual nature, which from the beginning has sought after its Creator that it might worship him, is not a thing apart, living in a separate “house,” but rather a phase of man’s complexity. It depends for its growth upon both the physical and mental sides of man’s nature, and cannot be divorced from them.
At the foot of the path that reaches to the very height of spiritual life, we find feeling as sensation and emotion. The myriad sensations which express themselves in bodily consciousness through the physical, and the emotions which find expression through mental consciousness, can not escape their share of responsibility for the development of the spiritual side. As year after year he sees successive classes of children repeat the development of their predecessors, one stands in awe and reverence before the presence of laws which seem universal in the development of child life. He notes the days when life means food and clothing furnished by another. He notes the strong development of the self interests to the exclusion of others. He sees the gradual development of the sense of justice, of pity, of sympathy. He watches the development of altruism in adolescence. He sees the rapid change of body, mind, and spirit, and witnesses the struggle for control, sometimes on the part of one, sometimes the other, until at last physical, mental or spiritual emerges in control of a life. Or in the rarer cases, where a more perfect development has come, all three work together in the effort to make a perfectly balanced man.
We saw in our brief study of the physical side that a girl in her teenscan feel. Her whole being is sensitized, ready at a moment’s notice to respond. In our study of the mental side we saw that she can and does think, is capable of the heights and depths of emotion, and is able in a limited way to make comparisons and reach sane conclusions.
As the physical side of her nature is awake and the mental side keen, curious and eager, so the spiritual side feels the thrill of new life and opens to all the wealth of impression. She is close to the great mysteries of life, and “whence came I, what am I here for, where am I going,” press her for answer. In her early teens she accepts gladly the theories and creeds of those who teach her. There are comparatively few “unbelievers” from thirteen to sixteen. The average girl at this period is religious in the truest sense of the word. Her moral sense is keen, her conscience is alive,—she longs unspeakably to be good; to overcome jealousy and envy; to be truthful, thoughtful of others; and a score of minor virtues she longs to possess. Yet in strange perversity she is often none of these things. She finds it easy to pray, and a song, a picture, a story filled with deeds of deepest self-sacrifice, awakens immediate response. She can be appealed to through her emotions, and herdeepest religious sense touched and developed. The awakening of her spiritual nature thus through the emotions is perfectly legitimate. The appeal should never be sensational, and never under any circumstances awaken an hysterical response. Not tears but unbounded joy should be the result of her response to an appeal to all that is best in her.
If the Sunday-school were equipped with just the right teachers, and able to so influence parents and home conditions that the girl in her early teens were regular in attendance, very few would reach the age of sixteen without having determined to love and obey God and to live in the world as Christ lived. Almost all would unite with the church, which is the visible expression of the religious life,—and be ready to throw themselves into its work.
In all my experience with Sunday-school girls of this period regular in attendance and interested in the work I have found when talking with them that they invariably say, “I think Iama Christian,” “I am trying hard to be good and to be a Christian,” “I am willing to sign the card, I have been trying to be a Christian for a long time,” etc., etc. Then, having so expressed themselves, if later I talk over with them thematter of uniting with the church, I find only a few objections repeated year after year by successive classes. “My father and mother think I am too young,” “My father says I would better wait until I know what I am doing,” “I am afraid I am not good enough,” and the one most reluctantly expressed, “If I join the church I am afraid I’ll have to——,” then follow the things which perhaps must be given up. I have yet to find the girl from thirteen to sixteen who has been a regular attendant at Sunday-school since primary age who has no desire to call herself a Christian. The splendid devotion to duty, the sympathy, the service to the world, the marvelous love and compassion, the supreme sacrifice of our Lord, makes the strongest possible appeal to the spiritual nature of the girl. We may confidently expect her to respond, and she does.
But if the girl has been irregular in attendance, has lost interest in class or teacher, is permitted to enjoy the stimulus of social life while too young, comes to church only on special occasions, has little or no definite moral instruction at home, and does not come into close touch with rich spiritual life, she will drift through the years of adolescence with her spiritual nature undeveloped and expressing itselfonly in vague longings unsatisfied. The chances are that such a girl will never have anything but a superficial interest either in her own development or the vital life of the church expressed in its various agencies.
Two years ago, at a conference, a girl of sixteen from a fashionable boarding-school, coming from a home where fads and fashions rule, said to me, “I never knew Christ was so wonderful, but then I have never thought much about it, though I go to morning service in the winter. I have never met women and girls like those I have seen this week; they are so interesting,—they are doing so many things to help people,—they seem to love to live. I don’t want to live a mean, selfish kind of life. I am going back to school for my last year. What can I do? How can I help?” I have met many girls of whom she is the type. Little is being done for the spiritual side of their natures. The Sunday-school at present does not reach them to any great extent. One of the greatest problems facing the fashionable church is how to reach in any way girls in their teens who are members of its congregation. Such girls with their abundance of life have at least a right to those things offered in the Sunday-school which will mean the awakening and developing of thespirit. They need teachers especially equipped in every way to meet them and help them. To find such teachers is one of the problems that must be met within the next few years. Perhaps we may look confidently for help before long to the girls of culture and refinement now in our colleges hard at work upon every kind of problem dealing with the development of a better life for girls and women. For these girls are beginning to look at the Sunday-school seriously as the means of bringing moral and religious education to girls of all classes, and are asking how they may best equip themselves for service in its various departments.
The problem of the other girl is just as great. She works all the week, and when on Sunday morning she is tired, the family sympathize. She gradually drops out of Sunday-school, is not able because of her long hours to enter into the work of the church, does not come into contact with any vitalizing spiritual force, and slowly this part of her nature, lacking food and stimulus, begins to die. She spends Sunday afternoon and evening socially, and enters upon the new week’s work with no uplift of soul and spirit to help her when temptations come.
She needs a real teacher, sympathetic and appreciative, to hold herduring the first years of her working life. One who can make the class a social factor, and by her effort and personality make the Sunday-school hour interesting enough to insure attendance. Then the teacher has an opportunity at least to bring the girl into contact with Christ, and through instruction to feed and develop her spiritual nature until it is ready through exercise to develop itself.
The spiritual nature needs food as does the physical. If the physical life is poorly nourished in this time of the most rapid development, a loss of vitality and power is the inevitable result. The same is true of the mental life. There must be healthful, attractive, abundant food for interesting, enjoyable thought. And just as surely the spiritual life, unless the emotions and moral sense are nourished, will yield to slow paralysis or run into wrong and wasteful channels.
But there comes a time in the spiritual experience of the girl, usually about sixteen, when she wants to do something to express the longing to give herself which is growing more intense each year. If the Sunday-school and church are together able to provide her with work she is fairly safe for the next few years. The work will mean definiteinterest, will call for some sacrifice, and will bring the satisfaction of accomplishment. The spiritual side of her nature will find in this way opportunity for immediate expression, and we must never let the fact escape us that without opportunity for expression abundant life is impossible.
Sooner or later there is bound to come to the average girl in her teens a period of doubting, anxious questioning. Most often it appears at the very end of the period. The outcome of this longer or shorter period of turmoil in thought may be a much broader, deeper faith in the Christian ideals and the realities of life, or it may be a drifting away from the church and the loss of definite faith in anything.
There are in the world many more people who will notdothan who will notbelieve, but a large and growing number of young women are questioning, doubting, and finally deciding that we can not know, and that the faith of our childhood is without reasonable foundation. Some of these will seek satisfaction for the spiritual nature in later years in all sorts of “isms,” “ists,” and cults; some will drop all definite terms of faith and find a measure of satisfaction in educational work among the poor. Some will grow hard and cynical, lose all interest inany visible form of religion, and give themselves over to a good time. The doubters and questioners are often thoughtful, sincere young people, with mental ability of the best sort and high moral sense, and every Sunday-school teacher who has any influence with them must put forth every possible effort to save them, for their own sake and that of the world. For the world can ill afford to lose its women of faith.
Occasionally, the girl who asks questions is not sincere in her desire to find answers; she just wants to argue. Argument with such a girl is not helpful. As a rule, doubts expressed grow stronger. In talking with a girl who wants to tell all that she doubts, I have found it helpful to lead her to make positive statements as to what she believes, and urge her if she feels that she must part with her old faith to start a new one with what shedoes believe. To treat her as “wicked,” or to be “shocked” by her expression of unbelief is exceedingly unwise. Positive teaching, free from dogmatism, along the line where her doubts seem to lead will help to strengthen her, and work with actual problems of a social and altruistic nature will act as a good balance. Those who are at work with actual life problems have invariably the strongest andbroadest faith because they come close to humanity and see its worth as well as its weakness, and in the long run can not explain what they see without the presence of God in the world, nor help the deep needs they realize without the aid of Christ.
If the girl who questions is sincere, and is troubled and unhappy because she can not believe, she deserves and should have the deepest sympathy. The teacher to whom she comes for help is to be envied, for she has the great privilege of an opportunity to help hersee.
Oftentimes it is such a little thing that hides from her the whole great range of Christian thought. I shall remember always the little hill that hid my view of the White Mountains I had made such a sacrifice to see. I had reached my stopping-place late at night, in the rain, and when morning came with a flood of sunshine I went eagerly forth to catch a first glimpse of the mountains. They were nowhere in sight. A quiet country road, shaded by tall trees, and a long, low range of hills was all I saw. Deep disappointment filled my soul. I determined to go back. Before noon my companion climbed the hill opposite the house and beckoned eagerly for me to follow. I shall never forget what I saw! There they were, clear, blue, reaching up to the bluer sky. How I loved them that summer,—touched with fire at sunset, purple and gold in the deepening twilight, soft and far away in the early morning mist; and when clouds shut them in, hid them from sight, I knew they were there,calm, still, immovable! I had seen them. Yet for a whole morning a little hill shut them from my vision, and I had concluded that some one had deceived me, that from the little town they could not be seen.
The greatest power of the teacher is that of beckoning to the pupil that he may follow, helping him to climb the little hills, that he may open his eyes andsee. The mental questions must be answered as far as possible. The difficulty in the way must be surmounted. The hill must be climbed. If the teacher feels that she can not meet the task herself, friends and books may help. The girl usually doubts the miracles; doubts the deity of Christ, thinks the Bible is not different from other books, asks the old, old question, “If a man die, how can he live again?” She questions the existence of a God of power in a world where so much evil and misery abound; says the foundation of everything is gone, and that she is wretched and unhappy.
It seems to me a most helpful thing to make her feel that all thoughtfulmen and women have at some time in their experience asked these questions. Both the teacher and the girl must accept the fact of mystery,—that there is much that we cannot hope to know, many laws of mind and matter of which we know just a little, and many more of which we know nothing. Mystery is a fact. That the spiritual sense can reach into a realm where the mental faculties cannot follow, and that the spirit of man can perceive what the mind alone cannot comprehend, we have a right to believe.
When so much has been acknowledged the teacher may tell her pupil what she personally believes about the disputed questions, and what the scholars of the world believe on both sides of the question. The teacher’s belief is often the strongest argument, especially if she has met the questions, found an answer, and her own faith is positive, sane and strong. But if the teacher meets the troubled, anxious mental state of the girl with dogmatic argument, insisting upon the definite phraseology of some creed, she will most certainly fail to help. What we want to do is not to inculcate a creed, but to help a girl to come into living, vital touch with her Maker, that she may live with confidence and be a help in the world.
In time she will find the creed that expresses for her in the most satisfactory way what she has come to believe.
One of the most keen and interesting girls I have ever met, a junior in college at nineteen, said to me after stating all that she could not believe and why,—“Can’t I believe that Christ was the finest man that ever lived, and try to live and work in the world as he did? I can’t believe anything else.” “Yes,” I said, “that is true, believe that. I think he wasmore, but start there. Do all you have planned to help the needy, but don’t forget to read again and again what he said about himself and what those who have served the world most fearlessly and faithfully say of him.”
Two years later at the conference she told me she had come to the conclusion that “what he did and said and his present influence in the world can’t be explained unless he was in a sense different from ourselves, divine.” This washer conclusion, reached by thought and study. It was worth much more than any insistence two years before that she believe as I did.
The way to help most effectually the girl who doubts, so far as my experience has gone, is to help her to see that she can start, standingfirmly on what she believes, and then to help her faith grow by giving her work to do and by putting in her way books that give constructive teachings. Then one may supply her with stories of those who have lived what they believe, and if possible bring her into contact with fine, sane men and women of strong faith who love and enjoy life.
Sometimes all the doubts and questionings come because life is so hard and seems so unfair and unjust. Then the troubled girl needs to know just one thing—“Godislove”; and only the teacher who loves can help her,—she will know how.
Nothing can so stimulate the teacher’s own faith as to be brought, year after year, face to face with world-wide questions hurled at her from the lips of girls in their later teens. She learns at last to anticipate the time when doubts will trouble by giving during the early teens definite constructive teaching that will strengthen faith and deepen the spiritual sense.
The girl in her teens is a worshiper of the ideal, and the teacher’s business is to furnish her with ideals so beautiful, so strong and so desirable that with irresistible power they woo her until she is ready to leave all and follow. If she is possessed by a great ideal nothing is too difficult for her to do, no price is too high to pay in the effort to realize it. Ideals are the things in life most real, for theydetermine action.
In impressing high ideals upon mind and spirit the teacher of girls in their teens has advantages over those of any other period. All nature is ready to help, the wealth of emotion waits to be stirred to action, the spirit waits to be led.
If the spirit of the teacher is to lead, it must itself be led. It must be dominated by great ideals.
The girl in her teens needs a teacher whose deepest longings are not all satisfied—then she understands. She needs a teacher who is not afraid to let her emotions speak—who knows that the greatest deeds possible to man have their birth in the emotions. She needs a teacher who sees amid all the joys and real pleasures of the world, as well as amid the petty cares and dark and puzzling problems which are our common lot, the Spirit of her Creator working out in man for ultimate good the great plan of which she is a part.
Such a teacher can open the eyes of her girls and help them to see the Father for whom the human spirit is ever seeking—and will not be satisfied until it finds.
I have been spending the day with adolescence, surrounded by boys and girls in their teens and young men and women just outside. It is now the evening of Memorial Day, and I have spent most of the day at the popular pleasure resort just outside the city. My companion, a young woman just out of her teens, had taken her holiday to come to the normal school to arrange for entrance in the fall. She has worked hard for two years, saved her money, and now plans to take a full course at the school to fit herself to become an expert teacher in China. She wanted to spend the rest of the day with me and talk about it, and I took her to W. ——, that we might enjoy the out-of-doors. We sat in a secluded corner of the big open dining-room, and during dinner she talked of China’s need, of the great opportunity,—hurled facts about the darkness of China at me until I gazed at the animated encyclopædia in astonishment. Her face glowed with enthusiasm; it is a sweet face, girlish and eager, and Icould but wonder as I looked at her how China’s need had gotten such a hold upon her.
While she seemed for a few moments lost in thought, my eyes wandered over the room crowded with youth. All sorts and conditions were there, but all young. It was Memorial Day, but they had not waited to see the short procession of those who still remain to us of the hundreds who went out with their lives in their hands at the country’s bidding. The procession and all it signifies meant little to them. They were jolly, happy, light-hearted, rough and very crude, and yet—they were just the ones who, if the country should call again, would answer; the boys promptly, willingly, offering their lives, the girls laying their hearts on the altar of their country’s need. But to-day was just a holiday. At the table near us was a group of four, none over seventeen. The discussion and final ordering of the dinner was most interesting. They talked over prices, too, with great frankness, “That’s too much,” and “we don’t need coffee, that will take ten cents off for each of us.” I have seldom seen four people enjoy a dinner as they did. The girls’ dresses manifested the effort to attain “the latest thing,” and the boys were not behind. When they left the dining-room and walked down towardthe boat-house they tried to look so unconcerned! How they had saved for this day! This one little day! At every table were groups just as interesting. The grounds were crowded with other groups, laughing and shouting and joking. The jokes no one save themselves could appreciate. The skating rink was crowded—the dancing pavilion—the open air theater—every incoming trolley brought more intent upon having “a good time.” I forgot China until a direct question brought me back. Here she was,—my eager, intense, enthusiastic girl,—looking forward with joy to China with its crushing weight of ignorance, its impossible language and its almond-eyed people neither asking nor desiring to be helped! What has made the difference between her and those all about me? Before I could answer her question or my own, three automobiles passed, filled with laughing girls and boys, all in their teens. Their faces were different from those in the grove,—their laughter more musical,—the automobiles bore their country’s flag, the girls wore flowers. I knew some of the faces—it was a “house party,” and they were off for a “good time.”
Suddenly it surged over me that this was but one little spot in the great country—and the rush of the other thousands, the shop girls,clerks, the office girls, the students, all in search of a good time oppressed me, and before my mind hurried back to a Chinese kindergarten, my heart cried, “Oh, Lord, how shall the worldplaywith real pleasure and profit?” Isthisthe way? I heard no answer. The problem is too big for me, yet I cannot let it alone, for the world must play, and always the most eager players are young,—and always the girl in her teens is the center of the game.
Man is social. He must have companionships and pleasures in common with his kind. Only when physically deficient, mentally deformed, abnormal, does he become anti-social. This is true all through life and especially true in adolescence when nature is most keenly conscious of elemental powers and passions.
It is true that the girl in her teens is often alone. Alone she dreams her day-dreams, writes her poems, floods her imagination with all the things that are to be. In common with all humanity she meets her deepest experiences alone. Yesterday a girl of nineteen tried to tell me of the happiness her engagement to a fine, strong man had brought to her. She said, “all that it meanscan’tbe said.” Last week a girl of eighteen tried to tell out all the loneliness and crushing disappointment her mother’s death had brought, but she ended her appeal for help with the old cry, “no one can really help, I’ve just got to bear it.” Before theteens have passed so many girls learn that great joy and great sorrow must be met alone.
But for the common life of the every day, man lives with others. He can neither work alone nor play alone, and with adolescence comes the realization of it sweeping into the life. “The gang,” “our crowd,” “our set,” work and play together.
The girl who loves and seeks solitude continually is ill mentally, physically, or spiritually, and needs watchful, sympathetic care, which shall discover the cause of her morbidness and help her to escape from it.
Environment fixes largely the companions of the girl, and her place in the social scale predetermines to some extent how she shall play. If she is in a home where the family is closely related to the church in all departments of its active work and life, the church becomes her natural social center. Its entertainments, suppers, young people’s socials, etc., furnish the means for her amusement and the place where she may form friendships. If she is a working girl boarding in a strange city or living in a home in no way connected with the church, unless the Y. W. C. A. through the gymnasium orother classes reaches her, where shall she find her social center where she may enjoy the society of other young people, form friendships and have a good time? In summer the public parks answer that question. In winter, the skating rink, “the dancing party,” the moving picture show.
If the girl lives in a happy home surrounded by wealth, together with culture and refinement, her social life will be guided and guarded during her teens and she will be helped to have a good time. If she be that happiest of all girls, the one whose own home is the social center, where music, games and fun abound, and where friends are always welcome, she is safe. Such homes might solve the whole problem, but there are not enough.
When the teacher looks seriously at the social side of her girls in their teens and realizes the craving of the whole nature for companionship, laughter and fun, she finds it hard to say “Don’t” even to the things of which she does not personally approve, because she must meet the question clear and frank, “WhatcanI do then?” That question has been answered, so far as the church is concerned, only here and there. Some splendid and successful attempts have been made that give us hope for the future.
Most Sunday-school teachers of girls in their teens have awakenedrecently to the fact that unless the demands of the social side be satisfied in a sane, healthful way, the girl’s spiritual nature suffers, and the mental and physical as well.
When once the teacher really sees it she can no longer be content to meet the interested members of her class just an hour on Sunday, to discuss the lesson of the day. The crowded parks, the trolleys, the “parties,” the call of the great demanding whirl of amusements from Sunday to Sunday, presses upon her soul. She learns how her girls spend the week end and the evenings and then she throws herself, her knowledge, her skill, her time, into the scales, hoping where she finds girls in the danger zone to turn the balance in favor of clean, safe, sane pleasure.
Any teacher willing to make a little investigation will be surprised to learn how many of the girls enjoying the kind of amusements which do not make for sound moral health, were at ten or twelve regular members of the Sunday-school, and how many still come occasionally.
My observation the past few years of the social side of the girl in her teens, and especially the girl who has left school, has made me feelthat if the opportunity to choose came to me as to Solomon, I would rather have the knowledge and power to give the young people of to-day sane, safe amusement than anything else I know.
The social side of the girl reveals itself not only in the desire to have a good time, but in the deep and ardent friendships formed during the teen period.
While she enjoys to the full the society of the group, the girl in her teens invariably has a “dearest friend,” who shares her joys, sorrows and confidences. This tendency becomes especially evident at sixteen and becomes more marked at the latter part of the period.
These friendships may be the source of greatest blessings or may mean the lowering of the whole tone of moral life. Both mother and teacher need to observe carefully the formation of friendships and be sure to encourage only the helpful ones. Public school teachers of experience can all testify to the rapid changes in girls which so often follow the development of a deep friendship.
I remember a girl of sixteen, dreamy, imaginative, and so much interested in her boy companions that lessons, home interests, and everything else were sacrificed. What to do with her, and what interests to substitute, were questions that both mother and teacher failed tosolve. At a most opportune time a “new girl” moved into the neighborhood and entered school. She was practical, attractive, a good scholar, greatly interested in outdoor athletics. Because they were neighbors, the two girls were thrown much together. The companionship deepened into friendship. Soon the dreamy sixteen-year-old was playing tennis on summer afternoons, and reading aloud in the hammock afterward to rest. When winter came she suddenly decided that school and study were worth while, brought up all her averages, and made up her mind to try for college. Skating and the gymnasium made her a new girl. And all this transformation, fortunately for her good, came naturally and very rapidly through the influence of her companion. It comes almost as quickly in the other direction. Nothing can be more helpful to the shy, timid, self-conscious girl than the companionship of one who will encourage her and help her take her place with others in the social life of which she is a part.
Some of the bitterest suffering known to girls in their teens comes because they are “left out” and must go “alone.” The misery of being left to oneself is registered in that familiar sentence, “Oh, I don’twant to go alone!” The girl in her teens needs a “chum,” a “best friend,” a companion, and anything that the teacher can do to aid in the formation of helpful friendships is worth while, for the friends loyal and true through the teen age are the ones who in later years, when the need is deeper and friendships are tested, stand by. That there should be some way and place in which, surrounded by a Christian environment that makes for righteousness, girls in their late teens and just outside, who have no homes, or homes only in name, can meet and learn to know young men of the right sort is evident to all who have even considered the matter.
When the Great Teacher was here no need escaped his notice. All that he taught and did was in response toneed. Many of the teachers of to-day are earnestly asking how far they can follow him in this great principle of his life.
When as teachers, interested in what we call the deepest things in the girl’s life, we are sometimes impatient with her light-heartedness, with the giggles and boisterous fun and “silliness” of the early teens, and the social tactics and sophistries of the later period, let us remember that the natural, healthy girl is “whole.” She is body, mind and spirit, and all three together make her a social being. All three speak in thepassion to enjoy,—to seek pleasure. And the teacher of girls in their teens is as truly in the service of the living God when she boards the trolley car and accompanies her girls to the lake for a picnic supper after a day of hard work or study as when teaching them on Sunday the splendid principles that governed Paul’s life. She just as truly serves, some cold, rainy, February afternoon as, with two of the girls she wants to know better, she cuts out red hearts to decorate the room for the valentine social to which the members of her class have each invited a girl not specially interested in the Sunday-school as when she talks over on Sunday, “Serve the Lord with gladness,” for on Sunday she is telling them how to serve and on Tuesday she is showing them how through her own action. And they understand and are more willing to listen as she strives to impress upon mind and heart the facts and ideals that shall keep them steady, pure and true amidst all the distractions and temptations of the world’s good time.
If the teacher once catches a glimpse of the significant fact that a girl can not play wrong and pray right, a new realization of theimportance of the social side will stir her to action and send her out to seek help from all who are willing to aid in the solution of the world problem, of how to satisfy the social nature in ways that make for character.
That the Sunday-school has no relation whatever to vast numbers of girls in their teens is a fact apparent to any one interested in the girlhood of that period. And it is a fact of tremendous significance. It means that at the time when the religious sense is keenly responsive, when the mental faculties are alert, when the physical is asserting itself with all its power for good or evil, the girl in large numbers is not getting definite, systematic instruction from the best book of ethics, morals and religion that the world has known. She is not being brought face to face each week with questions that have to do with her own welfare, and that of the world, nor is she being led to think definitely of her personal relation to the church and its work for mankind. Unless she is in some way led to think along these lines all the myriad little interests that call to her from the outside world slowly crowd out the more real and uplifting thoughts and influences.
Every one, even in mature life, needs to come regularly into contactwith influences that tend to lift him up and woo him away from the domination of the petty and material, and even more is it needed during the years when character is taking definite form.
No girl can afford to lower her ideals or even to allow them to become tarnished. Life apart from contact with religion in some form seems to do that. Men in later years seem often to recover the ideals lost during their teens; women seldom do.
So even a glance at the problem shows one that the first thing for the Sunday-school to do is to establish a relationship between itself and the multitudes of girls in their teens.
The best way to do this, as any teacher knows, is to keep a strong hold on the girls who have been regular in attendance up to twelve years of age. With these girls as a nucleus, it is easier to make definite effort to gain new members and to make the class so attractive that they will stay.
When the teacher has resolved to make the effort to reach out for the girl who is leaving the Sunday-school in large numbers, the clear and challenging question, “What makes a class attractive to the girl in her teens?” immediately presents itself.
In the first place, the Sunday-school as a whole makes a greatdifference to the girl in her teens. She likes enthusiasm, the impression that the school is popular with its students, that indefinite atmosphere which makes her know that pupils and teachers alike enjoy the hour and come because they want to. A superintendent who is popular with young people, who is thoroughly likable, is almost indispensable in the teen age. The Sunday-school choir with fortnightly rehearsals, if impossible to meet oftener, is a great help, and after a year or two of training will do splendid work. I have in mind a school where the organized choir meets only once a month. The music for the next few Sundays is practised; those who are to be soloists or those to sing the duets are chosen; light refreshments are served by the committee from the choir, and a most enjoyable evening spent. The regular attendance of the choir at Sunday-school has been remarkable, and a number of new members gained. The same methods can be used with a Sunday-school orchestra when there are enough members who play the various instruments.
The girl in her teens enjoys and responds to the well-arranged program when the prayers, the responses and the whole order of service aredignified and impressive. Just watch the college girl and her younger sister in the preparatory school at chapel and you can read her response in her face. She enjoys variety, too, and the program which remains in use so long that after three years’ absence she can come back and go through it exactly as it was when she left, is not the kind likely to appeal to her.
We have seen in our previous studies that the girl in her teens is in love with real life. She likes people, and the Sunday-school lesson must discuss real people and present problems if it is to deeply interest her.
I was present recently in a class of twelve girls about sixteen years old. Nine members of the class were supposed to be “heathen” and three girls were to tell any one of the parables as if for the first time to these people, anxious and curious to learn of the Christian faith. The interest was very real. After the telling of each parable the class discussed it and what it would mean to a people hearing it for the first time. “The Sowing of the Seed,” “The Good Samaritan,” and “The Ten Talents” were told. At the close the teacher told very vividly of an experience of a dear friend of hers who sat one day in the great plaza of a Mexican city, and told the story of the lost coin to a Mexicanwoman who wore a bracelet of old and curious coins. The account of the response of this Mexican who heard the story for the first time made a great impression upon me, as upon every member of the class. The teacher then appointed three girls for the next week to tell any one of the experiences of Jesus on his preaching tours as they would tell it to a group of factory girls who had neglected church for years and almost forgotten how to pray. Several protested that such girls would not listen, and the discussion as to their needs, what they had to help them live pure, true lives, what had made them careless and indifferent, was brought to a close by the quiet question of the teacher, “Do these girls need Christ or his teaching?” They said, “yes,” with conviction, and in answer she said, “Then there must be a way to tell what he said and thought so that they will listen; perhaps next Sunday one of our girls will find the way, and I have a most interesting story to tell of a splendid factory girl who herself found a way.”
That lesson did so many things for that class of girls. It made them think. First they had to be able to tell the stories Christ told. The class in discussion had to think of the adaptability of the story to the people who needed to hear it, and of all it could mean to them. Theyfelt the joy of the one who had the privilege of telling it to the Mexican for the first time. They said themselves that the great army of girls in our factories need Christ. They were to think for a week on how his words might be brought to them. The lesson was left with anticipation for next week’s story. It was a type of what every lesson should be. It connected the past and present; it touched life in their immediate surroundings and in the uttermost parts of the world; it gave opportunity for original expression and it led to discussion. It reached some conclusions. It appealed to the imagination and emotions and closed with a desire on the part of the pupils to talk more, and know more, and think more.
Perhaps in years to come we shall have good courses of lessons, six or eight weeks in length, which will help the teacher to do just these things. Courses which shall deal with church history for six or eight weeks, then with missions, with charities, with the history of the Bible, with the definite teachings of the New Testament and their relation to society to-day, dealing always withlifeand always with Christ as the great helper and redeemer of man in his struggles to live aright. While we wait for such courses the individual teacher mustattempt, with the material she has, to make real and vital connections with life, broaden the pupil’s horizon and increase her desire for knowledge. New courses and better lesson material, either in public school or Sunday-school, never come through folding one’s arms and spending one’s time criticizing the material at hand, but by using it, changing it, adapting and experimenting with it until something is found which more nearly meets the need. Any teacher now reading this chapter may be the one to discover through her own experience just the material for which teachers of the girl in her teens are waiting. That is the reason every one may teach with courage and joy.
It makes little difference where one starts in the discussion of public-school or Sunday-school problems, he always comes back to the teacher. After all has been said, the teacher is the greatest force in establishing and maintaining a close relationship between the girl in her teens and the Sunday-school. “Ways and means” are necessary and to critics of the so-called “machinery” of the Sunday-school, I have only one answer—unless I can get a pupil to come, I can’t teach him. Absent and irregular pupils receive no benefit even from the finest of teachers, and any legitimate “means” by which a pupil may be induced tocome, and a regularity of attendance be established, we have a right to welcome and use. But after the pupil has entered and become regularly enrolled it is the teacher who is the stimulating, guiding and holding power. To analyze the charm of personality which attracts and holds the girl in her teens is impossible, but there are certain things which the teacher must do that we may discuss.
She must remember that the girl in her teens has “grown up,” and that she is very conscious of it. One must be more her friend than teacher. In the earlier years every Sunday-school teacher really interested in her pupils calls freely in the home. When the girl reaches the teen age, the teacher must ask permission to call. “May I call on your mother?” often opens the way for a special invitation, or at least gives the girl an opportunity to make the invitation cordial or to let it be known that for some reason she prefers not to have her teacher call. I remember one girl of seventeen who never gave me any encouragement when I suggested calling, and I respected her wishes. One day when she was very ill, the mother asked me to come. The girl had always dressed well, was intelligent and refined, and would have been supposed to come from afamily of comfortable means. I found it to be a home of real poverty, where the father, a nervous wreck struggling with diabetes, was unable to work regularly, and the mother was obliged to assist. Even with the seventeen-year-old girl giving every cent she could spare, it was a hard struggle. The girl was proud and reticent; she had not wanted me to know, and I was glad I had not come until she was willing. That day when she was ill and discouraged she was willing—she really needed me.
There are many times when for reasons akin to this or others entirely different but equally good, a girl prefers to have her teacher see and know her apart from her home. Every woman who understands girlhood in the later teens respects such a wish.
The teacher’s home should, if possible, be always open to the girls and they should feel free to come. Sometimes it is not possible and then the cosiest corner in the smallest church parlor should be available.
As the girl approaches the later teens the Sunday-school class should become more and more a place of training for service. It has been my experience that after seventeen many girls prefer to work in Sunday-school rather than to remain as pupils. If the girls express sucha desire, or show particular willingness to act as substitutes, to help in the music of the elementary departments, or to tell stories to the beginners, such a desire should be recognized and an opportunity given a girl to test herself under supervision. The Sunday-school should be constantly preparing assistant superintendents, directors of music, secretaries and teachers. Material for the teachers’ training-class is found in classes in the later teens.
Some of the most loyal, responsive and successful teachers of pupils from nine to twelve, I have found in the boys and girls of the later teens. While they lack mature judgment and discretion, they have enthusiasm and desire to succeed in any undertaking. If the Sunday-school is constantly training such helpers as assistants, and testing them as substitutes, then the changes that are bound to come in the teaching force of any Sunday-school are not so disastrous, for some one will be ready to supply the need.
As has been hinted in previous studies, the Sunday-school should lend valuable assistance in making the church a social center for the young people who need it. To be of real vital interest to the girl, the Sunday-school must touch her everyday life. It does that through thesocial side of its work. The organized class giving socials, entertainments, enjoying lectures and music, picnics, trolley parties, skating or camping has a decided influence for good on all the members. I know of one such organized class of girls eighteen and nineteen years old which met three times a month for an entire year. They met one week “for fun,” the next to “go somewhere,” or “to hear a talk,” or “to sew and read, and talk if we want to,” and the third for a “sing” to which they invited members of the boys’ classes. All these meetings were popular, well attended, and have meant a strong united class with a splendid spirit.
The girl in her teens needs the Sunday-school because of the help and uplift which its teachings are bound to bring to her. Even if she belongs to a class in its early teens which is given over to the giggles, to wandering thoughts, to all sorts of asides in more or less noticeable whispers, to the continual admixtures of the Bible lessons and the events of the week just passed or to come,—even though as is often the case with the American girl, she is thoughtless enough to forget to be either reverent or courteous, still it pays for her to come. She gets something,—often more than we think.
And the Sunday-school needs the girl in her teens. It needs her devotion, her enthusiasm and eagerness, her close touch with both the real and ideal in life, that it may keep its balance, stay in the real world of need, and not walk far afield by paths of theory. The Sunday-school has awakened to its need of the girl, and now at its door lies the task of making her feel more and more her need of it.