that which will stir her soul to high and lofty emotion,' and enable her
to help and bless her world?" At home? Can she there breathe in that
which will enkindle noble ambition to love and serve in a world which so
needs love and service?
Once there were numberless homes and, thank God, there are still many
where a girl can breathe in deep draughts of the fresh, sweet, wholesome
atmosphere in which the family lives. But knowing something of that
mother, I knew she discussed with her daughter, dress and parties, her
future at college, her music, her marks, and laid wisely and well her
plans for the forming of friendships which she considered "an
advantage." In her presence she criticized friends and neighbors and
related bits of gossip. Occasionally she scolded her for faults that
happened at the moment to annoy. Her father talked boastfully of his
successes and ambitions, criticized the men for whom he did business,
found fault with those whom he employed, occasionally talked of
politics in a vain attempt to interest his wife and daughter. There were
few books in the home. The newspapers and one or more popular magazines
represented the only reading of the family. The daughter played a
little, sang a little, sewed a very little and studied as much as she
must to insure the certificate for entrance to college. But she attended
matinees, dancing parties in large numbers, and belonged to a whist
club. A whist club, poor girl, at sixteen! Her parents were blind and
deaf to the fact that in their daughter's life there was nothing, save
now and then a desperate attempt on the part of an earnest high school
teacher, or a word from a teacher who occasionally found her in the
Sunday-school class, which might inspire her soul with high ideals,
pure, noble thoughts expressed in action which makes life sweeter. Of
nature's beauties, of her countless miracles, of the dramatic acts of
current history, of the lives and needs of other girls she knew almost
nothing. In her pitiful little world she lived, her best self dying for
want of pure air with the oxygen of power in it.
Can she find in the social life and amusements of the day the
inspiration needed to fill her soul with life that it may develop as her
normal healthy body develops? No, the girls of our country do not find
our social life a help to the higher expression of self. Only here and
there do wise parents make social life simple, free from show and sham,
from false standards and appeals to the senses. But few know how to
center the social life in the home, in the out-of-doors, in clean
sports, instead of letting it center about exotic conditions,
unreasonable hours, and deadly refreshments. Only now and then does the
present social life demand any exercise of mental power.
It is wonderfully encouraging to find, here and there, groups of girls
of sixteen and their boy friends having their simple good times in each
other's homes, enjoying the picnic and the skating party; or the girls
by themselves enjoying camp life, the tramp in the woods, the gymnasium
class; or with their parents or chaperones enjoying the moving pictures
of high standard, without vaudeville. These girls are such a contrast to
the usual groups of sophisticated, bored, blasé girls who at eighteen
have tired of the ordinary means of recreation and amusement. Our social
life suffers from too rapid growth. It does not offer the tonic for
healthy social nature. It needs pruning. Some of it needs to be torn up
by the roots.
And what of the schools? Can she find there the atmosphere that will
stir her soul to noble, unselfish joyous living? Yes, in some schools.
Many are engaged in merely continuing the "system," following a
curriculum strangely deficient in those things which touch life
directly, to inspire it and kindle it with ambition.
Recently, four names, the names of women, were presented to classes of
girls in the last year of the grammar grades and the four years of the
high school. The girls were asked, "Did you ever hear of Frances
Willard? What do you know about her?" Then followed the names of Mary
Lyon, Clara Barton, Alice Freeman Palmer. The show of hands and the
written replies were pitiful. Some had a vague idea that they had heard
the name somewhere, a few gave one or two facts. Clara Barton seemed the
one most familiar but knowledge concerning her was very limited.
Then Jane Addams' name was tried, the same meager replies resulting.
Finally the name of the wife of a noted and notorious insane criminal
was given and scarcely a hand was down in answer to the first question,
and pencils flew over the paper in answer to the second. What does it
mean? It does not condemn the school, nor does it hold the school
responsible but it does suggest that there might be some substitute
characters for the mythical ones of ancient history, or that possibly
the lives of great and noble women might be studied with greater profit
by the girls of today than certain abstract problems in physics. In many
of the classes where the questions were asked that fresh, clear,
vitalizing atmosphere charged with reality, seemed lacking.
When we can calmly look at our schools, recognize the tremendous
difficulties under which they work, realize their limitations, and with
profound belief in what they have done, gratitude for what they are
doing and confidence in what they are going to do, get at our task of
setting teachers free and vitalizing courses of study, we shall be able
to generate in them all the atmosphere in which the girl will find
inspiration for noble living.
Where can the girl turn for the life giving atmosphere? To the church?
Yes, if the church were awake to the facts and equipped to meet her
needs. But what a small part of our country's girlhood comes into direct
contact with the church, and how few churches have adequate leadership
provided for those whom it does touch. The whole problem of adolescence
is a problem of leadership. A wise leader has almost unlimited power in
charging the atmosphere with the spirit of uplift. The church _must_
furnish leadership. It _must_ guide or lose its youth. It must advise
with practical, possible advice.
Perhaps the day will come when groups of churches will unite in forming
social centers and the business men of those churches shall _seriously_
consider the problem of where girls shall meet their young men friends
and how they shall spend their evenings together. Perhaps some day the
men of the church will select in their community a good, clean moving
picture house, and there are some, where they can advise their young
people to go, helping them thus to escape the snare of those who cater
to evil.
Those most deeply interested in a girl's religion, have come to see its
relation to every other phase of her life, and to know that one may not
snatch amusements from the lives of young people, giving nothing in
return.
Just what is wisest to give in return is our great problem. The church
_must_ meet it and it needs help.
The time is ripe and more than ripe for the direct appeal to the
home. It should be made through every avenue and in every language.
It should be made through every newspaper and printed in every
tongue--"_Responsibility_ belongs to the home." All sorts of homes
must help in making the atmosphere in which a young girl must live,
_safe_, free from poisons that mean suffering and in the long run
death to the best things.
I happened one day in a smoke laden city upon a group of women in one of
the residential districts who were meeting together to see if all the
families for a certain number of blocks east and west would promise to
use only hard coal in their homes. One of the women, the mother of
three young children, pictured vividly the difference it would make in
the atmosphere their children must breathe and closed her appeal by
saying, "But women, it means that we must _all_ burn it. The help one or
two of us can give amounts to almost nothing. Into each of our cellars
the hard coal must go and each of us must insist upon using nothing
else. Then we shall have clean, pure air for our babies to breathe
throughout all this section."
She had stated the answer to the whole problem of bringing inspiration
to our girls. It will need _every_ home and _every_ church to keep the
atmosphere clean and invigorating.
It may be that the girl herself is reading and thinking over this _Plea_
and _Promise_. If she is she will realize how earnestly we covet for her
all the best things and how we long for wisdom to help her get them.
Perhaps she will think that _she_ can do a great deal toward getting
them for herself, _and she can_. Let me recall to her mind one of the
girls whom we find in almost every gymnasium class, whose pale face and
stooping shoulders attract at once the instructor's attention. Let me
remind her of the special exercises given that girl for chest
development, the advice about food and the command, "Live with your
windows open. Let the air into your lungs." Again and again you will
remember the instructor gave the command to the class, "_Breathe_. Use
your lungs! Half of you use only two-thirds of your lung capacity!" And
then by way of emphasis she contrasted her own chest expansion and
yours, adding, "If you want health, take deep breaths."
The Plea which I make to the girl herself is that she use, to the full
capacity, her power to inhale those things that shall give inspiration
for pure, helpful living. Every girl has that power. Some use only
two-thirds of it, some one third, some have forgotten its existence. If
a girl wants to really live she must "breathe deep," with her soul's
windows open wide to the atmosphere that will give her strength. If she
is obliged to live with those who do not think of these things, whose
own spirits are starved, she can seek friends who will help, she can go
to the places where her mind and soul are stirred as well as her senses,
she can find in good books great uplift and courage. She will, if she
truly wants inspiration and help to live nobly, attend regularly some
church where the service makes her long to be her best. She will, if
possible, join some class where she can study the life and teachings of
Jesus Christ, who _now_ even as when He was here, lifts those who listen
to Him out of failure and discouragement into hope, in whose presence
every girl may breathe in the atmosphere filled with life giving power.
If a girl responds to this _Plea_ to open her soul to the great Giver of
life, I can _Promise_ that she will find true happiness and joy.
XVII
A PERSON NOT A FACT
Every thoughtful person craves facts. They are cold, hard, sometimes
disconcerting but they carry weight. "It is a fact, it has been proven,"
hushes many a query and silences many an argument. And yet it is not in
the array of facts which can be given at any moment that young people
find their incentives and inspirations. They may have all the facts at
their tongue's end but lack the fire which shall transfuse those facts
into power to act in accordance with their teachings. Julius Cæsar is a
fact. A girl may have no doubt of his existence, she may not question
the great events of his life, but he does not stir her to action. The
fact of George Washington does not awaken the patriotism of a girl and
in schools where merely the facts regarding his life are given his
influence is practically negative. But whenever the facts have been
breathed upon by a sympathetic spirit and the fact George Washington
transformed into the personality that lives in the girl's presence then
his influence begins to count.
It is not the facts about Abraham Lincoln that engender heroism. The
facts may be presented in such a way as to hold but passing interest. I
have heard the life and times of Abraham Lincoln taught that way. But I
have seen Abraham Lincoln presented to a class of foreign girls by one
to whom he had become a friend as real and genuine as if he stood by her
side. As I listened _I_ saw Abraham Lincoln. I felt the kindness and
patience of his great soul, the honest purpose and the fine courage of
his life. The facts were there in that lesson but more than the facts
were there. _He_ was there. At the close of the lesson that teacher
looking into the faces of the girls who represented nearly every land
across the sea said to them, "What do you think of him?" One girl
responded eagerly "I think he was _grand_!" and a dark-haired intense
girl, her black eyes glowing, rose and said with an earnestness and
fervor I can _never_ forget, "I _love_ him!" "You shall hear more
tomorrow," said the teacher, and they looked as if it were hard to wait.
A careful observation of the ways of presenting great men of history and
great characters in literature to young people will convince one beyond
doubt that the girl may store the _facts_ in the memory for a time, but
if the living personality is presented _it_ will remain to mold and
guide and influence the life. The teacher's greatest power is never in
what she teaches but in what is revealed to the individual through her
teaching. The mind hungers for facts, searches for facts and wearies of
facts. It follows personality.
When Richard Watson Gilder tried to voice the plea of the young doubter,
puzzled, perplexed and suffering from the great array of apparently
conflicting facts and most of all from his own failure to win out over
the temptations that swept over him he said:
"Thou Christ, my soul is hurt and bruised!
With words the scholars wear me out;
My brain o'erwearied and confused,
Thee, myself and all, I doubt.
And must I back to darkness go
Because I cannot say a creed?
I know not what I think! I know
Only that _Thou_ art what I need."
The fact is not enough. John Kendrick Bangs says it forcibly--
"A mere acceptance of the fact of love of God above,
Of all the vast omnipotence of Him our Maker and Defence
Is not believing."
Slowly we are getting back to the recognition of the proper place of
fact, of its power as the background and basis against which and upon
which Personality must stand. Our eyes are opening to see that if the
girl is to gain a religion which shall mean life, she must gain it
through a person who reveals a _Person_.
Here is Mary D----, a girl of fifteen, a worker in a mill employing a
very cheap grade of help. Her face was hard, there was no light of
anticipation in her eyes--she had nothing to anticipate. She toiled
through the long hours, for there was no limit to her day in the state
where she lives. Her home was not a home but a place where she could
stay nights--when her father was not so quarrelsome through cheap
drink that he drove her out. One day a woman at a noon service in the
factory shocked at a profane remark of Mary's said reprovingly, "Don't
you believe there is a God?" "Sure I do," said Mary, "but I don't see's
it makes no difference to me." Further questions followed and Mary
declared her belief, adding, "I don't bother much about them things."
Mary had some _facts_ and declared some sort of belief in them, but they
made _no difference_.
[Illustration: THE FUTURE PROMISES NOTHING AND SHE HAS LOST HOPE]
The next summer, Mary, overcome by the work of the year and an attack of
the grippe, was sent by a woman in one of the churches, to a girl's
camp. She lived in decent fashion, she saw a lake, great mountains,
sunsets and stars! She found flowers and sat quite still watching birds
that seemed so marvelous to her.
Slowly she grew strong. One night she went to the sloping bank by the
lake under the great pine trees to attend the twilight service. The sky
was crimson with the sunset and there was a wonderful path of light
across the lake. The songs and the beauty moved Mary's soul. She wanted
something with all her heart that she had never wanted before. She did
not know what it (the great change) was at first, but before she slept
she turned to another girl in the tent and expressed it as best she
could--"I want to be _good_," she said.
Through the weeks that followed she saw in the faces, in the kindness
and courtesy, in the good times she had never known, in the women who
planned them and in the songs and talks at sunset a _Person_. She heard
His name often. He represented all of the happiness and comfort she had
ever known and one day with all the eagerness of an awakened soul she
said, "I love Him." They told her what changes must come in the life of
a girl who said those words and meant them, for they had seen the faults
in her and they were many. She was undaunted by all they said she must
do, and answered in her uncouth fashion, "I'd die doin' them fur Him."
They wanted her to leave the mill but she said no, one of the girls was
leaving and she was to have her place with lighter work. She wanted to
go back and tell the girls some things, she said.
Not three years have passed but Mary D---- is a new girl. She is
attractive; one can scarcely believe unless he has seen it. She is
clean; she is happy. Her friends secured a position for her father
out-of-doors where he had loved to work as a boy. Mary took him to the
Mission and there he promised to begin the fight against his enemy. The
men in the Mission helped. Regular pay made a decent home possible. They
have begun to live.
Overcome by the effects of ignorance and sin, failures as citizens, as
individuals, as human souls, they met a _Person_ and life was
transformed. If it were possible to replace in every factory for Mary
D---- who assented to the facts but passed them by as having nothing to
do with her, Mary D---- who met a Person and loved Him what a world of
new moral forces we could create!
He was revealed to Mary D---- not in the abstract which could not
impress her but in the concrete which she understood. O if only we
_could_ grasp the significance of that!
Ruth M---- was a college junior with ancestry and wealth, brilliant,
sarcastic, selfish. She knew all the facts and accepted them. She was a
member of a church with which she had united at fourteen as had her
mother and grandmother before her. She did not think much about the
facts, they had not greatly impressed her. If questioned, she promptly
stated that she believed this and that, she thought such and such things
were probable though no one could prove them, and dismissed the subject
to talk of her own plans and interests.
Then her great sorrow came. In a moment she lost everything dear to her.
They called it an accident. She held God accountable and in bitterness
and anger turned her back upon all the facts. The months passed and her
health breaking she was obliged to leave college. At the beautiful
health resort to which she went she met a girl she had known well when a
little child. They renewed the friendship. Then the girl's sorrow came.
It was not death, it was far worse, scandal and disgrace in her family,
which had been unstained before. Out of a clear sky it came.
In amazement Ruth watched her friend. She saw her suffer but she saw no
conquering bitterness, heard no words of wild rebellion. She looked into
a sweet calm face and saw a girl less than twenty, with life's
conditions changed in a moment, adjust herself to the new conditions
and go on. Seeking a solution she questioned her friend and met a
Person. Day after day as she saw Him revealed in that heroic life, as
she beheld the girl overcoming in His strength natural resentment
against the injustice and unkindness of those who would make her suffer
for the sins of her parents, the facts were swallowed up in the Person
and she loved Him.
Together, the past summer, in a rest camp for mothers and babies they
worked out the commands of the Person who had made it possible for them
to take up life after bitter loss and find it sweet.
If one could summon to a central place the girls who have met the Person
what an inspiration they would be! Of every sort and condition, of every
color and nation, speaking languages new and old and dialects that have
never been written, all uniting in the testimony that He has made life
great for them.
The facts are in chaotic state. Parts of truth and segments of universal
fact are waiting for man to unite them. Only the perfect whole can speak
with certainty and we must wait for that. The creeds are countless. They
do not matter much. The Person said little about them. They are just
our poor attempts to put in words--God and His will. It is
"Not the Christ of our subtile creeds
But the Lord of our hearts, of our homes,
Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs;
The brother of want and blame,
The lover of woman and men,
With a love that puts to shame
All passions of mortal ken."
The only way to meet a fact is to face it, follow it and see where it
will lead. It is prejudice that blinds one's eyes to facts. It is only
man's limited vision, that makes a part seem as a whole, that accepts as
_fact_ the thing he would _like_ to be a fact, that one need fear. Facts
that _are_ facts need never cause one to doubt. For fact is truth and
truth leads to God. The business of every church and every teacher of
religion is to discover the facts, _and present the Person_.
If the girl herself is reading these words let her be assured that more
than any array of facts that she can gather, more than any proofs man
can summon, she needs the Person. The handicapped girl finds in Him
strength to triumph in spite of it, the privileged girl finds in Him
the inspiration for her work of extending her privileges, the girl who
is easily led to find in Him one who never leads astray, the girl who is
misunderstood can find in Him one who understands perfectly, the
indifferent girl who "means to" will find in Him a friend to encourage,
steady and compel, the girl who worships the twin idols can find in Him
a rescuer who shall set her free, the girl of high ideals will see in
Him the highest Ideal, the source of all the others, and the average
girl of the every day with her good points and bad, her successes and
failures, will find in Him a Friend who will make life seem wonderfully
worth while.
Don't let the multitude of things in which you are interested, the maze
of contradiction, the abstract facts, the trials and hardships of life,
the pleasures you love, or any other thing make you pass Him by. If you
gain everything else in life and miss Him you will fail to know what
life means. If you find Him you will find Love and that is the best
thing life can give.
XVIII
THE GLORY OF THE CLIMAX
So many miss it. It is more than duty but the path that leads to the
glory of it often begins with the plain, insistent, _ought_ of duty. It
is more than obedience, though without obedience none ever find it. How
many girls there are who are disappointed, dissatisfied, suffering
perhaps in body and soul because they never learned to obey! It is a
great thing to be able to hear "you ought" and then at whatever cost to
_obey_ it. But the climax is not found in these things great as they
are.
Faithful servants of a religion whose law is duty one finds among girls
and honors them. Good and faithful servants of a religion whose law is
obedience there are among girls. But neither of these have found the
glory of the climax. The climax is Love. The supreme command of the
Founder of true religion is--Thou shalt Love.
The religion of love is a girl's religion and she can never be
satisfied with any other. If those who have tried to teach her religion
have failed to show her this, then they have succeeded in giving her
only a set of laws to be obeyed or a list of things she should not do.
Love gives to Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not _power_ without which they
can accomplish little.
Love transforms hard, disagreeable, empty service and makes it glorious.
No one knows this better than a girl. She has done things when necessity
compelled her to do them, and she has done them when love compelled her
to do them. She knows the difference. Jesus founded His Kingdom on the
knowledge He had of Love. He _knew_ the kingdom would stand. On his
lonely island of banishment dreaming in the twilight, with all the
struggle and attainment behind him Napoleon realized it as he said,
"Caesar, Charlemagne, I, have founded empires. They were founded on
force and have perished. Jesus Christ has founded a kingdom on Love, and
to this day there are millions who would die for Him."