These beauty building impulses are sent out in such abundance during
the teens, that they fairly cause the body to scintillate, the cheeks
to glow and the eyes to sparkle. Here they come, wave after wave,
_like shimmering light upon the mountains, trooping up through the
physical life like angels of the Eternal, making the body glow with
unspeakable beauty_.
They should be guided by the finest and holiest thought, for _they are
the elect angels of God to the physical life of man_. But what is done
with them? Oh, sad! The parents have been led to think it is not quite
the thing to talk to their children of these things and the child has
not developed sufficient brain activity to reason about them and to
understand them and translate them into elements of beauty and sacred
service. Here the young life stands like a beautiful deer before the
on-coming prairie fire, it feels the tremendous swish of the flood of
feelings and physical life, like the hissing of the flames behind the
deer. If only the deer can reach the lake for which he pants and swim
out into its cool depths he will be safe; and if the child could creep,
as it were, into the heart of father or mother and hear glorious,
tender, holy words spoken of this flood of feelings, which is all so
strange to it, and which sweeps up through its being like a storm in
the forest, and have an intelligence translate them into God’s own
beauty of life, what a joy it would be!
When I see the mighty army of beautiful youth standing unprotected and
in ignorance of the great danger before them, with no one to teach
them and the very parents that gave them being, indifferent, is it any
wonder that my heart cries out, Oh, sad?