One beautiful June Sunday I stood waiting for my car at the transfer
corner, thinking about the Sunday problem and watching the crowd
hurrying away to the parks and the lakes, when a most interesting
group of girls passed. There were six or eight of them about sixteen
years old, and in their light dresses, their fresh, sweet faces half
hidden by hats that were "too dear for anything," they made a picture
good to see.
They were evidently returning from Sunday-school, for most of them
carried Bibles, and, as I watched them out of sight, I was plunged
into a wilderness of questions as to what that wonderful old Book,
written in the dim, hazy past under foreign skies, in languages almost
forgotten, could possibly have to do with gay, happy, laughing
girlhood--in the midst of the things of to-day. And I knew that to the
majority of girls in their teens it means little. Most of them own it,
respect it, and feel a certain reverence for what it says, but it
plays little part in their everyday lives.
The average girl in her teens uses it more or less in the preparation
of her Sunday-school lesson. She hears certain portions of it read
without comment in opening exercises in school; in a comparatively few
instances it is read in the morning or evening at home. That is
practically all that most girls have to do with the Book whose
teachings have so largely made possible the wealth of happiness of the
girlhood of to-day.
How to bring the girl in her teens into touch with this Book of books
so that it shall exert upon her individual life its wonderful power of
transforming, purifying, and strengthening character is a problem.
But those who have been trying hard to meet it have learned some
things. They have found out that the girl in her teens knows little of
the history of the Book, and that when she is told the story of how we
got our Bible she is intensely interested. Its wonderful history, from
the time before it lay in parchment rolls on monastery shelves and on
through the centuries until it reached the hands of ordinary men and
women, and the period of their struggle to learn to read that they
might know what it said, stirs the imagination and awakens a host of
questions that lead to knowledge.
When she begins to understand what it has cost to preserve the book,
how not only men and women, but boys and girls, have loved it and died
rather than betray it or disobey its commands, it becomes to her a new
book, worthy of her study.
But the history of the Book, although it is necessary and does deeply
interest the girl and increase her respect for it, is by no means all
we want her to have.
The fragmentary knowledge of Abraham and David, Esther, Ruth and Paul
which she has gained in her childhood must be supplemented now by the
knowledge of great periods and what the world learned through them.
She needs to be shown what the Psalms and some of the chapters of
Isaiah and the other prophets have meant to the literature, music and
art of the world.
I remember with pleasure the class of girls sixteen and seventeen
years old who studied the books of Job and Jonah with me one year. The
dramatic element held us, and Job and his friends, Jonah and his
struggle, became very real to us. Two years afterward one of the
girls, in talking about references to the Bible in literature, said to
me, "Well, when they refer to Jonah or Job I'm safe, for those two
books I shall never forget." She can grasp a book as a whole, remember
it and enjoy it.
But the study of the Bible under guidance and with every means used to
make it interesting and helpful is not all that we want for our girl.
She must be led to find in the Bible personal inspiration and help.
Experience so far has taught me that unless the girl in her teens is a
member of a Christian Endeavor Society or kindred organization, or a
member of the church, she is not likely to read the Bible for herself,
nor is it easy to interest her to do so. She may enjoy poetry and
really good literature, and be an omnivorous reader, yet never read
the Bible. She has often told me frankly that she really does not like
to read it because it is not interesting and she does not understand
it.
We understand her feeling perfectly. The phraseology is unfamiliar,
and her knowledge is not broad enough to help her with the context;
and to do anything voluntarily with regularity, unless it is
absolutely necessary, is not easy for the average girl in her teens.
But every one interested in the future development of the girl's
personal religious life is anxious to establish now, in her early
teens, the habit of reading every day the words that have brought new
life and salvation to the world.
It needs no argument to show that any girl is safer, finer, and less
easily led into dangerous byways of thought and action if in beginning
the day, or when it closes, she takes time to read "Blessed are the
pure in heart: for they shall see God," "Do unto others as ye would
that they should do unto you," or the story of the Good Samaritan, the
healing of the blind, the parables, the thirteenth of First
Corinthians, or, "If any man thinketh himself to be religious, while
he bridleth not his tongue but deceiveth his heart, this man's
religion is vain," or the next verse, with its clear-cut definition so
plain that any girl can understand.
Through these and the other words of the New Testament she is coming
daily into touch with the deepest, most fundamental truths to which
men have ever listened. More than that, she is coming through these
words into touch with Christ. No girl can read day after day the words
he spoke or the record of his works of compassion and love, the story
of his patient, brave endurance of the cross, his faith that the
disciples he loved would carry on his mission, without becoming a
finer type of girl. And if after reading she bows her head for a
moment only, and sincerely prays for strength to do right all through
the day, or when the day is over, asks for pardon for what she has
done amiss, then we need not fear that she will go far wrong on her
way through life. One may be insincere under many circumstances, but
one is rarely insincere when, alone, at the beginning or close of the
day he reads the words of that Book, and prays. So we, who long for
the best for our girl in her teens, are willing to do anything in our
power to help her establish the habit of sincere reading of the
teachings of Christ, and of genuine prayer for strength to live them
out every day of her life.
Oftentimes such little things help in forming the habit. I know of one
teacher successful in reaching the secret recesses of girls' hearts,
who, with three of her fourteen-year-old girls, read every night for a
year the same Bible chapters, she assigning them one week in advance.
After they read the short selections they prayed for one another and
the members of the class not Christians. Just how the prayers of those
girls for their friends could or did affect their lives none of us can
understand, but that they did have a definite moulding influence on
the lives of the girls themselves and their relation to other girls
was plainly evident.
I know of one impulsive, imaginative, sixteen-year-old girl who formed
the habit of reading, while retiring, a chapter or more from the weak,
sentimental, but nevertheless fascinating, love stories which just
then were her delight. She found it hard to go to sleep, and often lay
for hours in a highly excited emotional state, going over and over the
words of the hero and heroine.
At Christmas, an older girl whom she greatly admired gave her a Year
Book having a Bible verse at the top of each page, followed by
quotations or forceful words of explanation. She asked her young
friend to read it the very last thing every night, and underline with
pencil anything she thought especially fine or true, and put a
question mark beside anything she did not understand, and every few
weeks they would look it over together. The sixteen-year-old decided
to learn the Bible verses. Often she looked up the reference in the
Bible. She faithfully underlined, questioned, and went to bed with
some of the finest thoughts in literature filling her mind. Any one
who heard her testimony, while in college, as to what that year's
reading meant to her might be almost tempted to present year books to
all girls in their teens.
Another very earnest young teacher, in love with girls, purchased for
her class cheap New Testaments and small unruled blank books. She
assigned a topic for a month's reading, such as faith, love, courage,
justice, and asked the girls to cut from the Testament all verses on
that subject, and paste them under the proper headings. The result was
a group of girls reading every night on the assigned topic, and at the
end of the month able to read from their blank books all that Christ
and the apostles had to say on that subject. Many of the girls added
quotations and poems referring to the special subject, thus enlarging
their own conception of it.
The girls valued their blank books highly, and exhibited them with
satisfaction. The teacher did not seem especially proud of the books,
but exceedingly pleased that the class had grown familiar with so many
of the verses. She had a right to feel gratified with her work, for
she was helping them to become acquainted with the Book, just as I
help my girls in their teens in school to become familiar with the
encyclopædia--by sending them to it repeatedly, until they form the
habit of consulting it.
That many girls in their teens are steadied and helped through hard
experiences by the words of comfort and encouragement which they find
in the Bible any teacher of experience in Sunday-school work knows.
I am looking now at the picture of the sweet, strong face of a girl of
seventeen. She is hard at work helping support the family. The father
has tried many times to reform and let drink alone, and as many times
failed. The girl can hardly endure the life at home, yet for the sake
of the younger children she must stay. Recently, when I told her how
much I admired her, she said, "It has seemed this year as if I
couldn't keep on. I can't tell you how much two verses on my calendar
have helped me. I keep saying them over and over, 'I will never leave
thee, nor forsake thee,' and 'Fear not, I will help thee.'"
Another girl, struggling to overcome the habit of exaggeration which
has been a characteristic of her family for generations, said to me
one day, "I think so often of that verse, 'With God all things are
possible.' If it weren't for that I would give up, for just as I think
I am improving I fail again, and it seems as if I never could tell
things as they are."
I have found many girls in their teens lonely, discouraged,
misunderstood, or in the presence of great sorrow, turning to the
words of the Book, and really finding help and comfort.
If, then, the girl in her teens can be taught something of the history
of the Bible,--the languages in which it has been written, the methods
by which it was compiled and translated, and finally printed,--so that
she will not half believe that in some mysterious way it dropped down
from heaven, or else never even ask where it came from; if she can be
taught that its men and women were real and lived under real
conditions in a real world; if she can know something of their
struggles, defeats and victories, and learn to love their psalms and
poems; if she can be led to see something of their growth and
development as they waited for the Christ to come, then the Bible will
be to her a real book, not a fetish to be worshiped afar off.
And if she can be led to seek in the Gospels and letters of the New
Testament help and inspiration to live honestly and sincerely, then
the Bible will become a tremendous force for righteousness in her
daily life.
When she meets the hard things of life or the temptations of leisure a
girl so taught and trained will have something to help her; and such a
girl, as she enters college and takes up critical study of the Book,
will have nothing to fear.
The secret of the marvelous influence of the Old Testament on human
life lies in three short words,--"And God said," and the secret of the
marvelous transforming power of the New Testament lies in one word,
"Christ"--"Christ"--"Christ." When the girl in her teens opens daily to
read for herself what that Book has to say of the leadings of Jehovah
and the teachings of Christ, she is on the road to safety,--therefore
the work of every teacher is to help her to open it.