CHAPTER VII—HER RELATION TO THE CHURCH
The girl in her teens, in common with all humanity, needs the upward pull. Fresh air, suitable clothing, nourishing food, so desirable in all stages of her development, become, we have seen, an absolute necessity during her teens. If not supplied, her whole future is doomed to pay the penalty; and unless during the period of the awakening and strengthening of ideals, a steady, uplifting, spiritualizing force has a definite influence upon the rapidly changing and developing forces of her nature, the chances are that her whole future will pay the price neglect always demands. The steady, upward pull is a necessity.
There are so many things in life that furnish the downward pull. Even the more fortunate girl, who lives in her own home and spends the greater part of each day in the enlarging atmosphere of a good public school, feels the downward pull. In the most carefully selected of select schools, the girl, though guarded every moment, feels the downward pull of the petty, selfish and mean. The girl in her teens hard at work among the world’s toilers is painfully conscious of it in one or more of its many forms.
In the struggle between the higher and the lower—the upward and the downward pull—humanity finds its growth and development. If there is no struggle there is no strength. The girl in her teens does not know all this—her teacher does, and puts forth all her effort to strengthen the upward pull.
As we study and observe the girl in her development one question persistently follows us. To what shall we look for this upward pull? There are many answers: the home, the school, friends, good environment, the church. With the last we are especially concerned.
Even the most open and avowed enemy of the church of to-day would not hesitate to place it definitely on the side of the upward pull. Its history, teachings and ideals, like its spires, point upward. It says reverently and steadily to a world of busy men so much engaged in the rush for mere things that they find it easy to forget all else, two simple, tremendously significant words—GOD IS. It says persistently, above the struggle for power through possessions,—“Truth, Righteousness, Justice, Love, these alone mean happiness,” and at some time during his progress from childhood to old age man stops to listen. The most natural and effective time to stop is during the early teens.
Of course the church, being made up of humanity, has its weaknesses. As an upward pulling force it is not perfect. Nothing is. Its most loyal friends are the ones most conscious of its faults and failures. Its members feel its weakness more keenly than the outside world possibly can, just as the members of a family feel more deeply than the outside world the weakness and failures of its members in any particular.
But in spite of its errors of creed, its lack, in many cases, of authority and initiative, and its temptation to shun real problems, yet the members do feel the power of its upward pull, and the community in general is conscious of it.
To place the girl in her teens where she will feel most strongly the lifting power of the church is the business of her parents and teachers.
In the average community the girl has been more or less in contact with the church from her earliest years. Her estimation of its value, its purpose and power, has been built up through the years by what she has heard parents, companions and teachers say of it. It is a refuge for the weak, a company of people who think themselves better than others, a respectable moral organization through which men climb to higher social planes, a necessary guardian of good in the community; or, the visible expression of the religion of Jesus Christ, the highest and most potent force in the world to-day for the conversion and uplifting of mankind. Her opinion is in accordance with the general opinion of those in her immediate environment.
As she approaches her teens, if her parents are not church people, through the influence of the Sunday-school of which she is a member she usually becomes a more or less regular attendant upon the services of the church. If her teacher is wise she does all in her power to establish the habit of church attendance. If the pastor has a thought and a word for the younger members of his congregation the girl, interested and helped, responds according to her temperament.
About the time she enters her teens, if she is a Sunday-school girl, she has had, through Decision Day or in answer to the direct question of her pastor or teacher, the opportunity of saying, “I choose to be a Christian.” If her teaching has been careful and wise she will know what being a Christian should mean to a girl of thirteen, and she will make the choice gladly and of her own free will. Before she is sixteen she will have met the question of her direct relation to the church. Shall she join it in its work in the world? If “joining the church” is made the simple, sincere matter that it really is, the average girl responds easily and earnestly. Only those who year after year have helped girls from fourteen to sixteen decide to take the step can know the genuine, loving, devoted spirit in which they come to their decisions.
Through the weeks of instruction that follow the decision, when the girl learns, under her pastor’s or teacher’s direction, the history of the church, the development of her own denomination, and the statements of its creed, the work the church has done, and is actually doing for the poor and outcast, the rich and careless, her admiration for it deepens, and all the love and devotion of her girl heart goes out to Him whose wonderful life and sacrifice have inspired ordinary men and women to live in the world as real Christians.
After such instruction, when the Sunday comes on which she is to publicly unite with the church she knows what she is doing and why. She knows as fully as any one can what she believes, for belief is a growth, and life and experience always modify it. The mystery of the communion service is to her as clear as it is to any of us, and she prays as truly and sincerely as the oldest and wisest.
How much of uplift to her whole life her act has been can be known only to those who year after year have walked home with her after the service, received her notes so full of joy, and watched her effort to live aright in the weeks that follow.
So far in the relation of the church to the religious and spiritual development of the girl the steps have been successive, natural, and easy, but now the hard part comes.
She is on Monday, after uniting with the church, the same girl that she was on Saturday before doing so. If she had a bad temper, she has it still; if she was easily tempted to be insincere, selfish, sarcastic, careless, unkind, the characteristics are with her still. She has simply placed herself on the side of the upward pull, and every one of us who comes in contact with her should watch the struggle against the downward pull never with condemnation and criticism, but always with sympathy and assistance.
Here is where the church so often fails. Having joined the church she is ever after expected to be good. “The girl has joined the church, all is done,” is a false and fatal conclusion.
I have been watching with real interest a young girl who, after a most happy engagement, a beautiful wedding, a delightful continental trip, is learning to live in the prosaic every day. She had forgotten that it is always there waiting for us. In her great uplift and happiness little things had not made her as angry as before. But she found out what could happen when “Harry” forgot to order the cream for the dinner party at which all her friends were present for the first time in her new home. After her outburst of anger she was so discouraged that she was tempted to think the whole thing was a mistake, that she could not have loved him, and she could never be happy again. She had not reckoned with herself. The plain details of everyday living reveal one to himself. He finds he cannot live in the clouds, and that the art of living harmoniously and finely in the valley must be learned, and it takes time.
The girl in her teens after uniting with the church and experiencing the uplift and stimulus must come back to the every day. Like my young friend, she so often thinks that she will “never feel angry again.” She does, and with the failure to control herself or the quick yielding to her special temptation comes the feeling of utter discouragement. She is not good enough to be a member of the church, and it was a mistake. She needs help—her mother or teacher—to make her see that even a deep love can not in a moment overcome a quick temper, nor uniting with the church overcome the habit of the unkind word and selfish act. It will give her comfort and courage to know that one becomes a real Christian by successive steps, and it will take all her life to accomplish the task.
The first thing a young member of the church needs to help her become what we want her to be, a sane, natural, happy girl, interested in, enjoying and loving all the things that belong to the normal girl in her teens, is work.
She must have something to do, for unless the emotions are given a sane, legitimate outlet, she may come to the fatal conclusion that religion is a thing apart from life, or there may follow a lowering of ideals, or the morbid introspection common to girls in their teens, but which the Christian should escape.
So we must direct her thoughts from herself to her companions. It is she who can establish a bond of interest between the other girl and the church. She can bring the other girl under its influence, and help her see what it stands for in the world.
“No,” said a girl to me at a conference, “it isn’t any of the speakers, or the books, or sermons that have interested me; it is just Edith and Alice. They are such splendid girls and they just love the church and all the work they are doing. They are having such good times and are truly happy. I want to understand it. Whatever it is I want it.” I have heard scores of girls say it in varying phraseology. One girl influences another more than we can, so we may set her at work with her companions.
But that is not work enough—and it is too indefinite. She must have a part in the mission work, the social work, be interested in the sick and unfortunate, and learn now that the business of the church is to care about the lonely women, the toiling women and their children, the little, narrow, self-centered women, and those who find it hard to be good, just as its Lord and Master cared. Nothing is more encouraging to those who love the church than a large number of bright, attractive, natural girls, on whose hearts and lives this great truth is beginning to make an impression which must find expression.
The second thing necessary to the right development of the girl in her teens is ideal Christian women in the church of which she is a member. The women of the church, from those a little older than herself up to those who for many years have been its support, must show to her what it means to be a Christian woman in the church, community and home. Alas for those girls who see that it means only attendance upon the services of the church when perfectly convenient, and when minister and choir are entirely satisfactory! Alas for those girls who see that it means little more than a comfortable sense of respectability and social opportunity!
Fortunate are those girls who in their early teens see among the church members scores of sane, true, large-hearted women interested in every need, anxious to help, and willing to serve in every way that time and means will permit.
The church of whose women the girl in her teens, watching with her keen eye, can say, in her ardent way, “I’d rather be like Mrs. ——, than any one I know—she is perfectly lovely,” is of real value as an uplifting, vitalizing force in the world.
The girl in her teens needs the church to furnish the upward pull and there is need of greater effort in every line and by every member to bring her into contact with it.
The church needs the girl in her teens with all the intensity of her power of devotion and genuineness of her love; with all the strength of her emotions so easily turned under right conditions toward the best things in life.
CHAPTER VIII—HER RELATION TO THE BIBLE
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.
CHAPTER IX—HER RELATION TO THE EVERYDAY
The girl in her teens, although she is able now and then through her imagination to transfer herself to a land of day-dreams, where all she desires is hers, for the most part is obliged to live in the everyday, and often she finds it hard.
But she is young—and one may always hope when in her teens. If she is ill, health may come in a few weeks, a month, a year at most. If she works hard, she may always hope for a “better place with more money,” or by and by, just in the future a little way, a happy home of her own where she will have everything she wants.
If she is struggling for an education, the joy of what she will be able to do some day sustains her. If she is a care-free girl with no burdens, one whose parents give her every advantage and strive to make her girlhood happy, life is one great joy and the future an even more wonderful dream.
But these girls, every one of them is obliged to live in the ordinary world, and we who realize it must so train them that when they meet it in reality they will be able to live happily.
One reason why there is so much misery and unhappiness in home life to-day is because the girl in her teens is not trained to live. Even those who love her most say, “Oh, she’s young yet, there’s time enough.” Meantime habits are formed and when the “time” comes effective training is not possible. In spite of hopes, castles, day-dreams, most girls are destined to live amid the commonplaces of life, and unless we prepare them, many will fail to learn that
“The trivial round, the common task
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God,”
and so insure our happiness.
The Sunday-school is limited of course in what it can do to guide the girl in the everyday, so many other agencies enter into her training, and yet we have seen that what we teach on Sunday must influence her on Wednesday as she settles some question, or we have not really helped her.
As we try to plan how we may best help her to live, we ourselves meet the question, “What, after all, do we want her to be in this world of the everyday?”
It is a little hard to answer, we want so much for her, and yet it can all be summed up in one sentence, “We want her to be comfortable to live with.”
When we stop to think of what a flood of blessing would come to this old world if all the girls now in their teens were comfortable to live with, and will be as they develop into full womanhood, we know no effort should be spared to make them so.
If the girl in her teens is comfortable to live with she will be content in the place where she is. She will have that sane satisfaction which is not apathy but which makes the best of what it has till something better can be found.
Very early in her teens the girl begins to pencil upon her face the first tiny lines which in later years, grown deep and heavy, will mark her discontent. There are so few faces that show their owners have learned to be content.
A sixteen-year-old girl friend of mine the other day said in a discouraged way, “Well, I wish Frances’ mother felt differently about their home. Her mother is such a lovely cook, and their house is neat and pretty, too, but she will never let Frances have any of the girls to dinner because they haven’t a maid. She wouldn’t let even me go upstairs to Frances’ room, and I know it must be so pretty by the way she describes it. It is too bad; we just love her, and we could have such good times. She can’t accept our invitations very often because her mother won’t let her entertain us. It is just too bad.”
The girl was right. It was “too bad” to deprive Frances of the society of these girls, who, though they came from homes where more money was expended, would have so enjoyed her simple hospitality.
Although not meaning to do it, her mother is teaching Frances to place wrong values upon things, and her life will be narrowed and made more and more unhappy because the living-room is small, and the floor not of hard wood, but painted around the outside of the rug, and she will come to believe that happiness consists of possessions. When she marries, like thousands of other girls she will be unhappy unless her own new home is perfect in equipment from the start, she will want the new, “up-to-date” things faster than her husband’s salary can supply them, and the long line of misery that follows may easily be hers.
If, instead, her mother could demonstrate that a neat, clean, and therefore attractive home is a fit place in which to entertain any friend by welcoming her daughter’s friends for a good time, how quickly for that girl things would assume their right places in the scale of importance. We can help her to be happy and content by showing her in what very simple ways good times may be had.
If the girl in her teens grown to womanhood is to be comfortable to live with she must be trained to be kind. Kindness is born in unselfishness, and if we expect her to be unselfish, the days of her teens must be her training days. She must be carefully guarded from daily association with women who speak cynically of life, and shielded from close contact with those whose conversation is invariably the criticism of their neighbors. She must be led to let her heart speak—the heart is rarely unjust and seldom unkind. Her thoughts must be continually turned, as were those of Frances Willard and Alice Freeman Palmer, toward her neighbors in need, until a world-sympathy is born in her, and the joy of helping makes her keen to help. The girl to whose lips almost involuntarily spring the words “Let me help you” will not find it so easy to utter the cutting word or the phrase that leaves a sting. A real interest in “the other girl” will tend to make her unselfish.
If she is comfortable to live with she must be thoughtful. Thoughtfulness also has its birth in unselfishness. The girl wrapped up in thoughts of herself has little time to be concerned with others, and demands invariably that she be the center of the circle. She does not make others comfortable and is not good to live with.
The girl who is good to live with in the world of the everyday, shares her joys and pleasures with the family. How many times I have seen a tired mother forget her cares listening to the recital of her daughter’s “good times”! Her petty little annoyances, her disappointments, she keeps to herself.
After all, when we sum up the qualities of the girl in her teens which endear her to every one, and make her good to live with, we can put them under the one word unselfish. If she is this, then she will apply herself to her studies; she will remember her mother’s burdens and not add to them; she will think of all she owes to her father and show her gratitude to him; she will be a helpful friend to the boys and girls with whom she associates, and she will have a good time, as the unselfish girl invariably does. By frequent illustrations taken from life, the Sunday-school teacher may hope to make her see how true these things are. An absolutely unselfish girl may be, as those in their teens say she is, “impossible,” but the impossible can be made wonderfully attractive by the teacher who can picture the girl in her teens at her best.
In her life in the everyday, no matter what her circumstances may be, the girl is constantly tempted to live below her best. The temptation to be disagreeable about the household tasks that fall to her, to forget the errand she is asked to do, to be careless about her room, to leave things for her mother to look after and put away, to be impatient with younger brothers and sisters—all these things are so easy. Not to yield to them requires constant watchfulness and struggle, and the word of warning on the part of the teacher, through story and illustration each Sunday, helps the girl see these faults in all their miserable littleness.
In her school life she meets the temptation to neglect her studies, and to spend too much time on the social side. Many girls are tempted to yield to petty deceptions; some are tempted to copy or exchange work; many are discourteous, and many more do nothing to make school life happy for any except those in their own “set.” Some whose parents are so unwise as to leave them without knowledge or protection fall into temptations from which they never escape.
The high-school girl needs from the earnest lips of a woman she admires the weekly word of warning, and the oft-repeated plea to keep herself pure and fine.
If the girl in her teens is in business she meets daily the temptation to let her own interests interfere with her employer’s, to waste time, to give excuses, to indulge in pleasures that do not uplift, but mean late hours, little sleep, and physical unfitness for work. She needs every Sunday the practical words of warning and inspiration straight from the heart of a woman who understands her temptations and can help her to overcome them.
Wherever the girl in her teens finds herself she needs some one to make her want to be her best amidst all the things which tend to pull her down. She needs strong words that will show her to herself in all her weakness making her ashamed if she has yielded, and at the same time arousing in her the determination not to yield again.
When the teacher understands the girl in her teens and lives close enough to her to become her confidante, she knows how hard the fight to be good and fine and strong in the everyday is, and she realizes more and more as her experience broadens that while the girl’s love for her parents is a great incentive toward right living, and desire to please those whom she greatly admires is a help, and while unhappiness and other consequences of evil-doing act as deterring agents, yet no one of these things, nor all of them together, will prove strong enough to keep her pure and honest and make her unselfish.
What will? Nothing will make her absolutely perfect. Only one thing, so far as I know, will keep her safe and strong in the life of the everyday. That thing is the consciousness that she lives in the presence of God, accepting Jesus Christ as her example and her Helper in her effort to live aright.
A girl conscious that she lives out each day under the pure, kind eye of an infinite personality, interested in her efforts toward righteousness, and that she need not be afraid to ask for strength or for pardon, finds it easier to do right and harder to do wrong than the other girl who leaves him out of the struggle.
In all the hundreds of girls and women I have met, the most thoughtful, generous and unselfish, the purest in heart and mind, those richest in the finer traits of humanity, have been conscious of the presence of God in the world of the everyday.
They live as in the presence of a perfect father, and live aright, not because men see, but because he sees, and they are able to live as they do because they ask for help and receive it. If we are to be of real help to the girl in her teens, this consciousness of the reality of God we must give to her.
I have so often seen it help in the lives of individual girls. I am thinking now of Vivian, whose parents had given her up in despair. She was careless, rude, and untruthful. In school her teachers considered her “a bad girl.” The Sunday-school teacher who took her class when she was fifteen was one to whom the Christ was very real. She talked about him reverently, as if he were a real friend and a great help in everyday life. She interested Vivian. At Christmas she gave her Hoffman’s “Christ.” Vivian put it on her bureau, dusted the picture every day, and thought about it often. The teacher loaned her books of the sort which made Christ seem a real friend. She began to think of him as such and to pray that he would help her overcome the things that everybody despised. She read “What would Jesus do?” several times. She began to feel that God saw and cared, and as she worded it, “I felt that in all these hard things Christ would help me, and I asked him many times every day to make me do as he would.”
Her room showed that something had come to Vivian. A quietness came into her conversation. She treated her mother with a gentleness that was so different that her mother cried when she told the teacher about it. The girls saw the difference. Twice when she had been untruthful she went to her teachers and confessed it. She made a desperate struggle to speak accurately. Her father called her a changed girl, and his face showed his joy over the change. She is to-day one of the sweetest, strongest young women I know, prominent in her college and trusted and loved by scores of girls.
She is one of many whose lives I have seen changed, and as the years pass, and I see the power of the Christ still working miracles in girls’ lives, I long for more teachers like that one who opened Vivian’s eyes.
The greatest thing which the teacher can do for the girl in her teens is to open her eyes to a real Christ, for then all the incentives for pure, unselfish living in the commonplaces of life’s “everyday” will be hers.
CHAPTER X—HER TEACHER
When for a moment one remembers the girl in her teens, the long line that lives in the memory from those just thirteen up through the sweetest and prettiest at sixteen, to the beautiful, graceful, and dignified ones just twenty, it makes a picture hard to equal.
There is such evident joy in just living! When one catches a glimpse of the groups in their light dresses, with hair ribbons of every size and color according to the wearer’s interpretation of the latest fashion, wending their way to the high school, he feels that life is indeed a glorious summer morning. Though sighs and complaints may be heard over lessons too long and too difficult, they are not very deep, and are soon forgotten; though low marks do make very serious students with minds concentrated on work for a few days after report cards are out, yet with the majority the depression is short-lived, and life is sunshine once more.
When as whistles blow and factory gates swing wide, one catches a glimpse in the early morning of the girl in her teens going to work, he hears snatches of happy laughter and jesting. No matter how hard the work, it cannot crush out the laughter in the heart of the girl in her teens; the good times after work is over or at the week end when she puts on her ribbons and gay attire make easier the crash of machinery and less painful the aching muscles.
The girl in her teens is glad she is alive, and her evident and keen enjoyment of a world which some of her elders have found hard and a little disappointing does more to cheer and brighten the dull gray of the commonplace than she knows, or than we stop to remember.
As we think of this long procession of the girl in her teens which memory can so easily recall, and then see in imagination the host of those who call themselves her teachers, we are tempted to cry, “Her teachers! What manner of beings are they who pretend to instruct, enlighten and guide all this energy, this fascinating line of possibility and promise!”
It is easy to write or speak of the “ideal” teacher for all this fresh young life, filled with inexpressible longings for success and happiness. But the study of the very human and very real teacher, ideal only in the highest sense, in that she is struggling after perfection, will be much more practical and helpful to us.
Should the teacher of girlhood in the years of the teens ever be a man?
Yes, there have been many fine, successful teachers whose strength and manly qualities, whose sincere devotion to Christ and his teachings, have had a lasting influence for good upon the girl in her teens.
It is a good thing for the girl to see the world and its relation to moral and religious life through the eyes of a far-seeing man. It is a help to her to get his mental grasp of situations as from week to week they follow together the life of Christ and his teachings or seek to understand the characters of Old Testament days.
A fine man’s frankness, sincerity, and general freedom from the annoyance of little things prove a stimulus and a help to the girl. It is almost unnecessary to say that he must be the right sort of man, large-hearted, strong, and free from all suggestion of the “goody-goody.”
However, it has been my experience that while a man makes a most efficient teacher for the class during the hour of the Sunday-school session, he cannot guide and influence a girl’s life in the everyday as can the right sort of woman. Unless he has a home and a wife thoroughly interested in his work, or herself active in the work of the Church, he can do little in a social way during the week. If he is a successful, hard-working man he has little time to think of the girls or their needs except on Sunday, and unless he is a man of wide experience or has daughters of his own he does not understand girls, and must perforce deal in generalities.
In this matter, as everywhere in life, there are exceptions and no hard and fast law can be laid down, but my experience thus far has been that, all things considered, a womanly woman is best fitted to meet the many needs of the girl in her teens.
She must be a womanly woman, else she will have forgotten her own girlhood days and cannot come near enough to the girl in her teens to appreciate her need, nor will she have the personality that wins her confidence and love. The cold, hard, mechanical sort of woman one occasionally finds in charge of a class of girls is not the one whose influence will be felt in the years to come.
We have seen again and again in previous chapters that the teacher of the girl in her teens must be in love with life. If she has found it hard, she must not let that embitter her. The fact that she has met hardships and conquered them, has met sorrow and it has only deepened her sympathy and broadened her outlook on life, makes her a real inspiration to the girls who meet her each week.
I am thinking now of such a woman, into whose life one heavy sorrow after another has come. At thirty she is alone in the world, having lost in ten years parents, husband and two children. Yet there is no bitterness in her life. She is not in any sense a cynic. More than twenty girls, from sixteen to nineteen years of age, who make up her class, leave the presence of that sweet, strong woman with her tender, sympathetic spirit, and her calm, steady faith, able all the week to live better, more wholesome lives because they have been with her for one hour. She never speaks of herself, but often of courage, of hope, of making the best of things, of giving all one can in service to the world, of unselfish, cheerful living, and the girls listen and believe that all she says is true and possible.
The teacher must be an optimist. She is not self-deceived, she sees the faults of the girl in her teens. She is conscious of the thoughtlessness, the utter lack of courtesy, the love of the extreme in everything, and the greater faults of insincerity and pretense that characterize to so great an extent the girlhood of to-day. But while she is pained she is not dismayed. She is a good diagnostician. She examines her individual patients, finds the weak places, discovers the cause of the disease, and then goes to work systematically to eradicate it, trusting to the normal, unaffected organs and tissues to aid in restoring perfect health. She believes in and uses preventive measures and they pay.
The teacher must herself be an example in thoughtfulness and courtesy, respectful to those higher in office, and willing to co-operate with, instead of criticizing, those who have plans by which they hope to add to the efficiency of the school as a whole.
None of these things are lost upon the keen-eyed girl in her teens; indeed, the teacher’s dress, even the condition of her gloves, makes an impression and has an influence.
It has become a truism that to be successful in teaching one must know the pupil; yet only last week I met a teacher anxious for a new course of study which would interest her class of girls sixteen and seventeen years of age, who revealed in conversation the fact that she knew practically nothing of the girl’s homes. She did not even know the section of the city in which many of them lived, had made no calls and could tell the occupation of only two of the fathers. She did not know for what the girls were preparing themselves, nor any of their hopes or desires, and she had taught the class for two years. She said the girls were not interested, and did not prepare assigned work.
This type of teacher is fast disappearing, but wherever she exists the fact that the class seems to be “not interested” indicates very clearly that those who insist that the teacher must know the girl are right.
In the series of studies of the girl in her teens an article appeared in The Sunday School Times[1] giving the opinions of several hundred girls as to what constitutes “a lovely teacher,” and according to the statements of these girls, a lovely teacher is, “pleasant,” “fair to everybody,” “treats every one alike,” and “is interested in what you are doing.” “She writes notes to you when you are ill,” “calls on you,” “is kind and patient,” “makes the lesson interesting,” “explains what you don’t understand,” and “knows a great deal.”
Upon these as necessary qualifications of “a lovely teacher,” the girl in her teens from all sorts of homes and from various parts of our country is agreed, and as we think about it we feel inclined to trust her analysis.
When the average teacher tests herself by these standards, she finds deficiencies, but they are not discouraging ones, because every characteristic named by the girls is possible to every teacher.
She can make things interesting if she is interested and takes time to prepare her lesson material. It is a never-failing source of surprise to discover what interesting material,—anecdotes, illustrations, pictures and information,—can be found upon every subject when one is looking for it.
It is perfectly possible for the average teacher to be “pleasant”—to carry about with her the atmosphere in which work becomes a pleasure and difficult problems are just things to be conquered. This atmosphere of cheerful hopefulness makes everything easy. For many teachers it is the natural attitude toward life and work, which comes from constant association with eager, buoyant youth. If it is not natural it may be cultivated.
“Notes” and “calls”—acts of thoughtful kindness on the part of the teacher when illness or trouble enters a home, may be small things in themselves, but they mean much to the adolescent girl, and they bring their own reward. They also are possible to every teacher.
The confidence of a girl is more easily gained if one, to use her own phrase, “really likes” her. If a teacher knows her pupil, that is, sees her as an individual, learns her ambitions, longings, hopes and fears, she does “like” her. It is almost impossible not to like the average girl when one knows her. Every teacher can learn to teach individuals, not classes, and girls, not subjects alone.
The wise men of the past have told us, and experience and observation have proved, that we grow to resemble that which we admire. Admiration means imitation, therefore the necessity that those who are striving to awaken the best in the girl in her teens be those she can and does admire, and have traits of character she ought to imitate.
There never was a time in the history of religion when so many tools and such fine equipment for service were ready for those who want to be skilled workmen, and the teachers who desire the skill to make their work on Sunday really count in life every day in the week, have but to begin just where they are and progress as fast as possible. Bible classes for those who want and need to know more of the Book they teach are easy of access to many, and courses of study are open to all. The training class, where the characteristics of the various ages, and the needs of pupils, and how to meet them, may be intelligently considered, is possible in any community, and good correspondence courses are now available.
If one desires to do so it is perfectly possible for him to become a better teacher for the sake of those whom he instructs. For it is in desire, after all, that action is born, and that which one greatly desires he will seek after. To help the girl in her teens see the best in life and desire it, we have said, is the business of her teacher. Through the physical, mental, and spiritual sides of her nature, the teacher is to lift the girl to the place where she can see for herself.
There are so many girls all over our country, and in the farthest corners of the earth, to-day rendering splendid service to the world, sometimes in the shelter of their own homes caring for their children, sometimes in great hospitals, or lonely outposts as nurses, sometimes as teachers or missionaries, often as servants of every sort, who are living with a broad outlook and deep, sympathetic insight, because somewhere, back in the teens, by the patient effort of teachers they were lifted out of their narrow selves to the place where they were able to catch a glimpse of the real meaning of life.
Finding it impossible one day to make my way through the crowds on the street waiting for a procession to pass, I stopped, and standing back a little from the curb watched the eager faces gazing up the street. Right in front of me stood a group of men in their working clothes, and in their midst a tall, broad-shouldered expressman, explaining the reason for the “parade.” In a moment the sound of brass instruments burst upon us, a line of policemen swung into sight, the crowd of small boys following close beside the uniformed men, their eyes on the flying banners, and keeping step as only boys can.
Suddenly above the noises of the street, above the commands of the officers and the music of the band, I heard a little, thin, shrill voice from the crowded corner where the men stood, cry out, “Lift me up so I can see!” It was a street child, a little girl, whose dress and face showed that neither money, time, nor thought had been expended upon her. She looked so tiny as she stood there trying to peer through the crowd at the procession in the street. But she was not afraid. Again it came, “Lift me up, I say, so I can see!” Eager, insistent, filled with desire, the voice attracted the attention of the men. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then with that look one loves to see upon the face of a strong man, the expressman stooped and picked her up. As he held her there, high above the heads of the others, one little arm went round his neck, and she “held on tight” while the other hand pointed at horses, banners and men, and she called out again and again in her joy and delight, “Now I can see, I can see everything!”
The procession passed. He placed her on the sidewalk, and as the crowd scattered she hurried away, satisfaction written upon her small face. But as I walked slowly back toward the great school buildings on the hill, her voice rang in my ears, “Lift me up so I can see!” And I knew that that is the unconscious cry of the childhood of the world to the teachers of the world; that those words are the plea, often unexpressed, of the girlhood of to-day—“Lift me up—so I can see!” And I know that those who answer must themselves have eyes opened by the Christ, to see, and hearts quickened by his power, to lift.