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.