Two years ago, at a conference, a girl of sixteen from a fashionable boarding-school, coming from a home where fads and fashions rule, said to me, “I never knew Christ was so wonderful, but then I have never thought much about it, though I go to morning service in the winter. I have never met women and girls like those I have seen this week; they are so interesting,—they are doing so many things to help people,—they seem to love to live. I don’t want to live a mean, selfish kind of life. I am going back to school for my last year. What can I do? How can I help?” I have met many girls of whom she is the type. Little is being done for the spiritual side of their natures. The Sunday-school at present does not reach them to any great extent. One of the greatest problems facing the fashionable church is how to reach in any way girls in their teens who are members of its congregation. Such girls with their abundance of life have at least a right to those things offered in the Sunday-school which will mean the awakening and developing of the spirit. They need teachers especially equipped in every way to meet them and help them. To find such teachers is one of the problems that must be met within the next few years. Perhaps we may look confidently for help before long to the girls of culture and refinement now in our colleges hard at work upon every kind of problem dealing with the development of a better life for girls and women. For these girls are beginning to look at the Sunday-school seriously as the means of bringing moral and religious education to girls of all classes, and are asking how they may best equip themselves for service in its various departments.
The problem of the other girl is just as great. She works all the week, and when on Sunday morning she is tired, the family sympathize. She gradually drops out of Sunday-school, is not able because of her long hours to enter into the work of the church, does not come into contact with any vitalizing spiritual force, and slowly this part of her nature, lacking food and stimulus, begins to die. She spends Sunday afternoon and evening socially, and enters upon the new week’s work with no uplift of soul and spirit to help her when temptations come.
She needs a real teacher, sympathetic and appreciative, to hold her during the first years of her working life. One who can make the class a social factor, and by her effort and personality make the Sunday-school hour interesting enough to insure attendance. Then the teacher has an opportunity at least to bring the girl into contact with Christ, and through instruction to feed and develop her spiritual nature until it is ready through exercise to develop itself.
The spiritual nature needs food as does the physical. If the physical life is poorly nourished in this time of the most rapid development, a loss of vitality and power is the inevitable result. The same is true of the mental life. There must be healthful, attractive, abundant food for interesting, enjoyable thought. And just as surely the spiritual life, unless the emotions and moral sense are nourished, will yield to slow paralysis or run into wrong and wasteful channels.
But there comes a time in the spiritual experience of the girl, usually about sixteen, when she wants to do something to express the longing to give herself which is growing more intense each year. If the Sunday-school and church are together able to provide her with work she is fairly safe for the next few years. The work will mean definite interest, will call for some sacrifice, and will bring the satisfaction of accomplishment. The spiritual side of her nature will find in this way opportunity for immediate expression, and we must never let the fact escape us that without opportunity for expression abundant life is impossible.
Sooner or later there is bound to come to the average girl in her teens a period of doubting, anxious questioning. Most often it appears at the very end of the period. The outcome of this longer or shorter period of turmoil in thought may be a much broader, deeper faith in the Christian ideals and the realities of life, or it may be a drifting away from the church and the loss of definite faith in anything.
There are in the world many more people who will not do than who will not believe, but a large and growing number of young women are questioning, doubting, and finally deciding that we can not know, and that the faith of our childhood is without reasonable foundation. Some of these will seek satisfaction for the spiritual nature in later years in all sorts of “isms,” “ists,” and cults; some will drop all definite terms of faith and find a measure of satisfaction in educational work among the poor. Some will grow hard and cynical, lose all interest in any visible form of religion, and give themselves over to a good time. The doubters and questioners are often thoughtful, sincere young people, with mental ability of the best sort and high moral sense, and every Sunday-school teacher who has any influence with them must put forth every possible effort to save them, for their own sake and that of the world. For the world can ill afford to lose its women of faith.
Occasionally, the girl who asks questions is not sincere in her desire to find answers; she just wants to argue. Argument with such a girl is not helpful. As a rule, doubts expressed grow stronger. In talking with a girl who wants to tell all that she doubts, I have found it helpful to lead her to make positive statements as to what she believes, and urge her if she feels that she must part with her old faith to start a new one with what she does believe. To treat her as “wicked,” or to be “shocked” by her expression of unbelief is exceedingly unwise. Positive teaching, free from dogmatism, along the line where her doubts seem to lead will help to strengthen her, and work with actual problems of a social and altruistic nature will act as a good balance. Those who are at work with actual life problems have invariably the strongest and broadest faith because they come close to humanity and see its worth as well as its weakness, and in the long run can not explain what they see without the presence of God in the world, nor help the deep needs they realize without the aid of Christ.
If the girl who questions is sincere, and is troubled and unhappy because she can not believe, she deserves and should have the deepest sympathy. The teacher to whom she comes for help is to be envied, for she has the great privilege of an opportunity to help her see.
Oftentimes it is such a little thing that hides from her the whole great range of Christian thought. I shall remember always the little hill that hid my view of the White Mountains I had made such a sacrifice to see. I had reached my stopping-place late at night, in the rain, and when morning came with a flood of sunshine I went eagerly forth to catch a first glimpse of the mountains. They were nowhere in sight. A quiet country road, shaded by tall trees, and a long, low range of hills was all I saw. Deep disappointment filled my soul. I determined to go back. Before noon my companion climbed the hill opposite the house and beckoned eagerly for me to follow. I shall never forget what I saw! There they were, clear, blue, reaching up to the bluer sky. How I loved them that summer,—touched with fire at sunset, purple and gold in the deepening twilight, soft and far away in the early morning mist; and when clouds shut them in, hid them from sight, I knew they were there, calm, still, immovable! I had seen them. Yet for a whole morning a little hill shut them from my vision, and I had concluded that some one had deceived me, that from the little town they could not be seen.