The greatest power of the teacher is that of beckoning to the pupil that he may follow, helping him to climb the little hills, that he may open his eyes and see. The mental questions must be answered as far as possible. The difficulty in the way must be surmounted. The hill must be climbed. If the teacher feels that she can not meet the task herself, friends and books may help. The girl usually doubts the miracles; doubts the deity of Christ, thinks the Bible is not different from other books, asks the old, old question, “If a man die, how can he live again?” She questions the existence of a God of power in a world where so much evil and misery abound; says the foundation of everything is gone, and that she is wretched and unhappy.
It seems to me a most helpful thing to make her feel that all thoughtful men and women have at some time in their experience asked these questions. Both the teacher and the girl must accept the fact of mystery,—that there is much that we cannot hope to know, many laws of mind and matter of which we know just a little, and many more of which we know nothing. Mystery is a fact. That the spiritual sense can reach into a realm where the mental faculties cannot follow, and that the spirit of man can perceive what the mind alone cannot comprehend, we have a right to believe.
When so much has been acknowledged the teacher may tell her pupil what she personally believes about the disputed questions, and what the scholars of the world believe on both sides of the question. The teacher’s belief is often the strongest argument, especially if she has met the questions, found an answer, and her own faith is positive, sane and strong. But if the teacher meets the troubled, anxious mental state of the girl with dogmatic argument, insisting upon the definite phraseology of some creed, she will most certainly fail to help. What we want to do is not to inculcate a creed, but to help a girl to come into living, vital touch with her Maker, that she may live with confidence and be a help in the world.
In time she will find the creed that expresses for her in the most satisfactory way what she has come to believe.
One of the most keen and interesting girls I have ever met, a junior in college at nineteen, said to me after stating all that she could not believe and why,—“Can’t I believe that Christ was the finest man that ever lived, and try to live and work in the world as he did? I can’t believe anything else.” “Yes,” I said, “that is true, believe that. I think he was more, but start there. Do all you have planned to help the needy, but don’t forget to read again and again what he said about himself and what those who have served the world most fearlessly and faithfully say of him.”
Two years later at the conference she told me she had come to the conclusion that “what he did and said and his present influence in the world can’t be explained unless he was in a sense different from ourselves, divine.” This was her conclusion, reached by thought and study. It was worth much more than any insistence two years before that she believe as I did.
The way to help most effectually the girl who doubts, so far as my experience has gone, is to help her to see that she can start, standing firmly on what she believes, and then to help her faith grow by giving her work to do and by putting in her way books that give constructive teachings. Then one may supply her with stories of those who have lived what they believe, and if possible bring her into contact with fine, sane men and women of strong faith who love and enjoy life.
Sometimes all the doubts and questionings come because life is so hard and seems so unfair and unjust. Then the troubled girl needs to know just one thing—“God is love”; and only the teacher who loves can help her,—she will know how.
Nothing can so stimulate the teacher’s own faith as to be brought, year after year, face to face with world-wide questions hurled at her from the lips of girls in their later teens. She learns at last to anticipate the time when doubts will trouble by giving during the early teens definite constructive teaching that will strengthen faith and deepen the spiritual sense.
The girl in her teens is a worshiper of the ideal, and the teacher’s business is to furnish her with ideals so beautiful, so strong and so desirable that with irresistible power they woo her until she is ready to leave all and follow. If she is possessed by a great ideal nothing is too difficult for her to do, no price is too high to pay in the effort to realize it. Ideals are the things in life most real, for they determine action.