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.