The Girl in Her Teens

by Margaret Slattery

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.”