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 pa.s.sed. 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.
The average girl in her teens uses it more or less in the preparation of her Sunday-school lesson. She hears certain portions of it read without comment in opening exercises in school; in a comparatively few instances it is read in the morning or evening at home. That is practically all that most girls have to do with the Book whose teachings have so largely made possible the wealth of happiness of the girlhood of to-day.
How to bring the girl in her teens into touch with this Book of books so that it shall exert upon her individual life its wonderful power of transforming, purifying, and strengthening character is a problem.
But those who have been trying hard to meet it have learned some things. They have found out that the girl in her teens knows little of the history of the Book, and that when she is told the story of how we got our Bible she is intensely interested. Its wonderful history, from the time before it lay in parchment rolls on monastery shelves and on through the centuries until it reached the hands of ordinary men and women, and the period of their struggle to learn to read that they might know what it said, stirs the imagination and awakens a host of questions that lead to knowledge.
When she begins to understand what it has cost to preserve the book, how not only men and women, but boys and girls, have loved it and died rather than betray it or disobey its commands, it becomes to her a new book, worthy of her study.
But the history of the Book, although it is necessary and does deeply interest the girl and increase her respect for it, is by no means all we want her to have.
The fragmentary knowledge of Abraham and David, Esther, Ruth and Paul which she has gained in her childhood must be supplemented now by the knowledge of great periods and what the world learned through them.
She needs to be shown what the Psalms and some of the chapters of Isaiah and the other prophets have meant to the literature, music and art of the world.
I remember with pleasure the cla.s.s of girls sixteen and seventeen years old who studied the books of Job and Jonah with me one year. The dramatic element held us, and Job and his friends, Jonah and his struggle, became very real to us. Two years afterward one of the girls, in talking about references to the Bible in literature, said to me, "Well, when they refer to Jonah or Job I"m safe, for those two books I shall never forget." She can grasp a book as a whole, remember it and enjoy it.
But the study of the Bible under guidance and with every means used to make it interesting and helpful is not all that we want for our girl.
She must be led to find in the Bible personal inspiration and help.
Experience so far has taught me that unless the girl in her teens is a member of a Christian Endeavor Society or kindred organization, or a member of the church, she is not likely to read the Bible for herself, nor is it easy to interest her to do so. She may enjoy poetry and really good literature, and be an omnivorous reader, yet never read the Bible. She has often told me frankly that she really does not like to read it because it is not interesting and she does not understand it.
We understand her feeling perfectly. The phraseology is unfamiliar, and her knowledge is not broad enough to help her with the context; and to do anything voluntarily with regularity, unless it is absolutely necessary, is not easy for the average girl in her teens.
But every one interested in the future development of the girl"s personal religious life is anxious to establish now, in her early teens, the habit of reading every day the words that have brought new life and salvation to the world.
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 G.o.d," "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 compa.s.sion 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.signing them one week in advance.
After they read the short selections they prayed for one another and the members of the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s cheap New Testaments and small unruled blank books. She a.s.signed 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 a.s.signed 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 cla.s.s 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 encyclopaedia-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 G.o.d 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."
I have found many girls in their teens lonely, discouraged, misunderstood, or in the presence of great sorrow, turning to the words of the Book, and really finding help and comfort.
If, then, the girl in her teens can be taught something of the history of the Bible,-the languages in which it has been written, the methods by which it was compiled and translated, and finally printed,-so that she will not half believe that in some mysterious way it dropped down from heaven, or else never even ask where it came from; if she can be taught that its men and women were real and lived under real conditions in a real world; if she can know something of their struggles, defeats and victories, and learn to love their psalms and poems; if she can be led to see something of their growth and development as they waited for the Christ to come, then the Bible will be to her a real book, not a fetish to be worshiped afar off.
And if she can be led to seek in the Gospels and letters of the New Testament help and inspiration to live honestly and sincerely, then the Bible will become a tremendous force for righteousness in her daily life.
When she meets the hard things of life or the temptations of leisure a girl so taught and trained will have something to help her; and such a girl, as she enters college and takes up critical study of the Book, will have nothing to fear.
The secret of the marvelous influence of the Old Testament on human life lies in three short words,-"And G.o.d said," and the secret of the marvelous transforming power of the New Testament lies in one word, "Christ"-"Christ"-"Christ." When the girl in her teens opens daily to read for herself what that Book has to say of the leadings of Jehovah and the teachings of Christ, she is on the road to safety,-therefore the work of every teacher is to help her to open it.
CHAPTER IX-HER RELATION TO THE EVERYDAY
The girl in her teens, although she is able now and then through her imagination to transfer herself to a land of day-dreams, where all she desires is hers, for the most part is obliged to live in the everyday, and often she finds it hard.
But she is young-and one may always hope when in her teens. If she is ill, health may come in a few weeks, a month, a year at most. If she works hard, she may always hope for a "better place with more money,"
or by and by, just in the future a little way, a happy home of her own where she will have everything she wants.
If she is struggling for an education, the joy of what she will be able to do some day sustains her. If she is a care-free girl with no burdens, one whose parents give her every advantage and strive to make her girlhood happy, life is one great joy and the future an even more wonderful dream.
But these girls, every one of them is obliged to live in the ordinary world, and we who realize it must so train them that when they meet it in reality they will be able to live happily.
One reason why there is so much misery and unhappiness in home life to-day is because the girl in her teens is not trained to live. Even those who love her most say, "Oh, she"s young yet, there"s time enough." Meantime habits are formed and when the "time" comes effective training is not possible. In spite of hopes, castles, day-dreams, most girls are destined to live amid the commonplaces of life, and unless we prepare them, many will fail to learn that
"The trivial round, the common task Will furnish all we ought to ask; Room to deny ourselves, a road To bring us daily nearer G.o.d,"
and so insure our happiness.
The Sunday-school is limited of course in what it can do to guide the girl in the everyday, so many other agencies enter into her training, and yet we have seen that what we teach on Sunday must influence her on Wednesday as she settles some question, or we have not really helped her.
As we try to plan how we may best help her to live, we ourselves meet the question, "What, after all, do we want her to be in this world of the everyday?"
It is a little hard to answer, we want so much for her, and yet it can all be summed up in one sentence, "We want her to be comfortable to live with."
When we stop to think of what a flood of blessing would come to this old world if all the girls now in their teens were comfortable to live with, and will be as they develop into full womanhood, we know no effort should be spared to make them so.
If the girl in her teens is comfortable to live with she will be content in the place where she is. She will have that sane satisfaction which is not apathy but which makes the best of what it has till something better can be found.
Very early in her teens the girl begins to pencil upon her face the first tiny lines which in later years, grown deep and heavy, will mark her discontent. There are so few faces that show their owners have learned to be content.
A sixteen-year-old girl friend of mine the other day said in a discouraged way, "Well, I wish Frances" mother felt differently about their home. Her mother is such a lovely cook, and their house is neat and pretty, too, but she will never let Frances have any of the girls to dinner because they haven"t a maid. She wouldn"t let even _me_ go upstairs to Frances" room, and I know it must be so pretty by the way she describes it. It is too bad; we just love her, and we could have such good times. She can"t accept our invitations very often because her mother won"t let her entertain us. It is just too bad."
The girl was right. It was "too bad" to deprive Frances of the society of these girls, who, though they came from homes where more money was expended, would have so enjoyed her simple hospitality.
Although not meaning to do it, her mother is teaching Frances to place wrong values upon things, and her life will be narrowed and made more and more unhappy because the living-room is small, and the floor not of hard wood, but painted around the outside of the rug, and she will come to believe that happiness consists of possessions. When she marries, like thousands of other girls she will be unhappy unless her own new home is perfect in equipment from the start, she will want the new, "up-to-date" things faster than her husband"s salary can supply them, and the long line of misery that follows may easily be hers.
If, instead, her mother could demonstrate that a neat, clean, and therefore attractive home is a fit place in which to entertain any friend by welcoming her daughter"s friends for a good time, how quickly for that girl things would a.s.sume their right places in the scale of importance. We can help her to be happy and content by showing her in what very simple ways good times may be had.