"God's Word should be sown in the heart like seed;
Then men's hands must tend it, their lives defend it,
Till it bursts into flower as a deathless deed."
Somewhere in the religious training of a girl there must be a large
place for the feeding of the soul; for unless food which is able to
sustain life and expand it is supplied the girl can never become a power
in herself. Hers will not be an invigorating religion; there will not be
in her that vitality which will make it possible for her to banish fear
and fret, to rise above discouragement, to endure suffering, to triumph
over sorrow, to forget self. But if she can gain this energizing power
she will not join, in womanhood, the ranks of those spending their days
in search of inspiration; she will have it in her own soul. If she lacks
this vital power she will become one of the multitude of Christians who
are dependent upon circumstances for their happiness, upon the words of
others for their encouragement, upon the pleas and persuasion of others
to move them to service. From this sort of woman, who is kindly and
pleasant when things go smoothly, who courageously attacks a problem as
long as another stands by to brace up and urge on, who gives time,
thought or money when some strong appeal is made and then loses interest
and forgets, until another "prod" is given, from this sort of expression
of religious life all who are interested in girls would save them and so
are seeking the means of nourishing their souls that power may be
generated from within.
It is not possible to get inspiration from a source with which one has
no connection and the whole task of those attempting to give to the girl
a workable religion, is the task of making connections with the Source
of power.
Some weeks ago I observed the work of an instructor attempting to make
the connection through the study of the Bible. She knew that telling a
girl to read her Bible is not helping or training her to do it. These
girls had purchased ten and twenty cent Testaments which could be cut,
and small loose-leaf note books, on the covers of which were pasted one
of the pictures of Christ. The girls had spent two weeks clipping from
the Testaments and pasting in their note books "the things Jesus said
about himself and the words God spoke concerning Him." Two weeks more
were spent clipping the "things others said about Him"--Peter, Paul,
John, the Pharisees. The next work was to clip what Jesus said about
forgiveness, about one's duty to neighbors, treatment of one's enemies,
the way to be happy. Later they were to use both Old and New Testaments,
cutting out the verses which they thought would be of comfort to any
one in sorrow, to one who had greatly sinned, and verses which they
considered good advice to young people. That instructor was making a
sane, practical attempt to feed the souls of those girls by helping them
search out for themselves what the Bible has to say on topics of real
interest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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