I saw a note book recently prepared by a fifteen-year-old girl which I
believe most valuable because of the things about which it has lead her
to think. She had taken as the subject of her book, "The Good Shepherd."
On the cover was a picture with that title; in the inside a fine
collection of pictures representing Jesus as the Good Shepherd,
clippings regarding oriental shepherd life, "The Shepherd Psalm," the
Parable of the Lost Sheep and the words of hymns like "The Ninety and
Nine" and poems like "That Li'l Black Sheep."
One cannot soon forget that book with its decorated margins, its neat
mounting of cards and clippings and its beautiful pictures. The effect
of the book upon the girl who made it, the teachers said was very
apparent. Another book was entitled "Come Unto Me," and the pictures,
verses and hymns were most impressive. When each girl has exchanged
books with each member of the class, they are to be sent to a rescue
home for girls.
The Bible messages to mankind brought by such simple methods into direct
contact with a girl in her early teens is one means of nourishing her
soul. If it is true that the best in poetry, art, literature and
oratory, as well as the greatest uplift to character, finds its source
in that Book the girl should come into real touch with it that it may
feed her expanding soul. It is this sort of first-hand, individual study
while she is still a girl which will help her later to turn to the Book
for encouragement, comfort and strength, and lead her to great thoughts
and the attempting of great things because her own soul is inspired.
The majority of teachers, superintendents and leaders interested in
religious instruction today were trained in Christian homes and taught
as little children to pray. Attendance at church services of various
kinds gave to them almost unconsciously a phraseology of prayer and
impressed upon them the place of prayer in the Christian life. So
familiar is the fact of prayer that they forget that the majority of
pupils in the average Sunday-school of today are not familiar with the
words of prayer at family worship, are at best irregular in church
attendance and that many are associated with no society in the church
where there is any training in prayer.
To such young people prayer has nothing to do with life. They say the
Lord's Prayer at school perhaps, formally and hurriedly in the morning,
they hear the prayer from the superintendent's desk on Sunday, or
perchance remember the evening, "Now I lay me down to sleep," which is
said in many homes not Christian, by the little child. But the prayer;
which though only an echo of adult prayers, and only half understood,
calms many a fear in a childish heart, helps to victory over sin many a
struggling ten-year-old reared in a Christian home, is utterly foreign
to the child who has none of these influences and who meets in the
average Sunday-school not cultivation, but the abstract taken for
granted type of instruction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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