As the physical side of her nature is awake and the mental side keen,
curious and eager, so the spiritual side feels the thrill of new life
and opens to all the wealth of impression. She is close to the great
mysteries of life, and “whence came I, what am I here for, where am I
going,” press her for answer. In her early teens she accepts gladly
the theories and creeds of those who teach her. There are
comparatively few “unbelievers” from thirteen to sixteen. The average
girl at this period is religious in the truest sense of the word. Her
moral sense is keen, her conscience is alive,—she longs unspeakably to
be good; to overcome jealousy and envy; to be truthful, thoughtful of
others; and a score of minor virtues she longs to possess. Yet in
strange perversity she is often none of these things. She finds it
easy to pray, and a song, a picture, a story filled with deeds of
deepest self-sacrifice, awakens immediate response. She can be
appealed to through her emotions, and her deepest religious sense
touched and developed. The awakening of her spiritual nature thus
through the emotions is perfectly legitimate. The appeal should never
be sensational, and never under any circumstances awaken an hysterical
response. Not tears but unbounded joy should be the result of her
response to an appeal to all that is best in her.
If the Sunday-school were equipped with just the right teachers, and
able to so influence parents and home conditions that the girl in her
early teens were regular in attendance, very few would reach the age
of sixteen without having determined to love and obey God and to live
in the world as Christ lived. Almost all would unite with the church,
which is the visible expression of the religious life,—and be ready to
throw themselves into its work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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