(6) _A Spiritual Awakening._ Even though the pupil may be a genuine Christian, there comes to him at this time a larger consciousness of God and the soul's relation to him, and with it a call to full surrender. Whereas the childhood relation to God was based on feeling, there is now the element of will-power which must ratify by deliberate choice that which love has prompted. If the pupil is not a Christian, this awakening comes as God's call to accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and crown him Lord of the life as well. If the call is not heeded now, its tones grow less and less distinct, until, in the strident cries of the world, they may be silenced forever. Test Questions 1. What is meant by adolescence? 2. What is the general character of the period? 3. What two facts indicate the critical nature of this period? 4. What six special characteristics mark this period? 5. What two signs of personal consciousness? 6. What desire is paramount at this time? 7. What is meant by altruistic feelings? Describe their development. 8. What new element now enters in to affect the relation to God? Lesson 8 The Intermediate Age (Concluded) #26. Opportunities of the Intermediate Age.#--There is a significant difference in the purpose of the opportunities presented during childhood and during adolescence. If they were to be summed up in key-words, that for childhood would be absorption; for adolescence, adjustment. The opportunities of childhood converge toward supplying the soul with material needful for growth--influences, impressions, and a mass of facts more or less unconnected in the beginning. But this is only the first step in character building. These materials must be arranged, facts must be related to one another, and the life must be related to other lives in real interest, sympathy, and service. This process of relating fact to fact, life to life, and each soul anew to God is the paramount task of adolescence, even though absorption continues with almost unabated strength. Analyzing the opportunities which are presented to the Intermediate teacher in this new adjustment of life, three stand out prominently: (1) _The opportunity to foster high ideals._ Whether it be consciously defined or not, every one has that toward which ambitions and effort go forth, and this ideal determines what character shall be. No one can give an ideal to another, as a book is handed over, for it is a personal thing, to be fashioned by each soul for itself out of that which it has absorbed through the years. It is in the transition from childhood to maturity that every life decides what (for it) seems most worth while, and to this ideal makes surrender of thought, desire, and effort. Is not God's gracious purpose evident, in that this is the time when life is most easily influenced?