The Girl and Her Religion Part 6

If a girl, troubled and perplexed by the things the mind cannot grasp or heart understand, chances to read this chapter let her know that the trouble lies not with the G.o.d of whom she has been taught but with those who, trying to do their best, have been weak in their teaching.

If we can banish from our faith all its man made littleness, all its chaos of bickerings, all the fret of the conflicting opinions of those who, after all, are themselves but children searching after truth, and give to the growing girl, a growing religion, the G.o.d of the Universe will become her G.o.d and she will worship him in sincerity and truth all the days of her life.

"Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our feverish ways; Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise."

XII

IN THE HANDS OF A TRIAD

Despite all the words that have been written and spoken in the past it is still true that many of those engaged in the religious training of a girl, or responsible for the form of religion which is presented to her, do not realize, or else they ignore the fact that she is in the hands of a triad--body, mind and spirit. As a triad she develops if she be a normal girl, as a triad she acts. Her character is made by these three agencies working together. It is a fact, the significance of which none of us fully realize, as yet, that a clean mind and a clean heart in an unclean body is very rare. A quick, alert balanced mind and a pure, heroic spirit in a starved and diseased body is also rare. A well-nourished, well-cared-for body with all its functions doing their work and a mental weakling is a rare combination.

Once we did not know that adenoids made children mentally deficient, nor did we dream that teeth properly attended to, and a pair of gla.s.ses could transform a girl from a sullen, morose disobedient child into an interesting, happy and obedient one; but some of us have seen that transformation and marveled at it. Once we believed that inherent moral degeneracy sent a twelve-year-old girl to the courts. Now we are beginning to see the relationship between a room with no windows and no running water, a dirty alley or a wretched street and the moral degeneracy. Once we shook our heads and said, "Well, they say there's one black sheep in every family." Now we are beginning to see that the black sheep may be made by the gratification of every physical desire and every mental whim and the neglect of the spirit.

Churches, schools and individuals are beginning at last to _seriously_ consider the teaching of morals and religion and as they give themselves to the task of laying down practical workable plans, suddenly as if it were a new revelation comes the _fact_ that the individual is a triad and she must be taught as such.

If homes were ideal it would be an easy task. If it were possible for the majority of homes to approach the ideal it would seem an easier task. But with poverty, ignorance, inefficiency and indifference clutching at the very center of dynamic power, the task is one of the greatest which men have as yet been asked to meet. If homes were ideal, from the moment the little girl comes into the world, and even before her coming, sensible, rational care would be taken of her body, not only to make it beautiful but that it might do its work for her in healthful, normal fashion and be a good servant throughout her life. Her mind would be awakened and trained to think, her will to act and to control and all her sense of reverence, wonder and worship developed while her love for the good and the beautiful, the heroic and self-sacrificing was stimulated.

But homes are not ideal and the majority have neither accepted nor considered deeply the task of preparing the _whole_ girl for life. Some prepare her physically and let the rest of the triad develop as it will.

Some prepare her mentally and morally while both body and spirit suffer.

Some seek to prepare her spiritually by fitting on as a sort of garment what they believe to be religion while body and mind receive little attention and some let all three develop as convenience and chance may dictate.

When men's consciences have been awakened and they find the home incapable or inert, they have turned the responsibility over to the public school and the church. Of late civic forces have given their aid.

Those directly interested in the religious training of the girl are coming to agree that these three agencies are needed and that they must work _together_ if the whole girl is to be helped.

_Some one_ must teach a girl the things about herself that she ought to know. That some one is her mother. No one else can do it with the same power. Neither church nor school can perform well the delicate task of revealing life's secrets, and blundering is deadly. But church and school and civic forces together can help the mother, can give her a proper conception of her duty, give her the words to say, perhaps. The school can teach morals and keep its own moral standards high; the church can awaken the spiritual life of a girl and nurture it, that knowledge and high ideals may work together to fortify and strengthen her. The civic forces can see to it that the girl has the opportunity for pure physical enjoyment, for mental stimulation and moral uplift.

What civic forces have been able to do through tuberculosis exhibitions and child welfare exhibits, by showing parents the truth regarding the importance of the physical care of their girls, furnishes encouragement to go further. Good newspapers may speak to parents untouched by the school and out of touch with the church and have done so. The majority of parents when they see and believe will act.

There was a time, and not long since, when those engaged in teaching religion were not concerned with the number of hours the girl worked, the age at which she began, the sort of room in which she slept, the amount of real food she had. And because they were not concerned they lost her. Today a teacher cannot teach religion if she does not care about life. She attempts it but she fails. Jesus astonished the Scribes, Pharisees, Doctors of the Law and Priests of the Temple by His intense interest in the physical needs of men. He took into account the _whole_ man and set body, mind and spirit free.

When one considers how little mental stimulus and training comes to the average girl after leaving school and is aware of the vast majority who leave school at any early age, she is not surprised at the lack of power to think on the part of so many, and at the very limited knowledge she finds when attempting to teach. The girls of today need to be informed on matters of public welfare and political and economic affairs as never before. Where shall they go for that information and how shall they be led to desire it? Girls need to know the meaning of religion and in simple fashion the history of creeds and denominations. They need instruction from the Bible which cannot be given in a half hour a week of more or less regular study.

Once those who were teachers of religion were not deeply concerned with what the girl read and the things about which she thought. Now one cannot teach religion truly unless she _knows_ what a girl reads, about what she talks and thinks, whether she is in touch in any way with that which can broaden her mind and give her food for thought.

No girl is safe, no girl can be her best or get the most out of life who is weak on the third side of the triad. Unless she has the help of a well developed spiritual nature how the littlenesses, the routine, the difficulties, the jealousies and envyings, the gossiping and petty dishonesties of life dwarf her.

Long ago, when I first began to print pictures, I tried to print a picture of a beautiful rail-boat against long lines of sand dunes, on a postal card. I couldn't. They explained to me that I must have sensitized cards, then the imprint could be made. The girls of today need to be developed and sensitized spiritually that the imprint of purity and righteousness may be made upon the whole life. The spiritual life, as well as the mental and physical, is as we shall see in a later chapter, a matter of cultivation.

If the girl herself reads this chapter she will stop a moment to examine the triad which makes up her own life. Perhaps the physical side is weak. She may strengthen it if she will. Now is the time, while she is young and it will obey her. When habit has written its words in iron on muscle, heart and nerves it will be harder for her to control it.

Perhaps she has been careless about fresh air, perhaps has been tempted to let pie and cake and coffee make a lunch, perhaps to neglect rubbers, to get only half the sleep she needs or to dress foolishly on cold winter days. If the physical side of the triad is weak a girl must suffer. The body is a despotic master and it is a splendid servant. Even if others have failed to help her and circ.u.mstances have been against her, a girl can if she will, improve her physical condition and every little improvement is worth the cost. It may not seem to her at first a part of her religion to keep her body well and to strengthen it by every means in her power, but it is.

It may be that the mental side is weak; that it is lazy and does not want to think; that the only food it craves is the sensational, and light, _very light_ reading and not much of that. But the girl who is in earnest can refuse to gossip and learn to talk and think about the great needs and problems of our day. She can turn quickly the pages where crime and accidents are recorded and read carefully those that tell of the progress in science and the happenings among the nations of the world. She can read a great book once a month or once in three months according to the time she has and she can think and talk about what she reads. She can find some hobby in which to be interested. The effort she makes to compel her mind to work will bring a very real reward.

It is a pitiful thing to see a woman at thirty or forty who has nothing to think about but herself and the affairs of her neighbors, and who never reads. If the mental side of the triad has grown weak through laziness and neglect, the girl may strengthen it. The effort to make it strong may not seem a part of religion but it is.

And if she knows now as she thinks honestly about it, that the spiritual side of the triad that governs her life is weak, she may strengthen it.

She can read the Book that through all the ages has strengthened men's spirits and made them conquerors over temptation and sin. She can think about the words that have helped women to keep sweet and strong amidst trial, and danger, sorrow and disappointment. And she can pray. She does not need long prayers. She needs just a word with G.o.d, her Father and her Helper every day to keep her strong, and another at night to give her courage to go on trying when she has weakly yielded to temptation and failed. If she has neglected it she may begin now to strengthen the weak place that she may be saved from spiritual sickness which is the worst of all.

One covets for every girl the opportunity to live in the hands of the healthful, trained, awakened triad. Life is a blessed experience to the girl who is well physically, alert mentally and strong spiritually. If that experience is to come to the majority of girls, then those interested in her religion must more and more understand that true religion touches all of life--the triad--body, mind and spirit.

One summer night when the thunder was roaring over the sea and vivid flashes of lightning blinded for the moment one daring enough to face the storm, the little village church bell rang the dread alarm of fire.

The apparatus for firefighting was of the type most city people have forgotten. Men rushed to the fire company's quarters and dragged the engine forth. From one of the highest hilltops flames lighted the sky.

The men seizing the rope dragged the apparatus up the steep slope. Just before reaching the top it stuck. Suddenly a sharp appealing voice rang out into the darkness. It did more than request, it commanded and demanded. "Everybody take hold" it shouted, and under the power of it people sprang to obey and the engine reached the hilltop.

Those who look with sympathy and love at girlhood today, cannot help wishing that some Voice of power would ring out through every place where girls are found saying--"Everybody take hold!" If everybody would respond to the task as that night in the fire and the storm, the girl, in body, mind and spirit might easily be saved. Everybody may not respond now--but how about _you_, the girl herself?

XIII

THOU SHALT NOT

In our effort to get away from the harsh negative teaching of the past which made young people feel that life meant "don't," we have made the mistake of failing to teach with power the fact that there are things to which G.o.d's law and man's law say _thou shall not_. "I did not know it would do any harm," is oftentimes a truthful statement and the girl has the right to be carefully, wisely and sanely taught the things to which she must say no. A girl's religion must have not only the _constraining_ power which sends her out to do the kindly deed, say the word of comfort and cheer, give of her time and her talent to help make life easier for those who find it hard, but it must have the restraining power which shall keep her from self-indulgence and sin.

Whenever the _thou shalt not_ side of religion is mentioned the girls themselves and those responsible for their training immediately think of the question of amus.e.m.e.nts, which is after all only a part of the greater question of how much leisure a girl should have and what she should do with it. Preachers, teachers and Christians generally, differ so widely on the matter of disputed amus.e.m.e.nt questions that _thou shalt not_ loses its force. It is the parents' right to decide the girl's amus.e.m.e.nts and determine her social life and when one sees the length to which parents permit and even encourage their daughters to go, he knows that the _thou shalt not_ might well be said to _them_. When parents do not care what their girls do, or are too careless and ignorant to realize danger, when the girls are without friends and unprotected, then the teacher of religion must without hesitation, forcefully and with the arguments of _fact_, teach them to say "no" to the things which she believes can bring only harm, which weaken the power to resist other evils and which are unhealthy for the growing girl. One may teach with feeling and power the "_thou shalt not_" in which she believes without uttering bitter words of condemnation of those who differ with her.

Religion and the law together have the right to say to the unprotected girl, lacking wisdom, without discretion, eager for fun and adventure, ignorant of danger, _thou shall not_. The words should be written over every unchaperoned or inadequately chaperoned high school dance, over the public dance hall, over the cabaret, over the vaudeville where the vulgar hides behind a mask, over every place which by its very nature opens doors of temptation and lowers powers of resistance. The teachers of religion, and all agencies for moral training and uplift, _because_ of the comparative helplessness of girlhood, have the right to teach by every means at their command _thou shalt not_.

Some one must teach the growing girl that extravagance is sin; some one must say _thou shalt not_ to her common faults of promising without thought of the cost of keeping the promise, of exaggeration and untruthfulness. Some one must help her see the utter folly of sn.o.bbishness and false pride. In some way she must be taught the cruelty and meanness of gossip, the results of a sharp tongue and a critical spirit. She must be shown the sin of ingrat.i.tude and the curse of jealousy and envy. In fact the old ten commandments are needed by the girlhood of today as truly as they were needed by that great army of people in the days of the youth of a race, when their great law giver and leader strove to save them from the results of their own ignorance and newly acquired liberty.

Who teaches _thou shalt not_ to the girl of today? Indirectly, a great many people. Directly, clearly, definitely so that she understands and is impressed, very few. The Sunday-school in a half-hour a week attempts to do it, but the Sunday-school reaches a very small part of the girlhood of our land, and its work with those whom it has reached is often ineffective. It is at present engaged in a serious effort to make its teachings more effective and far reaching. The public school is not directly teaching the _thou shalt not_, for teaching it does not mean saying it, in the form of a command. It does much indirect moral teaching, which is invaluable. It is experimenting with direct moral teaching and many of the experiments have shown highly gratifying results, which lead us to hope that the day is not far distant when direct teaching of the common laws of moral living shall find a place in every school. We shall have to find some new definition first, for such words as success, wealth, honesty, courage, honor and the long list in the vocabularies which the pupils in every school make for themselves.

In reacting against the thundering negatives of the past, the church has, in the decade or more that lies behind us, been teaching an unbalanced religion. "Thou shalt," and "thou shalt not" must be taught together if the best results are to be reached. In individual instances so great success has been won by the teacher of religion that his method is worth one's earnest study.

One morning there came into Sunday-school cla.s.s a very ordinary looking little girl of ten years. Her father was a truck driver, her mother had been a domestic. There were four children in the home, the little girl being next to the youngest. The parents had no relation to any church.

The two older children had turned out great disappointments to them and when a neighbor invited the ten-year-old to go to Sunday-school the mother gave her consent, saying that perhaps the church could keep her from following her brother and sister. It did.

In that home there was no moral instruction, no moral suasion. When the children had told a lie directly to the mother they were punished severely. When they told a lie to a teacher or neighbor the mother was their defender and they escaped punishment. They heard their mother lie to her husband, to her neighbors, to the rent collector and the grocer.

They learned not to fear a _lie_ but to fear being discovered in it.

They became clever liars and the little girl at ten was an adept. For disobedience, cheating, taking food and pennies they were alternately turned over to their father for punishment or shielded from his wrath according to the mother's temper at the time of the offense. They were not taught or helped to hate sin or to see it in its hideous aspect.

_Thou shalt not_ was a matter of convenience, not of principle.

The teacher into whose cla.s.s the little girl came was a woman of experience who before her marriage had been a teacher in the public school. She called in the home, she learned the standing of the girl in the day school, in less than a month she _knew_ her. What she found out made her determine to help the child hate falsehood and cheating in every form. By story and incidents she showed Sunday after Sunday, side by side, the cowardice and unhappiness of the liar, the distrust of his fellowmen, the misery which he must suffer and the courage, happiness and freedom of the truth-loving and truth-telling child. Every lesson said "don't lie" and "speak and act the truth." One day the little girl was invited to her teacher's home to look at pictures and choose some books to read, for the teacher had discovered her love for pictures and books. After a very happy hour, while saying good-by in the hall, the child suddenly seized her teacher's hand and stammered, "How can you help telling lies?" The teacher says, "As I looked into her plain little face with its quivering lips, I loved her. I determined to fight for her and with her." It was a fight, for habit was strong and environment did not change. For over five years that teacher faithfully presented the "_thou shall not_" and "_thou shall_" which shaped the girl's ideals and helped her reach them. She taught her to pray; she inspired her with a genuine love for G.o.d the Helper, who would "see her through," she opened doors of service for her. At twenty she is a truthful and truth-loving girl, she has been able to say "no" to the things which proved the downfall of brother and sister; she is a useful, self-supporting, thoroughly respectable member of society and an earnest Christian. She has been able to lead her younger brother safely past the dangerous places and is helping him through school. What the church, through its religious instruction, has been able to do for this girl and many others it might do in far larger measure were it equipped with a regular teaching force adequate to its need, if its preachers could come into real contact with the children and youth of the community and present to them with power the _thou shalt not_ which shall give them at least an opportunity to strive to obey.

If the girl herself is reading this chapter I know she will agree with me when I say that a girl respects and honors in her heart the teacher who presents to her, fearlessly and honestly, the things which she believes a girl cannot do with safety, which lead into dangerous places and which make it hard for her to keep pure, true, unselfish in thought and deed; and she respects even more highly the teacher who can give her broad sane reasons for finding subst.i.tutes for these things. She may, as she grows older, come to the conclusion that her teacher was mistaken but she respects her for her honest effort to help.

In every girl's creed there must be some negative. The _law_ says you must and you must not. As she reads this page perhaps some girl will stop for a moment and write out the things to which she believes a girl should say "no." Here is such a list, written in the form of a creed by a girl when a soph.o.m.ore at college.

"I believe that a girl should not indulge in amus.e.m.e.nts which make her nervous and excited, give her a headache, make it hard for her to study, cost her a good deal of money and crowd out all thoughts of duty and which make her feel envious and jealous of those who are more popular or fortunate than she, and sometimes make her think things she hates to remember.

I believe that a girl should _never_ repeat what she has heard about another person if it could in any way injure that person's character.

I believe that she should not lie even by looks or by silence. I believe that she should never deceive another, never make fun of the weaknesses or misfortunes of other people and never treat another girl as she would not herself want to be treated."