cases it has been, a sheet anchor to windward holding him off the rocks. Belonging to the Church during the adolescent period, holding oneself to the pledge of membership, standing out positively for the Christian life, seems to me the most important social, moral, and religious relationship a boy can enter upon. The essential thing is that in the adolescent years he assume the individual responsibilities of his life, put his trust in God, commit himself to God's ideal for men, take up such work as he can do, enter into the larger relationships that now open to him, set himself to achieve the finest manhood, to render the highest service, and to make his life as great a success as possible. He will nowhere find so high an ideal as the Christian ideal; he will nowhere find so much companionship and help in his course as among Christian people."10

Never criticize their church, the pastor or the members in the presence of boys, but encourage them to love their church, to be loyal and full of faith, ready to answer to its great call for service.

The function of worship is somewhat overlooked in the development of a boy's religious life. "In worship, as an expression of the religious state of mind," says Hartshorne, "the

10 Hartshorne, "Worship in the Sunday School," p. 22.

highest values are symbolized and sought. They are here brought clearly to consciousness and renewed in vitality. Worship thus becomes a means of social control, for it serves to cultivate and revitalize in the individual the appreciation of objects which in its best moments society has come to regard as of the highest value." The Church is beginning to recognize the necessity of adapting its services to the needs of childhood and youth. The musical features, the responsive readings, the prayer, and the spoken word all appeal to him, especially when they are so arranged that action and right living will result rather than mere formalism.

When the youth enters into his eighteenth or nineteenth year, there comes over him a mental turmoil. Doubts of beliefs and ideals are common. He is now thinking, as well as working out his own salvation with fear and trembling. He is no longer a boy. The struggle for manhood is now on and he is finding out that the conflict between good and evil is no summer's play. It cannot be evaded. It is now difficult to keep him in the Sunday school and in church. "He feels a revulsion from all sorts of religious emotionalism and you cannot touch him with a year of prayer meetings, even of the quiet, modern type," observes Prof. Fiske. Boyhood visions have been disillusioned-he is tinctured

with a certain kind of cynicism and doubt. It is during this terrific struggle for characterChristian character that he needs friendship, constant, abiding, sympathetic friendship, rather than criticism. He is now looking for the real thing, and honors above everything else real nobility of character that is devoid of sham. He is usually silent about it, for he is afraid of being misunderstood. He has his own ideas on religion and plenty of doubt as well. Again quoting that master interpreter of boy-life, Prof. Fiske: "He needs a rational basis for his life creed, and he needs it soon, or he never will get it. It must be proved to him in some natural, undogmatic way (or better, flashed upon his intuitions) that the well-rounded manhood which he covets needs culture on the spiritual side to complete its symmetry. In short, he needs, not the effeminate sort, but a man's religion, which will appeal to his whole manhood. For the young man is not all spirit. He has a body to keep strong and well, and he welcomes any means which will help him in his life problem. He needs the right kind of fellowship, the heart of good friendship and the moral backbone of upright comradeship. . . . Above all he needs to be on friendly terms with Jesus Christ. Give him the great protection of the Christ love, the high incentive of the Christ ideals, the mighty

impulse of the Christian purpose, the Christ loyalty with the brotherly comradeship of the Christian Church; and you have armed him with all the panoply of God. He will win his fight.""

"A creed is a rod,

And a crown is of might;

But this thing is God:

To be man, with thy might;

To stand straight in the strength of thy spirit
And live out thy life as the light."

-PRESIDENT WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE.

u Fiske, "Boy Life and Self Government," pp. 268, 269.

CHAPTER VII

VOCATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

"The world has work for us; we must refuse
No honest task, nor uncongenial toil:
Fear not your feet to toil nor robe to soil
Nor let your hands grow white for want of use.”
-ALLEN PALMER ALLERTON.

What shall a boy's life be? This is a most serious problem with both the boy and his parents. "As the twig is bent the tree is inclined," goes an old saying. Judging from the large number of vocationally "bent" individuals in the world, one is led to believe that much of the bending was inclined downward during the moldable period of their youth or else, like Topsy, "they just growed," whithersoever inclined. "As the boy is started so the man probably will be." Many of the failures in life as well as much of the unhappiness and discontent, and shall we say crime, is traceable to our apparent inability to harness the aptitudes in the boy to definite vocations. Ask the boy of today, "What do you want to become?" or "What