That mankind has a spiritual, mental and physical side to his nature has been acknowledged for many centuries. That they are of equal importance has been accepted but for a comparatively short time. Time was when the spiritual nature was developed, the mental side cultivated, and the physical scorned and abused. The pale face and emaciated form were indications of the pure heart. The starved body meant the well nourished soul. When men were most deeply concerned with the future beyond the grave, and this life was but a penance, a period to be endured, a terrible battle to win, having little joy, and almost no pleasure not labeled wicked, it was natural that they should treat with a measure of scorn or ignore altogether the physical body in which dwelt so much of evil. But when man realized that eternity begins here and now, he turned his thoughts to the present welfare of his fellows, and the physical side assumed a new importance.

In some cases the importance attached to physical welfare is out of proportion. It is always difficult to keep a sense of proportion when new light on any line of truth bursts upon men’s minds. But in the main the place of the physical side is not exaggerated. Every teacher in the public school realizes it as she sees what a tremendous difference has been made in the spiritual and intellectual development of a child who after years of ineffectual struggle to see has been given glasses that make it possible for him to do the same work as his classmates. She realizes it as with astonishment she sees a boy transformed before her eyes, changed into an entirely different child as the weeks and months pass, because the troublesome and deadening adenoids have been removed. She realizes it as she sees a poor, weak little girl, undersized and underfed, changed into a new being under treatment, with plenty of nourishing food and fresh air. The experience of the past ten years alone, in the public schools, will convince one of the value of the physical.

Certain it is that the physical side exists, and is to be reckoned with in the development of human life to the highest possible point. The more we know about the physical side, the more we stand in awe of ourselves, and the more we appreciate the wonderful machine with which we are to do our work in the world.

I saw recently two locomotives that taught me again what it all means. One had been in a wreck and lay pitched over on its side, its splendid power gone. Its size and its powerful strength made its ruin more pitiful, and its utter helplessness appealed strongly to all who looked at it. Near it on the second track, all hot and panting, ready and waiting to pull its heavy load up the steep grade, was a fellow engine, in full possession of its powers: how strong, how complete, how perfectly able to perform its task it seemed as it stood there on the track beside its helpless brother. For days I could not forget the picture, and when I looked into the faces of my girls in their teens all it suggested impressed me anew.

How I should like to have them fully equipped physically to meet the demands which life will bring to them! The girl in her teens has a physical side of tremendous significance and importance, for it is during these years that she develops her powers or wrecks them. It is her time of rapid growth, of severe tax upon every part of her physical being. It is during these years she meets her crises.

We have seen that early in her teens a girl begins to care “how she looks.”

She should be encouraged to look well. She should dress carefully, which does not mean expenditure of much money, but does mean thought. She should be taught that dress means much, and physical condition even more.

But all this, some teachers may say, belongs in the home. It is the duty of the home to look after these things. Yes, it is true. And it is a cause for thanksgiving that in so many homes, sweet, patient, wise mothers watch over their girls and give them what they need. But every Sunday-school teacher of girls in their teens has at least one girl whose mother does not or can not help at the time when help is most needed. Some have had no training themselves and do not see the need; some are crushed by the multitude of burdens, some are careless, and some have no knowledge as to how to cope with the wilfulness of girls which sometimes appears in the years of adolescence. “The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick,” the great Teacher said once, and it is true to-day. Both the public school and the Sunday-school exist to cultivate all of good that appears in the girl’s life, and develop what she lacks.

Here is a group of girls in a certain Sunday-school class, most of them well taken care of physically, but with very little of direct teaching and development morally. They are selfish, self-centered, and vain. The teacher’s task is clear. Here is another class in a nearby church, suffering not only from moral and intellectual neglect, but from physical as well. Again the teacher’s task is plain.

We have seen that buried deep in the heart of every adolescent girl is the desire to be attractive, to be popular, to have people “like” her. This desire prompts her often to little acts of courtesy and kindness and efforts to be agreeable; more often it prompts her to make herself physically attractive. Take a walk through any park, along the boulevards, up the main street of small manufacturing towns, or watch any high school group at the hour of dismissal: if your eyes are open you will be conscious of the struggle to be attractive,—to look well. It is registered in hair and hats, bows and chains and pins. Sometimes it appears in fads in dress,—low shoes and silk stockings in winter, or the strange combination of no hat, a very thin coat, and a huge muff. These are the things that make the people of common sense ask the very pertinent question, “What are these girls’ mothers thinking of?” It is a hard question to answer satisfactorily. Often the mothers have helplessly yielded under the power of that insistent phrase, “All the girls do.”

If once these girls can be made to see the attractiveness of absolute cleanliness, of the charm of simple but spotless clothing, of teeth, hair, hands and skin that show care, a great deal will have been done toward helping their general physical condition.

Anything which has to do with personal appearance must be handled with great tact, for the adolescent girl is sensitive and she resents direct criticism. But on the other hand she accepts eagerly anything which promises to help her look well. If a teacher does not feel equal to the task of assisting the girl to make the best of her physical side she can find some one to help her. I know of one class of girls in their teens who will never forget the talk given by a bright, attractive, clever woman at the monthly social, on “Tales Told by Belts,” and not a girl in the Girls’ Club, I know, ever forgot the talk on “Sometimes the Head Rules and Sometimes the Feet.” More girls than usual wore rubbers the next rainy day, and some high heels disappeared.

Perhaps one of the most helpful of the little incidental ways by which the Sunday-school teachers may help is through praise. I have in mind now a girl of sixteen who usually selected her own clothes, and seemed to have a talent for putting together the wrong colors. One spring, she, in some way, was persuaded by another girl to have her coat, dress and hat all in browns that harmonized. One can hardly imagine the change it made in the girl. She realized it. That Sunday in the hall, I told her very quietly that she looked “dear,” that she must never wear anything except soft colors that harmonized; that I loved to look at her. She showed her pleasure. The next January she asked me one night if I thought dark blue would be all right for her new suit if she got “everything to match.”

No one can associate sympathetically with the girl in her teens week after week and not be concerned about her physical welfare. There are so many pale, anemic, tired girls that move one’s heart. Some work too hard. Many live under unhygienic conditions. Many can not stand the pressure and rush of school and social life. Great numbers suffer from improper food, and many more because they do not get enough sleep. Almost every Sunday I hear some girl say she “went somewhere every night last week.” This mania for “going” seizes so many of our girls just when they need rest and natural pleasures, the great out-of-doors, and early hours of retiring.

So many of our girls are “nervous.” A bright, interesting eighth grade teacher told me recently that she had fifty girls in her class and that according to their mothers forty-one were “very nervous.” It seemed to her a large proportion even for girls in their early teens, and she began a quiet study of some of them. One of the “very nervous” girls who, her mother thought, must be taken out of school for a while, takes both piano and violin lessons, attends dancing school, goes to parties now and then, and rarely retires before ten o’clock. Another “very nervous” girl takes piano lessons, goes to the moving picture shows once or twice a week, hates milk, can’t eat eggs, doesn’t care much for fruit, and is extremely fond of candy. In each case investigated there seemed to be much outside of school work which could explain the “nervousness.”

It is most interesting to note the gain, physically, made by almost every girl in her teens who enters a good boarding-school, where plenty of exercise, a cheerful atmosphere, regular hours and wholesome food is the rule.

Just how much the Sunday-school teacher who is a real friend of the girl in her teens can help is a question, but I know of enough cases where an earnest interview with the father or mother has resulted in better care of the growing girl, with more attention paid to her food and rest, to make me sure that it pays to attempt to help. If it only means that the girl in her teens shall not go to school or to work without breakfast, it pays.

I can almost hear some troubled teacher ask, “Where in the Sunday-school hour is there time for this?” It can not be done in a Sunday-school hour except incidentally. But those who are at work with girls in their teens must teach more than a lesson on Sunday. They are teaching girls to live, if they have entered whole-heartedly into the work.

Every girl in her teens is interested in her physical self. The ways in which she strives to satisfy her curiosity and desire for knowledge are often pitiful, often to be deplored.

From my experience I am convinced that anything which tends to center her interest upon the physical is unwise. For this reason I very much doubt the advisability of class instruction, except in general matters of hygiene. What the whole class is interested in they will discuss. It will be the main topic of conversation among “chums” as they separate after class, and the effect I am convinced is bad, simply because it centers thought upon a subject which to the girl in her teens should not be the chief interest. Then, too, the individuals in a class vary so much that the instruction to be given needs special wisdom, tact and comprehensive knowledge of girls which not every teacher possesses.

That instruction should be given, and that questions must be answered, is true. A girl’s mother is the natural and best agency through which knowledge should come to her, and the Sunday-school teacher may very easily enlist the mother’s sympathy, urge her to be true to her daughter’s need, and show her how necessary it is that she faithfully instruct her child in the things she needs to know. If the mother says, as is often the case, that she can’t, that she does not know how, etc., then the teacher may offer to help with suggestions, with books, or, if the mother asks her to do so, may talk with the girl herself. Such a conversation on the part of the teacher should never be forced, but introduced naturally and easily in some opportune moment. Sometimes, if there is real confidence and sympathy between pupil and teacher, the girl herself will open the way.

In a hundred ways, both in teaching and in conversation with the girls, the Sunday-school teacher may show her own respect for the physical side of life, the marvel of it all, and the need on the part of every woman to obey its unchanging laws, from which, if broken, there is no escape. In scores of ways she will frankly and naturally reveal to her girls her sympathy with womanhood everywhere, in every walk of life, and especially her respect for mothers, and her love for helpless childhood.

Girls learn so much more, and the impressions made are far deeper, through this almost unconscious influence of the teacher than through the “lecture” or “lesson.” I shall not soon forget the impression made upon a class of girls of eighteen years of age by the preparation of a complete outfit to be presented to a poor woman whose child was to come into the world in a tiny third-story room amidst deepest poverty. As one of the girls said, “It will be a lucky baby, after all, with eight of us to look after it.” Both teacher and girls felt new bonds of sympathy long before the last tiny garments were finished, and the girls had learned much.

It is not good for girls in their teens, especially in the latter part of the period, to be closely associated with women who are cynical, who have forgotten the tenderness of their own girlhood dreams, or who are out of sympathy with the great fundamentals of life.

The teacher may so easily reveal, too, her respect for the conventionalities of life. In her escape from the narrowing influences of the conventionalities of older countries, the American girl has gone so far into liberty that she does not realize the protection that lies behind simple conventionality. While it is perfectly true that a girl may travel alone from one end of this country to the other with safety, it is not true that it is wise for her to do so. Fathers are beginning to realize it, and daughters though not “in society” are enjoying the assurance that, if obliged for social or business reasons to be out late, their fathers will call for them. It will mean an effort on the part of the father, but it brings a reward, for his daughter, feeling herself guarded and protected, develops into a finer type of woman.

The girl in her teens is interested always in the influence of the passions and emotions upon the physical nature, and knowledge given in a simple direct way is good for her.

“Why do some people get very pale and others very red, when they are angry?” asked a fourteen-year-old girl one day.

“Sometimes you tremble when you are angry,” said another; “and you usually talk very fast,” added a third. The discussion which followed was interesting and helpful. They were astonished at the reports made by physicians and students of the effect upon digestion of angry words, or sullen silence, during dinner. They learned in a new way the value of the temper controlled, and of self-mastery in all lines. They were interested enough to bring into class instances of self-control under trying circumstances, and of calamities following complete loss of control for only a few minutes. I think they realized in a new way the majesty of the perfect self-control of Christ in the most trying moments of his life. We talked over with profit the effect upon the physical life, of hurry, of fear, of worry and useless anxiety, and have tried to find why the Christ was free from them all. The conclusions reached by the girls themselves have been helpful in every instance.

As long as we live, the physical will be with us; it is not to be despised, but respected; not to be ignored, but developed; not to be abused, but used. It demands obedience, and exacts penalty when its laws are broken. It is so complicated that no one can understand it. We may study and analyze, but how much of the physical is mental, and how much of the spiritual is physical, no one to-day is able to say. Of this we may be sure,—the physical side of the girl in her teens is a tremendous force that must be reckoned with, and demands for its fullest development and her future well being all the sympathy, patience, and wisdom that parents and teachers can supply.