All civilization begins in sensation and feeling. The most abstruse and abstract thought of to-day is possible because ages and ages ago men living in caves were hungry and sought food, were cold and sought warmth, felt fear and sought protection. They conquered in battle with fierce animals and neighboring tribes, and felt the joy of victory and the satisfaction of possession. The “self” sensations and feelings are at the foot of the ladder of civilization by which man, with almost infinite patience has climbed thus far. But self is not all. As the ages passed, man’s pleasure of protection included his neighbor in his feeling and thought. Misfortune evoked pity, and suffering called forth sympathy, the desire for fair play for self grew until it became a sense of justice which included the other man, and the moral sense developed and was strengthened by experience through the succeeding ages.

From the beginning “the spirit of man sought ever to speak.” At first he would propitiate the spirits of air and fire, the rulers of earth and sea, the harvest and the battle,—please them and buy their favor that he might be happy. In weird chants and dances, in feast days and fast days, by sacrifice and penance, he endeavored to appease the spirits of his gods and insure happiness for himself. Great multitudes of the human race have gone no farther. After all the progress of thought their prayers are still intense appeals for blessing upon self and self-interests, and they still keep the feasts and fasts, and bring offerings with hope of personal reward. But every century brings an increasing number so filled with the sense of another’s need that in some measure at least they forget self. Their prayers are petitions for others,—their gifts are poured out without thought of recompense; the spiritual nature within them, awakened and developed, triumphs and manifests itself in a thousand varying deeds that bless mankind.

This spiritual nature, which from the beginning has sought after its Creator that it might worship him, is not a thing apart, living in a separate “house,” but rather a phase of man’s complexity. It depends for its growth upon both the physical and mental sides of man’s nature, and cannot be divorced from them.

At the foot of the path that reaches to the very height of spiritual life, we find feeling as sensation and emotion. The myriad sensations which express themselves in bodily consciousness through the physical, and the emotions which find expression through mental consciousness, can not escape their share of responsibility for the development of the spiritual side. As year after year he sees successive classes of children repeat the development of their predecessors, one stands in awe and reverence before the presence of laws which seem universal in the development of child life. He notes the days when life means food and clothing furnished by another. He notes the strong development of the self interests to the exclusion of others. He sees the gradual development of the sense of justice, of pity, of sympathy. He watches the development of altruism in adolescence. He sees the rapid change of body, mind, and spirit, and witnesses the struggle for control, sometimes on the part of one, sometimes the other, until at last physical, mental or spiritual emerges in control of a life. Or in the rarer cases, where a more perfect development has come, all three work together in the effort to make a perfectly balanced man.

We saw in our brief study of the physical side that a girl in her teens can feel. Her whole being is sensitized, ready at a moment’s notice to respond. In our study of the mental side we saw that she can and does think, is capable of the heights and depths of emotion, and is able in a limited way to make comparisons and reach sane conclusions.

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.

In all my experience with Sunday-school girls of this period regular in attendance and interested in the work I have found when talking with them that they invariably say, “I think I am a Christian,” “I am trying hard to be good and to be a Christian,” “I am willing to sign the card, I have been trying to be a Christian for a long time,” etc., etc. Then, having so expressed themselves, if later I talk over with them the matter of uniting with the church, I find only a few objections repeated year after year by successive classes. “My father and mother think I am too young,” “My father says I would better wait until I know what I am doing,” “I am afraid I am not good enough,” and the one most reluctantly expressed, “If I join the church I am afraid I’ll have to——,” then follow the things which perhaps must be given up. I have yet to find the girl from thirteen to sixteen who has been a regular attendant at Sunday-school since primary age who has no desire to call herself a Christian. The splendid devotion to duty, the sympathy, the service to the world, the marvelous love and compassion, the supreme sacrifice of our Lord, makes the strongest possible appeal to the spiritual nature of the girl. We may confidently expect her to respond, and she does.

But if the girl has been irregular in attendance, has lost interest in class or teacher, is permitted to enjoy the stimulus of social life while too young, comes to church only on special occasions, has little or no definite moral instruction at home, and does not come into close touch with rich spiritual life, she will drift through the years of adolescence with her spiritual nature undeveloped and expressing itself only in vague longings unsatisfied. The chances are that such a girl will never have anything but a superficial interest either in her own development or the vital life of the church expressed in its various agencies.

Two years ago, at a conference, a girl of sixteen from a fashionable boarding-school, coming from a home where fads and fashions rule, said to me, “I never knew Christ was so wonderful, but then I have never thought much about it, though I go to morning service in the winter. I have never met women and girls like those I have seen this week; they are so interesting,—they are doing so many things to help people,—they seem to love to live. I don’t want to live a mean, selfish kind of life. I am going back to school for my last year. What can I do? How can I help?” I have met many girls of whom she is the type. Little is being done for the spiritual side of their natures. The Sunday-school at present does not reach them to any great extent. One of the greatest problems facing the fashionable church is how to reach in any way girls in their teens who are members of its congregation. Such girls with their abundance of life have at least a right to those things offered in the Sunday-school which will mean the awakening and developing of the spirit. They need teachers especially equipped in every way to meet them and help them. To find such teachers is one of the problems that must be met within the next few years. Perhaps we may look confidently for help before long to the girls of culture and refinement now in our colleges hard at work upon every kind of problem dealing with the development of a better life for girls and women. For these girls are beginning to look at the Sunday-school seriously as the means of bringing moral and religious education to girls of all classes, and are asking how they may best equip themselves for service in its various departments.

The problem of the other girl is just as great. She works all the week, and when on Sunday morning she is tired, the family sympathize. She gradually drops out of Sunday-school, is not able because of her long hours to enter into the work of the church, does not come into contact with any vitalizing spiritual force, and slowly this part of her nature, lacking food and stimulus, begins to die. She spends Sunday afternoon and evening socially, and enters upon the new week’s work with no uplift of soul and spirit to help her when temptations come.

She needs a real teacher, sympathetic and appreciative, to hold her during the first years of her working life. One who can make the class a social factor, and by her effort and personality make the Sunday-school hour interesting enough to insure attendance. Then the teacher has an opportunity at least to bring the girl into contact with Christ, and through instruction to feed and develop her spiritual nature until it is ready through exercise to develop itself.

The spiritual nature needs food as does the physical. If the physical life is poorly nourished in this time of the most rapid development, a loss of vitality and power is the inevitable result. The same is true of the mental life. There must be healthful, attractive, abundant food for interesting, enjoyable thought. And just as surely the spiritual life, unless the emotions and moral sense are nourished, will yield to slow paralysis or run into wrong and wasteful channels.

But there comes a time in the spiritual experience of the girl, usually about sixteen, when she wants to do something to express the longing to give herself which is growing more intense each year. If the Sunday-school and church are together able to provide her with work she is fairly safe for the next few years. The work will mean definite interest, will call for some sacrifice, and will bring the satisfaction of accomplishment. The spiritual side of her nature will find in this way opportunity for immediate expression, and we must never let the fact escape us that without opportunity for expression abundant life is impossible.

Sooner or later there is bound to come to the average girl in her teens a period of doubting, anxious questioning. Most often it appears at the very end of the period. The outcome of this longer or shorter period of turmoil in thought may be a much broader, deeper faith in the Christian ideals and the realities of life, or it may be a drifting away from the church and the loss of definite faith in anything.

There are in the world many more people who will not do than who will not believe, but a large and growing number of young women are questioning, doubting, and finally deciding that we can not know, and that the faith of our childhood is without reasonable foundation. Some of these will seek satisfaction for the spiritual nature in later years in all sorts of “isms,” “ists,” and cults; some will drop all definite terms of faith and find a measure of satisfaction in educational work among the poor. Some will grow hard and cynical, lose all interest in any visible form of religion, and give themselves over to a good time. The doubters and questioners are often thoughtful, sincere young people, with mental ability of the best sort and high moral sense, and every Sunday-school teacher who has any influence with them must put forth every possible effort to save them, for their own sake and that of the world. For the world can ill afford to lose its women of faith.

Occasionally, the girl who asks questions is not sincere in her desire to find answers; she just wants to argue. Argument with such a girl is not helpful. As a rule, doubts expressed grow stronger. In talking with a girl who wants to tell all that she doubts, I have found it helpful to lead her to make positive statements as to what she believes, and urge her if she feels that she must part with her old faith to start a new one with what she does believe. To treat her as “wicked,” or to be “shocked” by her expression of unbelief is exceedingly unwise. Positive teaching, free from dogmatism, along the line where her doubts seem to lead will help to strengthen her, and work with actual problems of a social and altruistic nature will act as a good balance. Those who are at work with actual life problems have invariably the strongest and broadest faith because they come close to humanity and see its worth as well as its weakness, and in the long run can not explain what they see without the presence of God in the world, nor help the deep needs they realize without the aid of Christ.

If the girl who questions is sincere, and is troubled and unhappy because she can not believe, she deserves and should have the deepest sympathy. The teacher to whom she comes for help is to be envied, for she has the great privilege of an opportunity to help her see.

Oftentimes it is such a little thing that hides from her the whole great range of Christian thought. I shall remember always the little hill that hid my view of the White Mountains I had made such a sacrifice to see. I had reached my stopping-place late at night, in the rain, and when morning came with a flood of sunshine I went eagerly forth to catch a first glimpse of the mountains. They were nowhere in sight. A quiet country road, shaded by tall trees, and a long, low range of hills was all I saw. Deep disappointment filled my soul. I determined to go back. Before noon my companion climbed the hill opposite the house and beckoned eagerly for me to follow. I shall never forget what I saw! There they were, clear, blue, reaching up to the bluer sky. How I loved them that summer,—touched with fire at sunset, purple and gold in the deepening twilight, soft and far away in the early morning mist; and when clouds shut them in, hid them from sight, I knew they were there, calm, still, immovable! I had seen them. Yet for a whole morning a little hill shut them from my vision, and I had concluded that some one had deceived me, that from the little town they could not be seen.

The greatest power of the teacher is that of beckoning to the pupil that he may follow, helping him to climb the little hills, that he may open his eyes and see. The mental questions must be answered as far as possible. The difficulty in the way must be surmounted. The hill must be climbed. If the teacher feels that she can not meet the task herself, friends and books may help. The girl usually doubts the miracles; doubts the deity of Christ, thinks the Bible is not different from other books, asks the old, old question, “If a man die, how can he live again?” She questions the existence of a God of power in a world where so much evil and misery abound; says the foundation of everything is gone, and that she is wretched and unhappy.

It seems to me a most helpful thing to make her feel that all thoughtful men and women have at some time in their experience asked these questions. Both the teacher and the girl must accept the fact of mystery,—that there is much that we cannot hope to know, many laws of mind and matter of which we know just a little, and many more of which we know nothing. Mystery is a fact. That the spiritual sense can reach into a realm where the mental faculties cannot follow, and that the spirit of man can perceive what the mind alone cannot comprehend, we have a right to believe.

When so much has been acknowledged the teacher may tell her pupil what she personally believes about the disputed questions, and what the scholars of the world believe on both sides of the question. The teacher’s belief is often the strongest argument, especially if she has met the questions, found an answer, and her own faith is positive, sane and strong. But if the teacher meets the troubled, anxious mental state of the girl with dogmatic argument, insisting upon the definite phraseology of some creed, she will most certainly fail to help. What we want to do is not to inculcate a creed, but to help a girl to come into living, vital touch with her Maker, that she may live with confidence and be a help in the world.

In time she will find the creed that expresses for her in the most satisfactory way what she has come to believe.

One of the most keen and interesting girls I have ever met, a junior in college at nineteen, said to me after stating all that she could not believe and why,—“Can’t I believe that Christ was the finest man that ever lived, and try to live and work in the world as he did? I can’t believe anything else.” “Yes,” I said, “that is true, believe that. I think he was more, but start there. Do all you have planned to help the needy, but don’t forget to read again and again what he said about himself and what those who have served the world most fearlessly and faithfully say of him.”

Two years later at the conference she told me she had come to the conclusion that “what he did and said and his present influence in the world can’t be explained unless he was in a sense different from ourselves, divine.” This was her conclusion, reached by thought and study. It was worth much more than any insistence two years before that she believe as I did.

The way to help most effectually the girl who doubts, so far as my experience has gone, is to help her to see that she can start, standing firmly on what she believes, and then to help her faith grow by giving her work to do and by putting in her way books that give constructive teachings. Then one may supply her with stories of those who have lived what they believe, and if possible bring her into contact with fine, sane men and women of strong faith who love and enjoy life.

Sometimes all the doubts and questionings come because life is so hard and seems so unfair and unjust. Then the troubled girl needs to know just one thing—“God is love”; and only the teacher who loves can help her,—she will know how.

Nothing can so stimulate the teacher’s own faith as to be brought, year after year, face to face with world-wide questions hurled at her from the lips of girls in their later teens. She learns at last to anticipate the time when doubts will trouble by giving during the early teens definite constructive teaching that will strengthen faith and deepen the spiritual sense.

The girl in her teens is a worshiper of the ideal, and the teacher’s business is to furnish her with ideals so beautiful, so strong and so desirable that with irresistible power they woo her until she is ready to leave all and follow. If she is possessed by a great ideal nothing is too difficult for her to do, no price is too high to pay in the effort to realize it. Ideals are the things in life most real, for they determine action.

In impressing high ideals upon mind and spirit the teacher of girls in their teens has advantages over those of any other period. All nature is ready to help, the wealth of emotion waits to be stirred to action, the spirit waits to be led.

If the spirit of the teacher is to lead, it must itself be led. It must be dominated by great ideals.

The girl in her teens needs a teacher whose deepest longings are not all satisfied—then she understands. She needs a teacher who is not afraid to let her emotions speak—who knows that the greatest deeds possible to man have their birth in the emotions. She needs a teacher who sees amid all the joys and real pleasures of the world, as well as amid the petty cares and dark and puzzling problems which are our common lot, the Spirit of her Creator working out in man for ultimate good the great plan of which she is a part.

Such a teacher can open the eyes of her girls and help them to see the Father for whom the human spirit is ever seeking—and will not be satisfied until it finds.