A Matter of Cultivation : Part 4

The Girl and Her Religion
by Margaret Slattery

(Page 18 of 21)

The teachers in the Beginners' departments realize the need of the cultivation of prayer and pray simply and often during the session, baby lips repeating the words. Through cards and memory verses prayers go into homes where none are ever made. In Primary departments the instruction is continued and children are led to express themselves in simple words of worship. In the Junior departments there is the superintendent's prayer - the appeal it makes depending upon the leader's sympathy, and knowledge of childhood. Often both are lacking. These Junior girls know the street, the moving picture show, the unsupervised playground, the temptations of school life; they are beginning to show the moral effect of poverty on the one hand and social ambitions and false standards on the other. How many prayers for girls from ten to twelve does one hear? How many can he find though he search ever so diligently.

When we come to the girl in her teens we find often in large numbers of classes that the only instruction in prayer is the indirect teaching from the prayer at the desk. How many girls listen reverently to it?

They come from stores and shops, from high schools, offices, homes of plenty and homes of want. They know temptation, they meet it in more dangerous forms than ever before. How does the prayer affect life as they know it? Very little I am bound to believe unless the great experience has come to them and they have said in simple girlish fashion, "O Christ, I choose thee King of my life - I follow thee wherever the way shall lead," unless that transferring of will from vague and indefinite desire to a definite purpose has come, the prayer which is a part of the average opening service will have little influence. Even if the great decision has been made, the prayer of one far away at the desk, often out of touch with young life, does not bring the uplift.

What a teacher may do the following testimony of a young girl may help us to see:

"I never had any special instruction in prayer at home. I think I must have said my prayers when a very little child. My parents are just fine but they do not go to church. They almost always spend Sundays with grandmother on the farm. I do not remember any instruction about prayer, though of course it was mentioned and I knew good people prayed, until I was seventeen when the finest teacher I ever had talked to us about it for four Sundays. Then I saw how much the people who had helped the world had prayed and how much it did for them. She made Christ seem so beautiful and sympathetic that though I can't explain it I wanted to pray myself. That afternoon out in the hammock I did. I shall never forget how wonderful the world seemed.... In a few weeks three of us joined the church and we prayed for the other girls. That year eight of us joined."

The testimony speaks for itself. She taught them what prayer had done for others; she made them want to pray. I do not know that teacher but I feel sure she knew by experience what she taught.

I know another teacher who is very successful in cultivating the spiritual life of every class of girls as it comes to her. I find that each new class has been asked to join with her at night in using wisely selected prayers written by Stevenson, Rauschenbusch, Phillips Brooks, and others taken from religious journals and from calendars. Each prayer is used daily for two weeks. After about six months the teacher asks that a committee be appointed to write a prayer for the class, this committee being changed every two weeks.

Some of the prayers were very helpful and all had a crude, simple sincerity that was fine. I saw a letter written to this teacher by a seventeen-year-old girl away from home and out on a strike. It was a pathetic letter but one sentence cheered the teacher's heart - "The prayer that Midge and Kate wrote keeps coming to my mind and it helps me to keep a level head when we all git kinder wild."

When girls see that prayer is not beseeching an unwilling God for things the desire for which may be born of pure selfishness, but is the way by which help to keep steady and strong, power to love one's fellows and to live courageously and well comes to many, it will make a difference in what they think about prayer and the way they pray. But most girls do not know these things intuitively. They must be helped to know them. The spirit within them must be cultivated. Prayer and seeking the Bible for courage and help are largely matters of cultivation. The great Teacher prayed Himself in such a wonderful way that the disciples listening cried - "Lord, teach us how to pray." And he answered their request, giving them the words to say until they should find words for themselves. He made them want to pray.

If the girl herself chances to read this chapter let her be assured that there is no lesson in all the world which she can learn which can give to her anything like the courage, strength, comfort and help to go right on in the face of hard things, that can come to her through learning how to truly pray, not empty words, not words for others to hear, but words that say all she feels of disappointment and longing, of hope and gladness. The Great God hears all one can say and knows what she cannot say. Only God can do that. Even the best friends tire of our struggles and failures. God never does and when I speak to Him I may know He cares. Though I am one speck of humanity in a great mass of men and women, though the girl who is reading this is just one ordinary girl, one among millions the world around, she may speak to God, her Creator without fear, may touch His greatness and her heart be warmed by His answering touch.

"Speak to Him then, for He heareth,
and spirit with spirit may meet.
Closer is He than breathing,
And nearer than hands and feet."

Copyright, 1913 by Luther H. Cary
Fifth Printing, The Pilgrim Press
Boston