A Person Not a Fact : Part 1

The Girl and Her Religion
by Margaret Slattery

(Page 17 of 19)

Every thoughtful person craves facts. They are cold, hard, sometimes disconcerting but they carry weight. "It is a fact, it has been proven," hushes many a query and silences many an argument. And yet it is not in the array of facts which can be given at any moment that young people find their incentives and inspirations. They may have all the facts at their tongue's end but lack the fire which shall transfuse those facts into power to act in accordance with their teachings. Julius Cæsar is a fact. A girl may have no doubt of his existence, she may not question the great events of his life, but he does not stir her to action. The fact of George Washington does not awaken the patriotism of a girl and in schools where merely the facts regarding his life are given his influence is practically negative. But whenever the facts have been breathed upon by a sympathetic spirit and the fact George Washington transformed into the personality that lives in the girl's presence then his influence begins to count.

It is not the facts about Abraham Lincoln that engender heroism. The facts may be presented in such a way as to hold but passing interest. I have heard the life and times of Abraham Lincoln taught that way. But I have seen Abraham Lincoln presented to a class of foreign girls by one to whom he had become a friend as real and genuine as if he stood by her side. As I listened I saw Abraham Lincoln. I felt the kindness and patience of his great soul, the honest purpose and the fine courage of his life. The facts were there in that lesson but more than the facts were there. He was there. At the close of the lesson that teacher looking into the faces of the girls who represented nearly every land across the sea said to them, "What do you think of him?" One girl responded eagerly "I think he was grand!" and a dark-haired intense girl, her black eyes glowing, rose and said with an earnestness and fervor I can never forget, "I love him!" "You shall hear more tomorrow," said the teacher, and they looked as if it were hard to wait.

A careful observation of the ways of presenting great men of history and great characters in literature to young people will convince one beyond doubt that the girl may store the facts in the memory for a time, but if the living personality is presented it will remain to mold and guide and influence the life. The teacher's greatest power is never in what she teaches but in what is revealed to the individual through her teaching. The mind hungers for facts, searches for facts and wearies of facts. It follows personality.

When Richard Watson Gilder tried to voice the plea of the young doubter, puzzled, perplexed and suffering from the great array of apparently conflicting facts and most of all from his own failure to win out over the temptations that swept over him he said:

"Thou Christ, my soul is hurt and bruised!
With words the scholars wear me out;
My brain o'erwearied and confused,
Thee, myself and all, I doubt.
And must I back to darkness go
Because I cannot say a creed?
I know not what I think! I know
Only that Thou art what I need."

The fact is not enough. John Kendrick Bangs says it forcibly -

"A mere acceptance of the fact of love of God above,
Of all the vast omnipotence of Him our Maker and Defence
Is not believing."

Slowly we are getting back to the recognition of the proper place of fact, of its power as the background and basis against which and upon which Personality must stand. Our eyes are opening to see that if the girl is to gain a religion which shall mean life, she must gain it through a person who reveals a Person.

Here is Mary D - - , a girl of fifteen, a worker in a mill employing a very cheap grade of help. Her face was hard, there was no light of anticipation in her eyes - she had nothing to anticipate. She toiled through the long hours, for there was no limit to her day in the state where she lives. Her home was not a home but a place where she could stay nights - when her father was not so quarrelsome through cheap drink that he drove her out. One day a woman at a noon service in the factory shocked at a profane remark of Mary's said reprovingly, "Don't you believe there is a God?" "Sure I do," said Mary, "but I don't see's it makes no difference to me." Further questions followed and Mary declared her belief, adding, "I don't bother much about them things." Mary had some facts and declared some sort of belief in them, but they made no difference.

The next summer, Mary, overcome by the work of the year and an attack of the grippe, was sent by a woman in one of the churches, to a girl's camp. She lived in decent fashion, she saw a lake, great mountains, sunsets and stars! She found flowers and sat quite still watching birds that seemed so marvelous to her.

Slowly she grew strong. One night she went to the sloping bank by the lake under the great pine trees to attend the twilight service. The sky was crimson with the sunset and there was a wonderful path of light across the lake. The songs and the beauty moved Mary's soul. She wanted something with all her heart that she had never wanted before. She did not know what it (the great change) was at first, but before she slept she turned to another girl in the tent and expressed it as best she could—"I want to be good," she said.

Through the weeks that followed she saw in the faces, in the kindness and courtesy, in the good times she had never known, in the women who planned them and in the songs and talks at sunset a Person. She heard His name often. He represented all of the happiness and comfort she had ever known and one day with all the eagerness of an awakened soul she said, "I love Him." They told her what changes must come in the life of a girl who said those words and meant them, for they had seen the faults in her and they were many. She was undaunted by all they said she must do, and answered in her uncouth fashion, "I'd die doin' them fur Him."

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