Jesus Christ stands out in startling relief.
Though God comes to a soul in a marked way during Adolescence, nurture
is taking a dangerous and often fatal risk in allowing life, as far as
human effort can go, to enter its crisis without Him. The spiritual
awakening of this period (to be considered in the succeeding chapter)
would seem to be God's call to larger service, rather than His first
summons to "Follow Me."

With the Master's authority to let the children come, and with every
condition in child life God prepared for their coming, there is no
tenable position but belief that our Father meant every life to enter
its period of "storm and stress," in step with Jesus Christ.

APPLICATION TO SUNDAY SCHOOL WORK

Sunday School work during Adolescence and maturity lays less emphasis
upon methods and equipment than in the earlier periods, and more
emphasis on the personal relation between teacher and pupil. For this
reason the preceding study, in so far as it interprets the lives of the
boys and girls, applies directly to Sunday School work, for a
sympathetic understanding is the key to the relationship. "There is no
greater blessing that can come to a boy (or girl) at this age when he
does not understand himself, than a good, strong teacher who
understands him, has faith in him, and will day by day lead him till he
can walk alone." Far more than a pedagogue, the adolescent needs a
friend in his Sunday School teacher, who shares his ambitions, knows his
temptations, sympathizes with his successes and failures and, through it
all, trusts him. This understanding and confidence, made long-suffering
and tender by the love that never fails, will be a binding cord that can
not be broken even by the most restless, wayward life.

Because of the close relationship to be sought between teacher and
pupil, other things being equal, it is wise for a class of boys to be
taught by a man, and girls by a woman. The counsel of one who has passed
through the same experiences and known the same temptations and
difficulties always comes with especial helpfulness. But the question of
sex is not as vital as that of sympathy, nor the manner of previous
experience as the manner of present love.

The new consciousness of distinction will make the class work difficult,
if there is any marked difference in the social standing of its
members. The leader must be won to the right attitude in private, the
appeal being based on personal feeling for