rt of the
International Commission on Adolescence.

This book is largely a volume of method and suggestion for leaders and
teachers in the Sunday school, to promote the better handling of the
so-called boy problem; for the Sunday school must solve the problem of
getting and holding the teen age boy, if growth and development are to
mark its future progress. Of the approximately ten million teen age boys
in the field of the International Sunday School Association, ninety per
cent are not now reached by the Sunday school. Of the five per cent
enrolled (less than 1,500,000) seventy-five per cent are dropping from
its membership. Every village, town and city contributes its share
toward this unwarranted leakage. The problem is a universal one.

The teen age represents the most important period of life. Ideals and
standards are set up, habits formed and decisions made that will make or
mar a life. The high-water mark of conversion is reached at fifteen, and
between the ages of thirteen and eighteen more definite stands are made
for the Christian life than in all the other combined years of a
lifetime.

It marks the period of adolescence, when the powers and passions of
manhood enter into the life of the boy, and when the will is not strong
enough to control these great forces. Powers must be unfolded before
ability to use them can develop, and instincts must be controlled while
these are in the process of development. The importance of systematic
adult leadership during this period of storm and stress cannot be too
strongly emphasized.

The teen age boy is naturally religious. Opportunity, however, must be
given him to express his religion in forms that appeal to and are
understood by him. In other words, his religion, like his nature, is a
positive quantity, and will be carried by him throughout the day, to
dominate all of the activities in which he engages.

The problem also reaches through the entire teen years and must be
regarded as a whole, rather than as a series of successive stages, each
stage being separate and complete in itself.

The great problem, then, which confronts us is to keep the boys in the
church and Sunday school during the critical years of adolescence and
to bring to their support the strength which comes from God's Word and
true Christian friendship, to the end that they may be related to the
Son of God as Saviour and Lord through personal faith and loyal service.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY