gs and shoots into consciousness, powerfully affecting the emotions
and the will. Certain stages of this process will be in the nature of
crisis according to the strength of the opposition encountered in the
personal moral struggle, and in opposing social conditions. Nothing but
calamity can forestall this progressive moral adjustment to the whole
world. To believe otherwise is to indict God for the purpose of covering
our own blunders. In proportion as society prevents or perverts this
moral outreach after God, it pollutes and endangers itself. The
atmosphere that kills the lily creates the stench.

In the passage of the boy's religious life from the imitative type to
the personal and energized form, or, as he experiences conversion, the
battle is usually waged about some _concrete moral problem._ His
conscience has become sensitive with regard to profanity, lying,
impurity, or some particular moral weakness or maladjustment and his
struggle centers on that. Being often defeated under the adolescent
sense--pressure and confusion, he naturally seeks help, and help from
the highest source of virtue. He has secreted somewhere in his heart
ulterior ideals of service, but for the time being his chief concern is
very properly himself; for if he "loses out" with himself he knows that
all other worthy ambitions are annulled.

But a religious culture that keeps him in this self-centered feverish
state is pathetically morbid and harmful. It short-circuits the
religious life. This is the chief criticism of the devotional type of
Christian culture. It seeks to prolong a crisis and often begets
insincerity or disgust. The real priest of boyhood will certainly stand
near by at this all-important time, but he will always manifest a
refined respect for the birth-chamber of the soul. In patient and
hopeful sympathy, in friendship that is personal and not professional,
knowing that the door of the heart is opened only from within, the true
minister, like his Master, waits. He knows, too, that a few words
suffice in the great decisions of life, and that the handclasp of manly
love speaks volumes. The prime qualification is a friendship that
invites and respects confidence and a life that is above criticism.

Another important aid in bringing the boy over the threshold of vital
and purposeful religion is the favorable influence of his group or
"gang." The disposition to move together which is so pronounced in every
other field must not