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_.

[Illustration: THE FUTURE PROMISES NOTHING AND SHE HAS LOST HOPE]

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