ness
in their children. Youth is the time when the soul is apt to be shaken
by sorrow's power and when stormy passions rage. The tiny rill
starting from the mountainside can be readily deflected east or west,
but the majestic river hastening to the sea is beyond all such
arbitrary directions. So it is with the human being: the character and
habit are directed easily in infancy, with difficulty during
childhood, but they are well-nigh impossible of direction by the time
adolescence is established. Those fathers and mothers who desire to
have happiness and peace in connection with their adolescent boys and
girls must take the trouble to direct them aright during the plastic
years of infancy and childhood. All natural instincts implanted in us
by Him who knew what was in the heart of man are in themselves right
and good, but the exercise of these instincts may be entirely wrong in
time or in degree. The sexual instinct, the affinity of boy to girl,
the love of adult man and woman, are right and holy when exercised
aright, and it is the result of "spoiling" when these good and noble
instincts are wrongly exercised. All who love their country, all who
love their fellow men, and all who desire that the kingdom of God
should come, must surely do everything that is in their power to
awaken the fathers and mothers of the land to a sense of their heavy
responsibility and of their high privilege. In this we are entirely
separated from and higher than the rest of the animal creation, in
that on us lies the duty not only of calling into life a new
generation of human beings, but also the still higher duty, the still
greater privilege and the wider responsibility of bringing up those
children to be themselves the worthy parents of the future, the
supporters of their country's dignity, and joyful citizens of the
household of God.

Another characteristic of adolescence is to be found in
gregariousness, or what has been sometimes called the _gang spirit_.
Boys, and to almost as great a degree girls, form themselves into
companies or gangs, which frequently possess a high degree of
organisation. They elaborate special languages, they have their own
form of shorthand, their passwords, their rites and ceremonies. The
gang has its elected leader, its officers, its members; and although
it is liable to sudden disruption and seldom outlasts a few terms of
school-life, each succeeding club or company is for the time being of
paramount import