A BOY'S RELIGION

GEORGE E. DAWSON, PH. D.

In any attempt to estimate a boy's religion we are, first of all, concerned with a few general qualities of the boy, for a boy's religion, like a man's religion, is the product of his life. Religion makes life, to be sure, but life makes religion.

There are four groups of qualities that especially condition what a boy is. First, are those qualities that center in a boy's energy and activity. A boy between twelve and sixteen years of age is perhaps the most complete embodiment of energy and activity in human form. This is scientifically true. Between the years of twelve and sixteen a boy grows faster in height and weight than during any other period of life; that is, he increases year by year more rapidly. The little child grows more rapidly, but its growth falls off from year to year; it is in a descending scale; whereas from twelve on to about sixteen the curve of growth is upward. This means that physical energy is on the increase constantly during that period. In other words, the boy is on the summit of a wave of vitality. The same is true of his increase in lung capacity, in strength, as measured by strength of grip in either hand, and in power of endurance, as measured by his power to resist fatigue. Finally, the curve of mortality is lowest; that is, from ten or twelve on to sixteen or seventeen, there is a smaller percentage of deaths.

All of these things bring to light the fact that in physical vitality, at least, the boy is on the summit of a tremendous wave of energy. These things affect his psychical life. Physiologists tell us that the special sense organs have become sharper and more discriminating during this period; that a boy actually sees more and feels more than at any other period of life. All the senses that condition the organic life of the boy are peculiarly alert and active. It would follow necessarily that the intellectual and the emotional life receive this same pulse of energy. The boy is energetic throughout his whole being, physical and psychical. But he is not a mere storage battery; he is a giver-off of energy. He is the most active creature in human life. We all know the incessant activity of boys on the play-ground and their great delight in all sorts of sports. The boy is the incarnation of energy and activity.

Again, the boy peculiarly illustrates the prominence of what is called self-feeling. By this is meant not merely self-consciousness. Self-feeling includes more broadly the realization of the self as an individual, the recognition of one's place in life, the feeling of one's relationship with society and with God. The boy comes to scrutinize himself more than ever

before, and to think of his associates in a different way. He is more concerned, perhaps, with the welfare of his own life. The instinct of self-preservation has now become more conscious. He is on the alert to get hold of those things that will help him to live. His outlook upon life is becoming wider. He is casting about him to find out what kind of business he is going into; what kind of a profession he is going to enter; and all through that he is thinking of himself.

Again, social feelings are peculiarly active. The boy has become more sympathetic. This is shown in his friendships. You all know what strong friendships boys form between fourteen and sixteen. You see boys going along the streets with locked arms. You see them going in groups or gangs. This is the basis of the gang formation-this sympathy and friendship. I need not speak of the boy's feelings as regards the opposite sex, but all these things enter into what we call social feeling, and they all have a prominent place in the boy's life.

Again, there is a large idealism in the boy's life. A boy is looking toward the future rather than toward the past. He is beginning to form plans. He is beginning to cherish ideals. Any one will make a mistake in dealing with a boy who does not take this fact into account. The boy has large hopes. He wants to be something. Above all, he wants to do something. The studies of boys' ambitions bring this to light. Their minds are teeming with ideals and plans for the future. Closely bound up with this idealism is a boy's tendency to hero worship. He always keeps before his mind some person who has done what he wants to do, or has become what he wants to be. The boy does not think of the position he is to hold so much as he thinks of the individual that is in that position; that is to say, that individual becomes his hero. It may be a Carlyle, or a Disraeli, or a George Washington, or an Abraham Lincoln, or a James A. Garfield, or a Phillips Brooks. But somewhere in the future, or in the past, or in the current life about him, there is a hero that sums his hopes and ideals.

These qualities that I have briefly sketched and that seem to me to be central in a boy's life, determine his religion. We shall find, to begin with, that a boy's religion is a religion of activity. I attempt no exact definition of religion. I leave that to those who are better qualified to define it than I am. But whatever else a boy's religion may be, or may not be, it is a religion of activity. Boys do not take naturally to a religion that is passive, to that which is expressed through what are ordinarily called "forms of worship." The average boy does not like to go to church or Sunday-school or class-meeting very well. And why? Because these various forms of worship are largely concerned with the passive attitude toward

God. The boy's attitude towards God is not simply an expression of faith by words or conventional religious work; by the bended knee, or by any other attitude of supplication, but the boy's impulses go out spontaneously to some act, some form of conduct. Accordingly I have never regarded it as a sign of total depravity in a boy if he does not like to go to church. I am disposed to extenuate the very general tendency that I have noticed from boyhood, a thing much deplored on all hands-the absence of boys from Sunday-school, church, etc. These forms of religious expression may fit the nature of adults, of women, who are more passive and less active in their motor life, but they do not fit the nature of boys. Boys want to do something. They prefer to work out their salvation.

This activity side of religion is of importance. I do not mean to say that you can get all of the religious life of a boy into activity, that is, simply into motor form; but a boy is attracted by those forms of religious expression that bring to light the active phases of religious belief. I believe that a boy, so far as he has thought of the matter at all, likes to think of God as an active God. God is not presented to young people sufficiently as an active God. Our ideas are still too much colored by that older, transcendent idea of God as One who has finished His work-a King on His throne. The idea of God's being an active, dynamic God, working in the world, has not been given to men in general as it should be. I know that this way of presenting God to boys as a working, active God, usually wins them to a greater interest in the great central fact of the universe.

And, furthermore, with regard to the immortality of the soul. You know what conception you had of the immortality of the soul when you were a boy-that heaven was largely a place of song services, playing on harps, and all that sort of thing. This seldom appeals to a boy. It may appeal to the old. But when energy is on the increase, when vitality is full, when life has so much hope and promise in it, our beliefs in eternal existence will be very much strengthened if they be given to us in connection with an active, working existence. I do not speak of these things theoretically. I have tested them and I have never failed to get boys interested when I have tried to open up to them a heaven where men do things. Then, again, a boy's religion, from what I said about selffeeling, must primarily be a self-regarding religion. That is to say, it must have a definite regard for his own personal welfare. When a boy's life is opening up to such large possibilities, when he is becoming so eager to know, then is the time to give religion to him as a means of self-realization and self-help. Religion is too often given to boys as simply a means of salvation after this life is past, and not as a means

of immediately and definitely helping, perhaps, to the realization of the very ideals that the boy has most at heart. What boy is there, for instance, that does not want to be a strong, vigorous man with strong muscles, a bright eye, a quick, sure responsiveness of hand and brain, in short, to have a robust physical manhood? What boy is there that does not want to realize everything that the superb and ideal man realizes? Suppose that religion is given to him as a stepping-stone to that sort of thing. Will it not increase its dignity and attractiveness to him?

Again, a boy's religion will be largely a fraternity religion, that is to say, a religion that will take account of the group of boys, of the clan. A boy lives a life of fraternal relationships -of friendship. He has chums. His religion, therefore, will naturally on its social side take the form of helping those boys, of doing good for them. This instinct of the boy should be given a religious coloring; he should be gotten to see that the befriending of a chum, the helping of one of his clan, to be something, to do something good, is a religious thing. Furthermore, a boy's religion will be a religion that is embodied in persons. A boy's ideals and ambitions sum themselves up in some personality. A boy's religion, therefore, will be a religion of personality, not a religion of abstractions, dogmas, or creeds. It may be a religion of creeds so far as those creeds are embodied in character, but the creed will then be lost in the person that practices it. Above all, a boy's religion, so far as relates to theological subjects and the Bible, is largely and primarily a matter of interest in the great characters of the Bible, and especially in the character of Jesus Christ. The longer I study these subjects, and the more contact I have in educational and religious work with boys and young men, the more I am convinced that great stress should be laid upon the study of the life and character of Christ. The boy is not interested in the theological interpretations of Christ, in theological questions of any kind, but he is tremendously interested in the personality of Christ and in the personality of those men that were grouped about Him.

From the facts thus far considered, we have suggested a few methods as to the way of reaching boys religiously. I think I am warranted in saying that this question is very far yet from successful solution. I have recently gone over the statistics of the Young Men's Christian Association with reference to the attendance upon religious services, and I confess that I was somewhat astonished to find that among the forty-three per cent of associations that have introduced religious work, but sixteen per cent of the boys, on an average, are given as attending regularly religious services; and of some thirty-five per cent of these boys' departments that have introduced Bible study, but six per cent of the boys are regular attendants upon

the Bible classes. I suppose that it is not wise to attach too much importance to these statistics, but if they are worth anything at all, they indicate that the attendance upon religious service and Bible classes is not at all satisfactory, and I do not see how we can long be satisfied with that sort of work. We must acknowledge one of two things, as Drummond has said somewhere, that either the power of God is not adequate to salvation, or else we human beings are not using the power of God in the right way. There is certainly something wrong somewhere. I think I am warranted in saying that the methods of reaching boys religiously are not what we might desire.

We have first then to take into account this matter of activity. Whatever methods we employ to reach boys in a religious way must provide some kind of action for them. I have sometimes thought that religious meetings, so called, for boys ought to be of the nature of more or less informal conferences, led by some devout and respected man, practical and wide awake in applied Christianity, who could talk with the boys, giving them suggestions as to how they can do things that will help them to work out their religious life, and submitting plans of work. I believe that at least some of our so-called religious meetings should take the form of prayerful, enthusiastic conferences with boys as to the ways in which they should work out their religious feelings and ideals. Of course, this would include efforts along the line of moral reform. Some twentytwo per cent or more, I think, of the associations that are doing work for boys have work along the lines of personal purity and the abstention from stimulants and narcotics. Things of this kind could be planned that would give the boy a chance to do something definite and effective for himself and others. Again, there should be a definite appeal to self-interest. We do not hear so much nowadays as we used to hear about sin. We do not hear such strong and definite appeals made to men's consciences with regard to their personal waywardness. There is no time of life when we do so much need this direct, plain talking, earnest exhortation and earnest work, as regards sin and its consequences. A boy up to thirteen or fourteen years of age has lived a more or less instinctive automatic life; his immorality or his morality has been largely a matter of habit; but there comes a time in the awakening self-consciousness that I have spoken about that he begins to look into his life, when he begins to see himself in his relation to society and to God. Then comes a consciousness of what his past life has been. If he has formed any bad habits in his past life, he becomes painfully aware of them. His conscience is alert, and this is the time to open up to boy the nature of sin and of righteousness. Here we need all the resources of religion as it has been taught through all the ages past, but we need particularly the resources of modern scientific thought.