But the new citizenship is in training for peace rather than for war, for world-wide justice rather than for national aggrandizement; and to this the Christian message lends itself with full force.  The rehearsal of war and strife, the superficial view of history which sees only the smoke of battles and the monuments of military heroes, give place to an insight which traces the advancing welfare of the common people.  The minister will inspire his formative citizens with good portrayals of statesmen, educators, inventors, reformers, discoverers, pioneers, and philanthropists.  He will charm them into greatness at the very time when a boy’s ideals overtop the mountains.

Conducive to the same end will be the rugged and humane ideals and activities of the Boy Scouts under his control; and all that is well done in the boys’ clubs—­the athletics, debates, trials, councils, literary and historical programs, addresses by respected public officials, visits to public institutions, the study of social conditions, especially in the young men’s classes of the Sunday school—­will make for the same good citizenship.

If the Men’s Brotherhood is of significance in the community it is quite possible to bring political candidates before it for the statement of their claims and of the issues involved in any given campaign, and boys of fifteen years and over might well be invited to such meetings.

Then, too, such activities for community betterment as are outlined in the closing chapter of this book should be of some benefit, since the boy is to become a good citizen, not by hearing only but by doing; and the great success attending “Boy-City” organizations should inspire the pastor to attempt by this and other means the training of a new citizenship.

In fact, the matter is of sufficient importance to have a definite place in the Sunday-school curriculum and a boy might far better be informed on the plan of government, the civic dangers, and the line of action for a good man in his own city than to fail of that in an attempt to master the topography of Palestine or to recite perfectly the succession of the Israelitish kings.

If the minister has faith in a living God, if he believes that people are not less valuable now than they were four thousand years ago, if his Golden Age comprises the perfect will of God entempled in the whole creation, if he believes that this nation has some responsible part in the divine plan for the world, if he believes that righteousness is more desirable than pity and justice than philanthropy, and that the unrest of our times is but opportunity, he will in every way gird his boys for the battle and deliver constantly to the state trained recruits for the cause of human welfare which is ever the cause of God.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BOY’S RELIGIOUS LIFE[9]