The indubitable and hopeful fact is that in every normal boy the potent germ of religion is present.  Usually in early adolescence it bursts its casings 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 be ignored here.  The ideal club will be bringing the boy toward the altar of the church and at the right point along the way the minister who is properly intimate with each boy will be assured in private conference of the good faith and earnest purpose of his prospective church member.