Apart from every speculative question the child accepts the ethical leadership of Jesus.  And he should understand that discipleship consists in conduct that conforms to His spirit.  To make the test creedal is not only contrary to the intensely pragmatic character of childhood but inimical to the resistless spirit of inquiry and speculation which breaks out in reflective youth.  Childhood needs a religion of deeds.  If a religion of dogma and detached sentiment is substituted the youth may some day awake to the fact that he can throw the whole thing overboard and experience a relief rather than a loss.  If from his earliest experience in the home he has lived under the wholesome influence of applied rather than speculative Christianity, he will be spared much of the danger incident to theological reconstruction.

In emphasizing this point of applied Christianity, and as illustrating the fact that the boy’s initial religious struggle, which necessitates a quest for God, centers about concrete temptations, it may be in place to make mention of a problem which lies very close to personal religion and social welfare.  On the one hand the very altruism which is exalted and glorified in religion has its physical basis in the sex life, and on the other hand the sex life, unless it be guarded by religious control, ever threatens to devastate all the higher values of the soul.  Hence the problem of the boy’s personal purity has profound religious significance.

As yet there is little consensus of opinion as to the best way of keeping him pure.  Parents, educators, and religious leaders, however, are showing increased concern over this difficult problem, and there is good ground to believe that prudery and indifference must gradually give place to frank and intelligent consideration of this vital and difficult subject.

It must be granted, however, that it is as impossible as it is undesirable to keep the boy ignorant.  His own natural curiosity, together with his school and street experience, are fatal to such a Fool’s Paradise.  Moreover, the general attitude of suppression and secrecy rather stimulates curiosity, and often amounts to the plain implication that everything that has to do with the perpetuation of our species is of necessity evil and shameful.  This “conspiracy of silence” makes against true virtue.  Religious instruction, based upon the confession of the repentant David, “Behold, I was begotten in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me,” has helped to perpetuate a sinister attitude toward this whole question—­an attitude not without some foundation in the moral history of man.

It has also been convenient and consistent, in support of the doctrine of man’s depravity, to exploit this dark view so as to make him a fit subject for redemption.  Somehow, the traditional “Fall” and procreation have been so associated in religious thinking that it has been practically impossible for the religious mind to entertain any favorable consideration of the physical conditions of human genesis.  Very naturally that which is under the ban, being the seat of human sin, the bond that binds each generation to fallen Adamic nature, must take its place as surreptitious and evil—­and never positively within the sanctioned and ordained agencies of God.