The years pass and in the later teens and early twenties another world forces itself upon the girl.  It is the world of sin and evil, of selfishness, greed and hypocrisy.  She shrinks from it but it is bound to be revealed.  She catches a glimpse of a world of suffering and pain that makes her heart ache.  And while these worlds are pressing hard she is plunging into the secrets of things.  The revelation of biology, astronomy, chemistry, the history of peoples, languages and books, the science of economics, and the mysteries of psychology are demanding consideration.  Something happens to the bright, sweet unquestioned faith.  Questions persist, doubts suggest themselves and demand answer.  Nature asks “What do you think about me?” The problems of sin and sickness, accident and injustice ask “How do you explain us?” and darkness settles over the girl’s spirit.  Sometimes she refuses to think things out and accepts the new explanations of things whatever they happen to be, turning in cynicism from the old.  But more often she does think—­asking the old questions she faced as a little girl all over again out of a larger world and a trained mind.  “Who made God?—­what was the very beginning of beginnings?” she asks.  “Is it some one or some thing?” “What is Death and what is after that?  How am I to know?” Soul, mind and spirit cry out for concrete proof of that which can never be concretely proven.

The thing she needs just here, is the very thing she is most often denied.  She needs some one who can show to her the larger God and the greater Christ for her larger world and greater thought.  She is losing or has lost her smaller conceptions in the maze of wonders which have been revealed to mind and heart.  She needs to know that she has not lost her God, rather is she just beginning to discover Him; that she has not lost her Christ, instead the Christ is just beginning to be revealed to her in all His greatness.  She needs some one to make clear to her the meaning of the promise, “Seek and ye shall find.  Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”  From a new view-point with a larger horizon she may be helped to begin her trustful search for God knowing that truth can never lead away from God.  She is just a girl but the Universe is hers in which to seek Him.  Its laws, as fast as she can discover them, are her servants to lead her to Him and its broadening horizons but bring her nearer.

When she can face all the new knowledge, feel the shaking of the old foundations, in this spirit of trustful discovery, her doubts will pass away.  The world is saved through Christ, not through dogma and if she can have the wise instructor or friend who can show her these things she is safe.