One summer night when the thunder was roaring over the sea and vivid flashes of lightning blinded for the moment one daring enough to face the storm, the little village church bell rang the dread alarm of fire.  The apparatus for firefighting was of the type most city people have forgotten.  Men rushed to the fire company’s quarters and dragged the engine forth.  From one of the highest hilltops flames lighted the sky.  The men seizing the rope dragged the apparatus up the steep slope.  Just before reaching the top it stuck.  Suddenly a sharp appealing voice rang out into the darkness.  It did more than request, it commanded and demanded.  “Everybody take hold” it shouted, and under the power of it people sprang to obey and the engine reached the hilltop.

Those who look with sympathy and love at girlhood today, cannot help wishing that some Voice of power would ring out through every place where girls are found saying—­“Everybody take hold!” If everybody would respond to the task as that night in the fire and the storm, the girl, in body, mind and spirit might easily be saved.  Everybody may not respond now—­but how about you, the girl herself?

XIII

THOU SHALT NOT

In our effort to get away from the harsh negative teaching of the past which made young people feel that life meant “don’t,” we have made the mistake of failing to teach with power the fact that there are things to which God’s law and man’s law say thou shall not.  “I did not know it would do any harm,” is oftentimes a truthful statement and the girl has the right to be carefully, wisely and sanely taught the things to which she must say no.  A girl’s religion must have not only the constraining power which sends her out to do the kindly deed, say the word of comfort and cheer, give of her time and her talent to help make life easier for those who find it hard, but it must have the restraining power which shall keep her from self-indulgence and sin.

Whenever the thou shalt not side of religion is mentioned the girls themselves and those responsible for their training immediately think of the question of amusements, which is after all only a part of the greater question of how much leisure a girl should have and what she should do with it.  Preachers, teachers and Christians generally, differ so widely on the matter of disputed amusement questions that thou shalt not loses its force.  It is the parents’ right to decide the girl’s amusements and determine her social life and when one sees the length to which parents permit and even encourage their daughters to go, he knows that the thou shalt not might well be said to them.  When parents do not care what their girls do, or are too careless and ignorant to realize danger, when the girls are without friends and unprotected, then the teacher of religion must without hesitation, forcefully and with the arguments of fact, teach them to say “no” to the things which she believes can bring only harm, which weaken the power to resist other evils and which are unhealthy for the growing girl.  One may teach with feeling and power the “thou shalt not” in which she believes without uttering bitter words of condemnation of those who differ with her.