I know another teacher who is very successful in cultivating the spiritual life of every class of girls as it comes to her.  I find that each new class has been asked to join with her at night in using wisely selected prayers written by Stevenson, Rauschenbusch, Phillips Brooks, and others taken from religious journals and from calendars.  Each prayer is used daily for two weeks.  After about six months the teacher asks that a committee be appointed to write a prayer for the class, this committee being changed every two weeks.

Some of the prayers were very helpful and all had a crude, simple sincerity that was fine.  I saw a letter written to this teacher by a seventeen-year-old girl away from home and out on a strike.  It was a pathetic letter but one sentence cheered the teacher’s heart—­“The prayer that Midge and Kate wrote keeps coming to my mind and it helps me to keep a level head when we all git kinder wild.”

When girls see that prayer is not beseeching an unwilling God for things the desire for which may be born of pure selfishness, but is the way by which help to keep steady and strong, power to love one’s fellows and to live courageously and well comes to many, it will make a difference in what they think about prayer and the way they pray.  But most girls do not know these things intuitively.  They must be helped to know them.  The spirit within them must be cultivated.  Prayer and seeking the Bible for courage and help are largely matters of cultivation.  The great Teacher prayed Himself in such a wonderful way that the disciples listening cried—­“Lord, teach us how to pray.”  And he answered their request, giving them the words to say until they should find words for themselves.  He made them want to pray.

If the girl herself chances to read this chapter let her be assured that there is no lesson in all the world which she can learn which can give to her anything like the courage, strength, comfort and help to go right on in the face of hard things, that can come to her through learning how to truly pray, not empty words, not words for others to hear, but words that say all she feels of disappointment and longing, of hope and gladness.  The Great God hears all one can say and knows what she cannot say.  Only God can do that.  Even the best friends tire of our struggles and failures.  God never does and when I speak to Him I may know He cares.  Though I am one speck of humanity in a great mass of men and women, though the girl who is reading this is just one ordinary girl, one among millions the world around, she may speak to God, her Creator without fear, may touch His greatness and her heart be warmed by His answering touch.

  “Speak to Him then, for He heareth,
    and spirit with spirit may meet. 
  Closer is He than breathing,
    And nearer than hands and feet.”

XVI