schools, clubs, and young people's
societies offer wider opportunity for vocational direction than is now
being used. The curricula in these institutions can be greatly vitalized
and enlarged by the inclusion of this very interest, and life can be
made to seem more broadly, sanely, and specifically religious than is
now the case.

Suppose that to groups of boys beyond middle adolescence competent and
high-minded representatives of various trades and professions present in
series the reasons for their choice, the possible good, individual and
social, which they see in their life-work, the qualifications which they
deem necessary, and the obstacles to be met; and suppose further that
the ethical code of a trade, profession, or business is presented for
honest canvass by the class, must there not result a stimulus and aid to
vocational selection and also a more lively interest in the study of
specific moral problems? In this way teaching clusters about an
inevitable field of interest, about live and often urgent problems, and
there is nothing to prevent the use of all the light which may be
adduced from the Bible and religious experience.

To describe the method more specifically, the lawyer presents his
profession and subsequently the class discusses the code of the bar
association; or the physician presents his work and then follows the
canvass of the ethical problems of medical practice, and so of the
trade-union artisan, the merchant or teacher, the minister, or the
captain of industry. All of this is diffused with religion, it has its
setting and sanction within the church, it supplements for a few, at any
rate, the present lack in public education, and it is real and immediate
rather than theoretical and remote.

Let this be complemented with visits to institutions, offices, plants,
courts, and the marts and centers of commercial, industrial, and
agricultural life; and, best of all, cemented in the personal
friendship, practical interest and sponsorship of an adult and wise
counselor who helps the boy both to the place and in the place; and,
within the limits of the rather small constituency of church boys at
least, there is guaranteed a piece of religious work that is bound to
tell. For surely every legitimate interest of life is religious when
handled by religious persons, and the right moral adjustment of the
whole self to the whole world, with the emotion and idealism inhering in
the process, is the task and