had been my training," she said regretfully.
"Perhaps I should have been saved the darkness and perplexity in which
I have lived for years."
Months after in a large class of earnest, eager and attentive girls I
listened to a wonderful teacher. I loved with a deeper love, after that
lesson, the Christ whose presence seemed to fill that room as the
teacher showed her girls the Master at His task of saving the world by
showing it God, the Father.
One day I stood in a silent home with a brilliant, cultured girl, who
had traveled much and enjoyed every privilege. She had that afternoon
left her mother beside her father out on the sloping hillside in the
great silent city. We raised the curtains the maid had drawn, the girl
laid aside her coat and hat and said sadly, "Now life must begin again,
without all that is dearest to me." I tried to find words to strengthen
her but she turned her calm face toward me and said, "How do people live
through it and go on, who haven't God? The Father of the World has them
both in His keeping. I can wait till I find them again."
This girl had never doubted. She had wondered and thought, questioned
and _believed_. Wise parents had given to her the God of the
Universe--the Father, and His Son the revelation of Himself to men that
it might be saved, in such simple terms, so free from petty dogma that
as she had grown in mind and spirit He grew in wonder and majesty and
power, commanding her love and worship.
If a girl, troubled and perplexed by the things the mind cannot grasp or
heart understand, chances to read this chapter let her know that the
trouble lies not with the God of whom she has been taught but with those
who, trying to do their best, have been weak in their teaching.
If we can banish from our faith all its man made littleness, all its
chaos of bickerings, all the fret of the conflicting opinions of those
who, after all, are themselves but children searching after truth, and
give to the growing girl, a growing religion, the God of the Universe
will become her God and she will worship him in sincerity and truth all
the days of her life.
"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our feverish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise."
XII
IN THE HANDS OF A TRIAD
Despite all the words that have been written and spoken in the past it
is still true that many of those engaged in the religi
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