to value property and the main chance.

The failure of self-knowledge and self-control to keep pace with the rapid changes of bodily structure, sense-impressions, and mental organization is nowhere more marked and significant than in sex development; and the common experience of adolescent boys is to the effect that no other temptations equal in persistence and intensity those that attend and follow this awakening. It is highly important, then, that, as preparation for dealing with the individual, the minister shall both see the generic boy upon the background of the past and that he shall also understand in some measure the physical basis and psychological ferment of the boy's inevitable re-birth, not for the purpose of cheaply exploiting adolescence but in order that he may bring every life to its best in terms of personal character and of worth to the world.

CHAPTER III

THE BOY IN VILLAGE AND COUNTRY^[2]

From the consideration of bodily health the village boy is better off than his city cousin. He also enjoys to a far greater degree the protective and educative attention of real neighborhood life. The opinions and customs which help to mold him are more personal. He probably holds himself more accountable, for he can more readily trace the results of any course of action in terms of the welfare and good-will of well-known persons. His relation to nature is also more nearly ideal. Artificial restrictions, territorial and otherwise, are not so strictly imposed. His lot favors a sane and normal view of life. There are more chores to be done, more inviting occupations in the open, and altogether there may be a more wholesome participation in the work of maintaining the home than is possible for the city boy.

On the other hand, the static character of village life leaves the boy with little inspiration in his primary interests of play and his serious ideals of the noblest manhood. Idle hours work demoralization and the ever-present example of the village loafer is not good. A disproportionate number of village people lack public spirit and social ideals. The masculine element most in evidence is not of the strongest and most inspiring kind, and the village is all too often the paradise of the loafer and the male gossip. This, however, cannot be said of the small frontier town where the spirit of progress is grappling with crude conditions.

Furthermore, the village is sadly incompetent in the organization of its welfare and community work. As a matter of fact, social supervision is often so lax that obscene moving pictures and cards that are driven out of the large cities are exhibited without protest in the small towns. Usually the village is overchurched, and consequently divided into pitiably weak factions whose controlling aim is self-preservation. Seldom can a religious, philanthropic, or social organization be developed with sufficient strength to serve the community as such.

The sectarian divisions which in the vast needs and resources of great cities do not so acutely menace church efficiency prove serious in the small town. The saloon, poolroom, livery stable, and other haunts of the idle are open for boys; but the Christian people, because of their denominational differences, maintain no social headquarters and no institution in which boys may find healthy expression for their normal interests. The Y.M.C.A. is impracticable, because the church people are already overtaxed in keeping up their denominational competition and so cannot contribute enough to run an association properly. Wherever an association cannot be conducted by trained and paid officers it will result in disappointment.

The caricature of essential Christianity which is afforded by the denominational exhibit in the village works great harm to boys. It is not only that they are deprived of that guidance which true Christianity would give them, but they are confronted from the first with a spectacle of pettiness, jealousy, and incompetency which they will probably forever associate with Christianity, at least in its ecclesiastical forms. Villages are at best sufficiently susceptible to those unfortunate human traits that make for clique and cleavage in society, and when the Christian church, instead of unifying and exalting the community life, adds several other divisive interests with all the authority of religion, the hope of intelligent, united, and effective service for the community, on a scale that would arouse the imagination and enlist the good-will of all right-minded people, is made sadly remote.

So far as church work is concerned, the village boy is likely to be overlooked, as promising little toward the immediate financial support of the church and the increase of membership. In the brief interval of two years--the average duration of the village pastorate--it does not seem practicable for the minister to go about a work which will require a much longer time to produce those "satisfactory results" for which churches and missionary boards clamor. A revival effort which inflates the membership-roll, strenuous and ingenious endeavors to increase the offerings, are the barren makeshifts of a policy which does not see the distinct advantage and security in building Christian manhood from the foundation up.

It must not be thought that the minister is largely to blame for the situation as it now is. Perpetuating institutions beyond the time of their usefulness is one of society's worst habits, and it is not to be expected that religious organizations, which in a given stage of the development of Christian truths were vital and necessary, can easily be persuaded to surrender their identity, even after the cause that called them into being has been won.

Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great has passed away.

But the real religious leader who loves boys will not be balked by the pettiness and inability of denominationalism. His hope lies not solely in the church or the churches, but largely in the intelligence, sympathy, and generosity of the unchurched citizens, whose number and importance in the small town is probably in the inverse ratio of the number of churches. Business men of whatever creed, or of none, are remarkably responsive to any sane endeavor to create a wholesome outlet for juvenile activity, and, whether right or wrong, count such efforts as being more valuable than much of the traditional church endeavor.

The minister will first try to organize boys' work for the whole community, but if co-operation on the part of all or of a group of the churches proves impossible, let him go ahead with such assistance as his own church and other voluntary supporters will afford, and let him still work in entire freedom from sectarian aim. As a minister of Christ and his kingdom he must give to Christianity an interpretation which will offset provincial and narrow impressions. He must free it from cant and from the other-worldly emphasis and bring it into the realm where boys and business men will respect it as a social factor of primary importance.

All the problems of early adolescence belong to the village boy as to every other. He also gropes about for his vocational discovery. How shall he gain self-control, how can he find himself? How can he relate his life to the great perplexing world and to the God of all? How can he win his immediate battles with temptation? The public school throws little light upon his possible occupation, trade, or profession, nor does it deal with his moral struggle.

The Sunday school, if it touches him at all, is often regarded as a nuisance to be endured out of respect for others. It addresses itself too much to tradition and too