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 Southern Branch 
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 University of California 
 
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 Form L 1 
 
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 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 132* 
 
 MAR 1 9 19 
 
 ^ 1928 
 ,DEC4 1933 
 
 t APR 1 5 193^ 
 1936 
 
 NOV 8 I9J| 
 APR 2 7 198T 
 
 Ml AY 1 
 
 Form L-'J-5tn-12,'23
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS
 
 "There are some ways in which we can play 
 on an instrument and some ways in which we 
 can not. Instead of blaming the instrument, we 
 had better learn the stops." 
 
 W. H. P. FAUNCE.
 
 CHURCH WORK 
 WITH BOYS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE BOY PROBLEM" 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
 
 Copyright, 1910 
 BY LUTHER H. CARY 
 
 THE . PI.IMPTOlt . PRESS 
 
 [w .D -o] 
 HOBWOOD . MASS . U . 8 A
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The Boy Problem was a study of boyhood in 
 general, with some special application to the 
 various forms of social work with boys, and, in 
 the last edition, some reference to the boy in the 
 home. 
 
 This smaller book deals solely with one special 
 but important part of such social work, that done 
 for boys in our churches. It exalts the signifi- 
 cance of it, states its principles, and goes into 
 details as to methods, books, and organizations 
 for the religious education of boys in the Church. 
 
 The book is designed for the reading of Church 
 workers and for study in classes by those who are 
 preparing to be of service to the men of tomorrow. 
 For the latter especially, each chapter concludes 
 with hints for first-hand study, outlines for report, 
 and suggestions for further reading. 
 
 WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH. 
 
 The North Woodward Avenue 
 Congregational Church, Detroit.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. WHAT CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 MEANS . i 
 
 II. THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY . . 8 
 
 III. THE PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK 
 
 WITH BOYS 19 
 
 IV. THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS . . 28 
 
 V. How TO TEACH A BOYS' SUNDAY- 
 SCHOOL CLASS 47 
 
 VI. How TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' 
 
 CLUB 61 
 
 VII. BOYS AND THE KlNGDOM .... 83 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 95 
 
 INDEX 103 
 
 vn

 
 Church Work with Boys 
 
 WHAT UilkCH WORK WITH 
 BOYS MEANS 
 
 There may be a few pastors and church members 
 who still think that social work with boys is either 
 something of a fad or at least an elective. To 
 such it seems necessary to explain that it is the 
 absolute essential if boys are to be brought into 
 the Kingdom. Social work with boys in the 
 church does not necessarily imply gymnasia or 
 apparatus or elaborate kinds of boys' clubs, such 
 as can be conducted only in churches of wealth 
 or by people of exceptional ability and leisure. 
 Social work with boys is simply a modern expres- 
 N 'sion of incarnation. 
 
 ^ What is meant is .this: The study of childhood 
 
 *} teaches us that boys are brought into the Christian 
 
 --life, not by the formal teaching of truth in sermon 
 
 \ and Sunday-school class, but by the contagion 
 
 * of Christian character in actual operation. 
 
 "Character is caught, not taught." Just as our 
 
 Master became the incarnation of the life of 
 
 God in our human life, so the leader of boys must 
 
 become the incarnation of the life of the Master 
 
 in their lives. Church work with boys gives the 
 
 opportunity for a man to live the Christlike life 
 
 in companionship with boys. One man will do 
 
 that effectively just by his example in the com- 
 
 [i]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 munity. Another will thus influence boys by 
 occasional contact with them in the Sunday-school 
 class or at his home, but as such occasions are too 
 fortuitous and infrequent for the certainty of 
 real influence, the devoted leader of boys will 
 covet regular social opportunities for influence. 
 
 A few men have been able by personal work, 
 which in its finest meaning is tactful personal 
 interest and evangelism, to bring boys one 
 by one into vital relations with God and with 
 manly character. Suitable opportunities for such 
 approach are difficult to secure, and the avenue 
 of such intimacy is a difficult one to travel. Most 
 people who say they depend upon this method 
 are likely to be neglectful in their exercise of it. 
 The reserved soul of a boy is not to be burglar- 
 ized, and most wise leaders feel that an acquaint- 
 ance formed through play or some other wholesome 
 interest of youth is the best way of approach to 
 affairs of the spirit. The interesting recent 
 studies that have been made of "the gang" 1 show 
 that instinctive social organization, especially 
 for outdoor play, but also for wintertime sport 
 indoors, is almost universal among boys. The 
 leader who takes advantage of this instinct is 
 not calling together boys out of their homes who 
 would otherwise be there; he is simply either 
 summoning a ready-made "gang," or he is arrang- 
 ing a new one from members of several others. 
 It has been questioned whether any man-made 
 "gang" is as strong as a boy-made one. The writ- 
 er's experience is that sometimes a "gang" may 
 be adopted by a worker outright, or that, in time, 
 a worker may lead in creating a "gang" which is 
 
 1 Summarized in The Boy Problem. 
 [2]
 
 WHAT CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS MEANS 
 
 fully as loyal and persistent as any of those in 
 the neighborhood. To do either of these things, 
 common sense would indicate that the leader 
 should try to follow the line of least resistance 
 in the choice of members, the plan of organizing, 
 and the matter of self-government. It is his 
 own tact and his superior resource which make 
 him an acceptable member of the group, i> 
 
 What then, essentially, is the boys' club for? 
 It is the opportunity actually to live out a certain 
 portion of the normal life together. It is a real 
 gymnasium or laboratory of life. In the Sunday- 
 school class the teacher preaches fairness, gener- 
 osity, truth, and virtue; in the club he tries, in the 
 real situations of the club life, to be fair, gener- 
 ous, true, and virtuous with them, and this without 
 preaching. The home and the school are of course 
 the chief laboratories of life, but the boy comes 
 so enthusiastically to his club that its effects 
 are of unparalleled intensity. The home and 
 the school chiefly develop individualism, the 
 club uses the cumulative influence of the group. 
 There, chiefly, the boy learns the brotherhood 
 of man. The club, though only occasionally 
 in session, calls out a new moral problem every 
 moment when it meets. In its uses of enthusiasm, 
 cooperation, and eager activity it affords us the 
 most practical and effective exercise of will possi- 
 ble in any human conjunct relation. It becomes, 
 in President G. Stanley Hall's fine phrase, "gen- 
 tlemen practising noblesse oblige." 
 
 Beyond this general influence there are a number 
 of special ones which can only be barely named in 
 passing. The supervised club gives safe expres- 
 sion for the "gang" instinct, which at its worst is
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 the mob-spirit, and at its best is the power of 
 friendship-making. This segregation of boys in 
 the club tends to prolong boyhood, prevent pre- 
 cocity, and postpone sex-functioning, thus retain- 
 ing wholesome boyishness as long as possible. 
 It offers an opportunity for the expression and 
 satisfaction of certain instincts which are best 
 expressed during boyhood. The boy who has 
 his fill of military drill, for example, is less likely 
 to want to be a soldier later. The boy who 
 belongs to some supervised club with a mystery 
 to it is less likely to become a "lodge fiend." It 
 often reveals vocational aptitudes and is in other 
 ways a help to a boy in self-discovery and self- 
 realization. 
 
 The study of childhood has also of late laid 
 the greatest emphasis upon the importance of 
 the social instinct even in the religious decision 
 of youth. So strong in every department of 
 immature life is the influence of companions 
 that it seems no exaggeration to say that boys are 
 candidates for individuality rather than complete 
 individuals, and that, to a degree greater than has 
 been realized, they live the conjunct life. If 
 this be indeed a law of the soul during the adoles- 
 cent years, then the social approach is not only 
 the most direct and wholesome, but it is the only 
 complete approach, and it may be questioned 
 whether a boy who enters into the religious life 
 entirely alone really gets all his birthright. 
 
 These psychological explanations are placed in 
 the forefront so that in the discussions of detailed 
 methods that follow the reader may remember 
 that methods are suggested not for their own 
 sake, but for the purpose of utilizing our best 
 
 [4]
 
 WHAT CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS MEANS 
 
 knowledge of child nature in the most skillful 
 Christian craftsmanship. 
 
 We have apparently passed pretty well through 
 the era of organizing in church life. It is 
 becoming realized that the Church often has 
 too much machinery for its power, and church 
 workers groan when anything additional is pro- 
 posed in the way of detail in church work. The 
 only objection that has been urged in Brother- 
 hood circles to work with boys is that aroused 
 by the fear that the Brotherhood itself is pro- 
 posing such a complex program that it is going 
 to give the men of the Church about all they 
 can attend to for the present. In response 
 to these objections it should immediately be 
 stated that church boys' work does not involve 
 more organization and machinery, and that, as 
 far as the Brotherhood is concerned, boys' work 
 is not an adjunct organization; it is one of the 
 two or three central tasks for which the Brother- 
 hood exists. To put it even more simply, church 
 work with boys is not new societies, it is the Church 
 at its work of evangelizing its own sons. And 
 as for the Brotherhood, it is not the Brotherhood's 
 luxury, it is the Brotherhood's job. 
 
 WHAT OTHERS SAY 
 
 "The gang instinct itself is almost a cry of the soul 
 to be influenced." 
 
 G. STANLEY HALL. 
 
 "The bad boy is what I am, except for a friend and 
 the grace of God." 
 
 LILBURN MERRILL. 
 
 [Si
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 "It is doubtful if a boy can be taught anything by 
 counselling. We can teach him by example, but the most 
 impressive way to gain knowledge is by experience." 
 
 G. A. DICKINSON. 
 
 "Education being a social process, the school is 
 simply the form of community life in which all those 
 agencies are concentrated that will be most effective 
 in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources 
 of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. 
 I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living, 
 and not a preparation for future living." 
 
 JOHN DEWEY. 
 
 "Education is friends seeking happiness together." 
 
 EPICURUS. 
 
 HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY 
 
 Did you ever belong to a "gang" when you were a 
 boy? 
 
 Did you respond readily to its influences? 
 
 How did its influence compare in potency with those 
 of the sermons you heard when a boy? In the shaping 
 of your ideals? In the regulation of your conduct? 
 
 Which influenced you the more in these directions, 
 the "gang" or your Sunday-school? 
 
 Were these two sets of impressions antagonistic or 
 simply utterly unrelated? 
 
 Whose fault is it that the Church and its school are 
 not more attractive to growing boys? Is it fair to say 
 of the Church that it seldom honors boys by taking 
 the trouble to understand them? Considering their 
 impressibility, their peril, and their possibility, are our 
 own churches giving boys all they deserve? Does the 
 Church service or the Sunday-school session give much 
 opportunity for the incarnation of adults in boys, 
 referred to above? Do they give much chance for 
 living out any of the moral life together? 
 
 What ought we to do then? 
 
 [6]
 
 WHAT CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS MEANS 
 
 OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC 
 
 The ways by which adults may influence boys: 
 
 By example. 
 
 By religious teaching. 
 
 By personal work. 
 
 In club life. 
 
 The advantages and limitations of each method. 
 The "gang" vs. the chaperoned boys' club: studied as to sponta- 
 neity, flexibility, permanency, moral influence. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 
 ON THIS TOPIC 
 
 G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, Vol. II, pp. 417-448. 
 F. G. Bonser, Chums, a Study of Youthful Friendship. Pedagog- 
 ical Seminary, June, 1902. 
 
 [7]
 
 II 
 
 THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY 
 
 The heading of this chapter is suggested by 
 that beautiful title which Horace Bushnell selected 
 for his proposed autobiography, "The Way of 
 God with a Soul." While a full study of the 
 religious development of boys is impossible here, 
 it does seem wise to furnish an outline sufficient 
 for us to understand clearly how the boy is develop- 
 ing as an individual, as well as in his relation to 
 his group, and so that we may see just where the 
 social instinct in a boy's life emerges in reference 
 to his personal development. The reader is 
 referred to the accompanying chart prepared by 
 Professor G. Walter Fiske, of Oberlin, which 
 presents a conspectus of the subject which is 
 unifying, and is as accurate as any chart can be. 
 The column on "Religious Development" has 
 been inserted by the author for completeness. 
 By studying this chart, it is apparent that the 
 boy passes in succession through religious periods 
 which have their parallels in race history. By 
 the time a boy comes into the reach of the social 
 instrumentalities of the Church, he has passed 
 out of the period of religion as instinct, has secured 
 nearly all that is to come to him from the period 
 of religion as habit, and is dwelling either in the 
 region of religion as sentiment or of religion as 
 
 [8]
 
 THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 (9
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 will. It is these two latter periods, then, which 
 are especially under attention and study. 
 
 The period of religion as sentiment in a boy's 
 life is a very short one. It is parallel physically 
 with the bodily revolution of early adolescence. 
 It is the time of personal loyalty, especially to a 
 hero. This is the period when conversion is 
 first apt to occur, and when it occurs at this time 
 it is usually accompanied by strong feeling. A 
 boy would be more apt to be converted at a revival 
 now than during the period which follows. He 
 would also be influenced more in his conversion 
 by the "gang" than he would in the next period. 
 Conversions which occur during these two or 
 three years are often discouraging to the parent 
 or teacher, because they do not seem to be followed 
 by any noticeable improvement in conduct. 
 This is because the boy's nature has not yet 
 acquired the third dimension, that of depth. 
 The boy lives in the realm of feeling, rather than 
 of will. The endeavor of religious education 
 during this period is to provide the boy with the 
 right heroes, both in books and in life. The 
 emphasis of Sunday-school courses ought to be 
 biographical. This is the time for teaching in 
 a convincing and inspiring way, not only the life 
 of Jesus and of the Bible heroes, but also the 
 heroic men and women who have lived since. 
 This is also the period when the influence of a 
 noble adult leader in a boys' club is more notice- 
 able, although perhaps not more real, than in 
 later years. 
 
 It is the next period, that of middle adolescence, 
 from fourteen to eighteen, which demands most 
 careful study and endeavor. This stage is 
 
 [10]
 
 THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY 
 
 marked in Professor Fiske's chart as "The Self- 
 assertive Period." I have called it, in the boy's 
 religious development, "The Period of the Religion 
 of Will." This is the time when, as Professor Coe 
 has suggested, the boy really begins to "person- 
 alize his religion." It seems accurate to say, if 
 he was converted in the preceding period, that it 
 was as much as one integer of a religious "gang" 
 as it was as a religious individual. But now it 
 is the boy himself who is converted. In other 
 words, the boy is now struggling for an individu- 
 ality of his own, religious as well as otherwise, 
 and these are the most significant years for charac- 
 ter-building. It is commonly a period of domestic 
 rebellion. These fierce and sometimes unreason- 
 jng struggles for a life of his own, while the boy is 
 finding himself, his world, and his mission, are 
 often so exasperating and baffling to others as 
 well as himself that this stage has sometimes been 
 called "the crazy period." Psychologists have 
 stated that a time of mild criminality is quite 
 normal to boys during these years. The criminal- 
 ity, however, is in action, rather than in purpose. 
 The boy's whole moral future is in the balance, 
 and never does he more need guidance, patience, 
 and good sense on the part of his parents and 
 teachers than just now. The endeavor of all 
 adult guidance during this "fool" age must be 
 to protect the boy from some of the more serious 
 results of his possession of adult powers without 
 corresponding adult judgment. Without actually 
 crippling the boy's incentive and growing power 
 of choice, we must make his education as inex- 
 pensive as possible to himself and to others. 
 We must encourage him, but at the same time 
 
 [ii]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 also make him to be chastened by reality. We 
 must never let him despair of himself or become 
 discouraged in his relation to others. This period 
 can probably neither be avoided nor shortened. 
 Never is there a time when a boy is less able to 
 take or appreciate advice, or more able to learn 
 from his own experience. President Henry B. 
 Brown, of Valparaiso, counselling once regarding 
 a boy who was just in this stage, made this wise 
 statement: "Never take a boy from an unlearned 
 lesson. No time, no matter how long, is wasted 
 until he has learned it. And never try to teach 
 it to him. He will not thank you until he has 
 discovered it himself. Some day he will come to 
 you and say, 'Now I know what I have been 
 learning." Just here, where the parents in the 
 home often become discouraged or find that they 
 have lost the confidence of their boy, or where 
 the school teacher has lost his patience, the 
 boy's club leader or the Sunday-school teacher, 
 who comes a little closer socially to the boy and 
 sees him at his best, has often a priceless oppor- 
 tunity. Not being nagged by daily contact with 
 the lad, he can get a bird's-eye view of him, 
 overlooking details, and remaining prophetic 
 and hopeful for his future. Such a leader is 
 often the only person in the world who seems 
 willing to do the boy the courtesy of regarding 
 him as an individual. It is the old story of the 
 prodigal son repeated, and it actually seems 
 necessary for every boy to pass through the experi- 
 ence of the far country, not necessarily of sin, 
 but of alienation from his father and his home, in 
 order that he may discover himself and eventu- 
 ally come back redeemed to his father's house. 
 
 [12]
 
 THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY 
 
 Those who have watched boys patiently through 
 these trying years bring good testimony to the 
 fact that it is worth while to await these "soul- 
 births" and spiritual fruitions. 
 
 Among the modifying influences that affect 
 the religious development of boys during these 
 years, probably the most important one is that 
 of sex. Sometimes this influence is manifested 
 by an acquaintance formed with an older girl. 
 The influence in this case is likely to be whole- 
 some, because the affection involved is much like 
 that of a knight of the olden times for his chosen 
 lady. Sometimes it is far different in character 
 and in influence. The Church and the home 
 have, as has previously been stated, an important 
 duty in preparing for the possibility of such 
 influences by wise instruction and a guarded 
 environment. It must be realized that almost 
 no religious change of importance takes place 
 between the age of fourteen and maturity that 
 does not involve some amount of sex influence. 
 
 The influence of the "gang," as we have been 
 saying all along, is also important religiously, 
 although it grows less evident as the boy matures 
 to the period of self-assertion and self-reliance. 
 It never fails, however, to assist or prevent, and 
 always to qualify, the character of a boy's religious 
 experience. 
 
 The matter of expectation also modifies a boy's 
 character. The kind of early religious develop- 
 ment produced in the church which expects a 
 cataclysm of conversion will evidently be different 
 from that one which is brought about by quieter 
 methods of steady nurture. 
 
 A boy's own temperament must always be taken
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 into consideration in the study of his religious 
 growth. All boys have a proper reserve upon 
 these subjects at this time, which is, no doubt, 
 self-protection. The adult leader who finds that 
 certain boys are fond of self-expression and are 
 ready to talk religion ought to realize that he is 
 dealing with deeper and more difficult natures 
 when he has to do with those who do not open 
 their hearts so readily. 
 
 Taking all these facts into consideration, it is 
 evident that the Church has important relations 
 toward the making of a boy's character in wider 
 fields than has usually been supposed. Perhaps 
 the most important function which the Church 
 supplies is to become to boys the matrix for their 
 religious thought. As we have previously empha- 
 sized, it may not be so much what the Church 
 actually teaches, as the atmosphere in which 
 it immerses its scholars. The difference be- 
 tween those who have been religiously nurtured 
 and those who have not is apparent even under 
 our present imperfect methods of Christian 
 training. The young person who has not been 
 a church attendant, who is converted at a revival, 
 is generally disappointing, because he seems to 
 have no moral foundations. It begins to appear 
 that the important question is not, "Are you 
 converted?" but "To what are you converted?" 
 The Church gives to those who have been in 
 its schools the background of a sound religious 
 training. 
 
 In the next place, the Church helps the boy 
 by giving him a healthy environment. In this 
 thing, of course, it cannot take the place of the 
 home, but it can help neutralize the bad home, 
 
 [14]
 
 THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY 
 
 and help supplement the good one. Here is 
 where the church club, with its healthy environ- 
 ment, supplements the church school with its 
 moral atmosphere. The author has spoken of 
 this matter at the end of Chapter IV. 
 
 The Church also, to a limited degree, especially 
 during the years between ten and fourteen, can 
 help establish good habits in a boy. It not only 
 informs him as to what those habits are, but it 
 examines him to some extent regarding his domes- 
 tic conduct, and offers him some opportunities 
 for the display of good-will in good conduct in 
 the church life. 
 
 The Church nurtures the boy through the 
 years between fourteen and twenty, which are 
 especially those of religious crisis. Here it ought 
 both to protect and to bring to fulfilment the 
 blossoming of his soul. The place of the church 
 school in relation to a boy's conversion is dis- 
 cussed in Chapter V in the study made there of 
 Decision Day. 
 
 Then, the Church enlarges the soul of the boy 
 by its social education. In a church boys' club 
 it develops a community life, in which, as I have 
 said again and again, boys live out the moral 
 life together. 
 
 Further, the Church, both in its Sunday-school 
 and in its clubs, develops the boy in generous 
 activity. The best antidote which the Church 
 can give to the moral struggle and the despair 
 of the revolutionary years between fourteen and 
 eighteen is by leading the boy to think of some- 
 body besides himself. He will gradually regain, 
 through service, the religious life which he has 
 begun to lose through self-assertion. 
 
 [15]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 Finally, the teacher or club leader has with the 
 boy passing into the last period of boyhood, 
 which Professor Fiske has marked as that of 
 "Resourcefulness," and which I have indicated as 
 "The Period of Religion as Thought," the impor- 
 tant privilege of encouraging the boy to an 
 adequate preparation for life, and, by his knowl- 
 edge of the boy's capabilities, of directing him 
 toward his future vocation. 
 
 This large and inspiring view of the privileges 
 of boy leadership suggests that there is no nobler 
 calling, either as a vocation or as an avocation, 
 than this of craftsmanship of the spirit. This 
 chapter may fittingly close with the splendid 
 definition which someone has given of the ideal 
 teacher: "One who has head enough, and heart 
 enough, and liberty enough, and time enough, 
 to be a master in the kingdom of life." 
 
 WHAT OTHERS SAY 
 
 "Build me as a boy if you would make a man of 
 me." 
 
 JOSEPH S. WALTON. 
 
 "The mischief in a boy is the entire basis of his 
 education. The boy could be made into a man out 
 of the parts of him that his parents and teachers are 
 trying to throw away." 
 
 GERALD STANLEY LEE. 
 
 "The one essential purpose of education is to set 
 an individual to going from within; to start his machin- 
 ery so that he will run himself." 
 
 - RAY STANNARD BAKER. 
 
 "Let him hang on to the boys by any sort of hook 
 or handle until they live past the age of barbarism and 
 
 [16]
 
 THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY 
 
 become human beings. This they will do in time, 
 though to the toiling teacher it seems an eternity." 
 
 HAROLD C. CHILDS. 
 
 "Sometimes . . . with the real illumination of the 
 conduct of some one whom he learns to trust and 
 love, he reconstructs for himself a Figure which for all 
 of us sums up and outdoes our hopes a Figure, 
 supreme, unique; an ideal, embodied, but ever idealized 
 afresh; a Presence, fugitive, but real; a Person whom 
 he is too reverent to define, but whose mastery he 
 admits." 
 
 CHARLES E. B. RUSSELL. 
 
 HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY 
 
 Take as an example some boy whom you have upon 
 your heart and, pencil in hand, go over each detail 
 of the chart in this chapter. Note down on paper 
 just where the boy is properly to be placed. To which 
 "stage," which "period," which step of will-progress, 
 of religious development, and of allegiance has he 
 arrived? You may note that he is farther along on 
 one side of his nature than in others. This will be 
 instructive. The whole analysis ought to be enlighten- 
 ing in the discovery of the boy. Read over this chapter 
 again with this boy solely in mind. What does it 
 suggest as to your plans and methods of dealing with 
 him? 
 
 OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC 
 
 The Period of Sentiment. 
 The Period of Self-Assertion. 
 The Period of Thoughtfulness. 
 Modifying Influences: 
 
 Sex. 
 
 The "Gang." 
 
 Expectation. 
 
 Temperament. 
 
 [17]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 
 ON THIS TOPIC 
 
 George A. Coe, Education in Religion and Morals, pp. 44-69, 
 195-270. 
 
 Hanford M. Burr, Adolescent Boyhood. 
 
 Charles E. McKinley, Educational Evangelism, Chapters II 
 and VI. 
 
 [18
 
 Ill 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK 
 WITH BOYS 
 
 Returning to our main issue, church work 
 with boys, we may quiet the fears of the timorous 
 by saying at the outset that church work with 
 boys is simply extension of the Sunday-school. 
 The Sunday-school is the exercise of the teaching 
 function of the church among its young, and work 
 with boys is larger and more effective teaching. We 
 may state, then, as our first principle in work with 
 boys, that it is the outgrowth of the church school. 
 
 THE FIRST PRINCIPLE: The Extension of the 
 Sunday-school 
 
 The wisest way to approach boys socially is 
 upon the basis of the Sunday-school class as the 
 integer. The ideal Sunday-school is one com- 
 pletely organized in these two directions: educa- 
 tionally, a series of graded textbooks for every 
 grade of pupils; socially, a series of graded social 
 opportunities for every grade of pupils. 
 
 In the large city school this would mean that, 
 just as each class meets regularly to study on 
 Sunday, so it also meets regularly, though not 
 necessarily so often, to have fellowship together 
 on a week day. In the smaller school it means
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 that classes of the same approximate grades will 
 meet in this way. In the little school it means 
 that boys of quite diverse ages will meet thus. 
 It seems to the writer invariably wise that all the 
 social organizations of the Church for young 
 people should be regarded as extensions of the 
 Sunday-school. He is convinced that if the 
 school had recognized this larger function a little 
 earlier, the Christian Endeavor movement would 
 never have gone off as a separate educational 
 and social movement. And even now he believes 
 it feasible to bring it back by insisting that it is 
 the social organization for certain definite grades 
 of the school. This correlation prevents a dupli- 
 cation of method and an overlapping of work and 
 brings a complete harmony and a larger efficiency. 
 The writer will accordingly insist in this book, 
 and in whatever influence he may have in shaping 
 our church work with boys, in treating it always 
 from the Sunday-school standpoint and in refusing 
 at any time to dissociate the social from the so- 
 called religious work of the school. He will try 
 always to correlate the weekday with the Sunday 
 work of the Church and he will endeavor, here 
 and elsewhere, to set side by side better methods 
 of teaching and better methods of working socially, 
 believing that the first are made perfect by the 
 second and the second will always react upon the 
 first. 
 
 THE SECOND PRINCIPLE : The Necessity of a 
 Leader 
 
 Now the one essential in social work with boys 
 is the same as the one essential in the Sunday- 
 
 [20]
 
 PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 school class, the adult leader. It was of school 
 teaching that Dr. C. J. Little spoke when he 
 said, "The educational problem of every century 
 is to find the schoolmaster, not to found the 
 school." We may paraphrase by saying that 
 the social problem and the religious problem of 
 the body is to find the adult leader, not to found 
 the society or to find the method. 
 
 The Sunday-school teacher who has the true 
 educational view will regard the weekday social 
 contact with his class as the supplementary oppor- 
 tunity that he needs in order to complete his 
 religious work. And he will recognize it, not as 
 an additional burden, but as a means of alleviating 
 the work of teaching, by giving him a better 
 acquaintance with individuals, revealing points 
 of contact, and stimulating that esprit de corps 
 which gives the class session swing and coopera- 
 tion. The teachers who have tried it will wonder 
 how they ever endeavored to teach without it. 
 The results that come immediately and constantly 
 are so vital that they are ashamed to think of 
 the kind they were satisfied with before, and the 
 enkindling enthusiasm that comes to both teacher 
 and class is such that the teacher is amazed that 
 he ever thought Sunday-school work to be 
 drudgery. 
 
 The next best thing to the use of the single 
 class as a social organism is to make such an 
 organism out of congenial classes under the leader- 
 ship of one of the teachers who is best adapted 
 or most available for the purpose. Sometimes 
 one strong teacher will utilize the others as his 
 assistants, according as they have time and ability. 
 The third best method is for an outsider to take 
 
 [21]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 charge of the social department of the Sunday- 
 school work, keeping the most sympathetic con- 
 tact with the teachers and bringing them into 
 the social work as much as possible. 
 
 Of the qualifications of the leader this is to be 
 said: He should be a person of genuine character. 
 Owing to the intimate personal problems with 
 which the wise leader of boys must deal, it may 
 be said that, other things being equal, he had 
 better be a man, but so many women have done 
 such work so magnificently that we have to 
 acknowledge that in this world other things often 
 are not equal. The second quality of the leader 
 is a patience, sympathetic and prophetic, and 
 that quality is so distinctly common with women 
 that it avails, even though masculinity is not 
 present. While it may be too much to say that 
 character and sympathetic patience are all that 
 are required of a leader of boys, it does seem that 
 in the Kingdom, to which not many mighty are 
 called, the Lord does use commonplace folks who 
 have those traits for most encouraging results. 
 If a sense of humor and ingenuity of device may 
 not almost be regarded as subdivisions.of patience, 
 they are certainly its consummate flowers. 
 
 THE THIRD PRINCIPLE: The Utilization of Play 
 
 The two most potent interests of boyhood are 
 undoubtedly play and friendship. Every peda- 
 gogue is striving to-day to utilize them both to 
 the fullest in the educational processes. The 
 Church must do the same if it is to do a complete 
 work of religious education. 
 
 Play, though apparently a simple thing, is not 
 
 [22]
 
 PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 easily defined. It is not the opposite of work, 
 for every kind of play involves work. It is rather 
 joy in work. Neither is play synonymous with 
 whim, or with "fooling." Such a statement 
 implies that it is capricious or purposeless. Play 
 is the joyous expression of natural instincts. 
 It is both the revelation and the exercise of 
 nascent powers, and genius is only transformed 
 mischief. 
 
 Education, therefore, has been studying the 
 instincts in order to use their nascent moments 
 in school work. Religion is trying to do the same 
 in its teaching work. 
 
 This explains why we are selecting certain 
 passages of the Bible for teaching to boys, because 
 they employ joyously the memory-instinct or, 
 later, the hero-instinct. This explains why we 
 introduce some modest handwork in Sunday- 
 school, because it employs joyously the manual 
 instinct. This explains why we try to use co- 
 operative methods in the class, because they 
 engage the "gang" instinct. 
 
 And so in the social work of the school. The 
 very reason for the weekday social work is that 
 the "gang" is bound to meet anyway. And the 
 Church employs the boys' brigade method because 
 of the boys' play instinct to imitate the soldier; 
 it employs the Knights of King Arthur because of 
 the instinct to imitate the knight; and the civic 
 club because of the instinct to imitate the citizen. 
 
 The leader of boys will learn to play with them, 
 and regard it not beneath his dignity to use a 
 method which has had dignity in education ever 
 since Socrates and Jesus, and which probably 
 has more potency in intellectual and social and 
 
 [23]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 moral evolution during a number of years than 
 any other. One would better not try to lead 
 boys who has not himself kept somewhat of the 
 play spirit. 
 
 THE FOURTH PRINCIPLE: The Utilization of 
 Friendship 
 
 The boy alone is only half a boy. Not only 
 is all adolescent play gregarious, but adolescent 
 ethics is largely the ethics of the group. The 
 "gang" to the boy is Public Opinion. It is as 
 unusual for a boy to revolt from it as it is for an 
 adult to revolt from the conventions of the public 
 morality of his class. As I have said elsewhere: 
 "It is probably from the 'gang' that most boys 
 learn first how to codify their conduct." This 
 is surely an important fact, for it suggests that 
 the most direct way to reach an individual boy's 
 morals will be by raising the morals of his circle. 
 Not only so, but there is large evidence that 
 even on so high a level as that of religious decision 
 the boy acts with his group, a few as leaders, 
 most by collusion, and a few in mere imitation 
 of those who are strong. 
 
 Somewhat as a heathen nation is more soundly 
 evangelized through a native ministry than any 
 alien missionaries, so the community of boyhcod 
 is probably more generally and soundly con- 
 verted through the agency of certain key-boys 
 than through the direct motion of the adult leader. 
 And the function of the adult leader, like that 
 of the foreign missionary, is chiefly, aside from his 
 character, in the training of "native workers." 
 
 Besides this, the "gang" is to the adult leader 
 
 [24]
 
 PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 the convenient opportunity for acquaintance 
 with individual boys. This, after all, is what 
 the leader is trying to get. As Professor Hanford 
 M. Burr points out, "At no time of life, so much 
 as in adolescence, are personal differences so great 
 and is the danger of treating them en masse so 
 serious." It is while umpiring the ball game 
 that the leader notes which boy tries to play 
 unfairly; it is in the free play of the gymnasium 
 that the leader discovers the near-sightedness 
 of the boy who does not care for games; it is in 
 the manual training of the club that the leader 
 finds in his agility of hand the key to the con- 
 trol of the lad who is abnormally restless in the 
 Sunday-school class. And here, by his adoption 
 into the "gang," the leader overcomes the suspi- 
 cion of its members, and thus sets the door ajar 
 for entrance into each individual's confidence. 
 
 The leader not only learns thus to know indi- 
 viduals, but he learns to educate individualities. 
 By the fifteenth year most boys begin to emerge 
 from the period of feudal loyalty to that of self- 
 discovery and self-assertion. To a degree they 
 begin to outgrow the "gang" at least, to fall 
 out of its lockstep, and while they continue, on 
 all levels, to be influenced by it, yet they now 
 desire and deserve an increasing measure of self- 
 propulsion and independent action. Such boys 
 the leader tries to walk apart with at times, to keep 
 pace with their ambitions, and to help guide their 
 movements toward their vocations. 
 
 There have come into being during the past 
 twenty years a number of simple, inexpensive, and 
 practical forms of social organizations for boys 
 which involve the two essential elements of play 
 
 [251
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 and friendship. Some have one strong and 
 attractive feature, some another. Although a 
 few of them have risen to the dignity of incor- 
 poration and salaried officers, they are only tools 
 for the worker's use, and the wisest workers use 
 the best methods they can secure, from whatever 
 source. In a chapter that follows, the writer has 
 attempted to name and impartially characterize 
 the strong points of the movements that seem 
 to have the most potency and enduring value. 
 Each of them is to be used, as has been already 
 suggested, not as a separate society, but as the 
 social method of the church school. 
 
 WHAT OTHERS SAY 
 
 "Boys should individualize in work and socialize 
 
 in play." c , 
 
 JOSEPH S. WALTON. 
 
 "After all, the one prime essential for moral and 
 religious education is that the young should live a 
 common life with moral and religious elders." 
 
 GEORGE A. COE. 
 
 "The will of the child, now coming to itself, is to 
 be trained chiefly through the fellowship of obedience, 
 the fellowship of labor, the fellowship of play, and the 
 fellowship of worship." 
 
 GEORGE A. COE. 
 
 HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY 
 
 Make a list of what seem to you to have been the 
 most active interests of your adolescent years. 
 
 Mark the two or three which seemed to you to be 
 paramount. 
 
 [26]
 
 PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 Do you regard them now as wholesome interests? 
 
 Have you lost any of them since then; and if so, 
 how has the loss affected your life? 
 
 Could they or could they not have been more 
 definitely and purposefully related to your moral 
 development? If so, how? 
 
 Could you then have been forcefully reached by 
 appeals that ignored your instincts of play and friend- 
 ship? 
 
 Is your own church making any use of play or friend- 
 ship in its work with boys? 
 
 OUTLINES FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC 
 
 Individualizing vs. Socializing the Boy: A study of the alternate 
 importance of each discipline. 
 
 The Minimum Qualifications of Boy-leadership. 
 Antidotes against the Professional Attitude toward Boys. 
 A Broader Appeal to Boys by the Church. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 
 ON THIS TOPIC 
 
 William Byron Forbush, The Boy Problem, pp. 19-30, 56-65. 
 H. D. Sheldon, The Institutional Activities of American Children. 
 " American Journal of Psychology," Vol. IX, pp. 425-448.
 
 IV 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 These statements pave the way to a definite 
 conception of the relation of the organized man- 
 hood of our churches to boys. Conceiving of 
 work with boys as the extension of the church 
 school, into weekdays as well as Sunday, under 
 the leadership of an adult, working through play 
 and friendship, it will be the function of the local 
 Brotherhood, wherever it exists, to encourage 
 such work. This six-fold work suggests the 
 desirability of organizing in all our local Brother- 
 hoods a strong Boys' Committee, and, where 
 the Brotherhood does not exist, of organizing such 
 a committee in the church itself. 
 
 The local Brotherhood can do this in the 
 following ways: 
 
 FIRST: Training and Furnishing Leaders 
 
 If the needs of boyhood are earnestly stated 
 in any church, if the privilege of working with 
 them is enthusiastically urged, and if such sensible 
 ideals are made current as have been named in 
 the last two chapters, it would seem that a Boys' 
 Committee in any church or Brotherhood could 
 secure manly volunteers to do this work. The 
 
 [28!
 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 young athlete just home from college, the father 
 who cares for his own sons, the business man who 
 wants to do religious work that is man's size 
 should catch a vision here. The writer wishes 
 to testify that such a proposition, put up 
 adequately to the strongest men, has, in his expe- 
 rience, made unnecessary an appeal either to 
 women or to weak men. The chivalry that is 
 latent in men answers to this call. 
 
 The "Big Brother" movement among boys in 
 the juvenile courts is an illustration of an oppor- 
 tunity for personal work by men that requires 
 no organization or machinery. There is also a 
 place for some such informal service as sponsor for 
 boys who are in the difficult process of finding 
 themselves, boys who will probably never reach 
 the court, but who are in danger of missing their 
 best possibilities. Fathers may learn to do this 
 for their own sons. Many a father would be 
 grateful if a brother man in the church would 
 help him to do this with his boy. 
 
 Both in such personal work and in social service, 
 while leaders of boys are to a degree born not 
 made, yet a little pedagogical training and some 
 general enlightenment will do even the best leaders 
 a world of good, and a Brotherhood could under- 
 take no better task than to endeavor to train men 
 for this service. 
 
 A series of thoughtful discussions in the men's 
 class for those who may become leaders of boys 
 would be even more concrete and practical. The 
 circulation of books on the subject among indi- 
 viduals would also do good. A list of books for 
 such reading and discussions is given at the end 
 of this book. 
 
 [29]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 SECOND: Developing Better Sunday-school Methods 
 
 Many Sunday-school quarterlies are disappoint- 
 ing as aids to real teaching or study with boys. 
 Both the lesson material selected and the method 
 of approach imply that the teacher is to preach 
 a sermon. The material is chosen for its adapta- 
 bility for discourse on the choice of the Christian 
 life and the value of the Christian virtues. The 
 approach is by the sermonette method, with some 
 questioning. At their best, such handbooks fur- 
 nish illustrative helps that are very bright and 
 ingenious, and sometimes the questions are 
 provocative. The danger is that the pupil may 
 have opportunity to cooperate only with his 
 voice and that his chief faculty called out is that 
 of memory. 
 
 The wise teacher will seek to do his work on 
 the plan, not of weekly climaxes of exhortation, 
 but of consecutive, patient, religious education, 
 and he will crave for his boys, beyond mere mem- 
 orizing, the opportunity for them to use their 
 hands, and, later, a chance to reason and discuss. 
 These are the values that need to be emphasized 
 in our lesson helps. The earnest teacher will 
 try to introduce them, even if his text-book does 
 not emphasize them, and many teachers will 
 be grateful for suggestions of books in which 
 handwork and the discussion method are dis- 
 tinctly provided for. 
 
 The writer gives elsewhere a list of the hand- 
 books, selected from the mass that is coming from 
 the independent press, which seem to him most 
 nearly ideal. If the boys' course of adolescent 
 grade soon to be published in the new Graded 
 
 [30]
 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 International Series is of the high standard of 
 the Juvenile grades already published, we shall 
 soon have relief also from that quarter. 
 
 The Boys' Committee will do a service to any 
 Sunday-school if it will investigate these new 
 courses. The question of uniformity for the 
 school must no longer stand in the way of efficiency 
 for the boys, and the objection, in the past justly 
 raised, that the new courses were not practicable 
 because they did not furnish adequate helps for 
 the teacher, has now been thoroughly met. The 
 problem of getting teachers, in the writer's expe- 
 rience, depends much more than is usually sup- 
 posed upon having ready for the prospective 
 teacher a course of study and a text-book that he 
 thinks he can use. 
 
 While it is generally true that the new material 
 is more expensive than the old, it is also more 
 permanent and the teachers' handbooks, once 
 purchased, can be used over and over. So the 
 ultimate expense is hardly greater. If it is, the 
 Brotherhood that believes in adequate religious 
 education of the young may well take hold here 
 to help. 
 
 THIRD: Developing Better Social Work with Boys 
 
 The Brotherhood, through its Boys' Committee, 
 having secured a social leader for the boys, may 
 be further helpful by studying the matter of 
 accommodations and equipment. The writer 
 would here and now state his conviction that many 
 church people are scared away from social work 
 with boys in the church by the bugbear of expense 
 and elaborate equipment. Having himself done
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 work with boys for over twenty years with practi- 
 cally no equipment and with no money but 
 what the boys themselves furnished, he feels 
 a mild wonder at those who cannot do this work 
 because they cannot afford it. The churches, 
 which have learned the unprofitableness of the 
 institutional idea in other departments, and that 
 are giving up their soup kitchens, dispensaries, 
 and reading rooms, still cling to the vicarious 
 method in their boys' work, and seem to think 
 that a gymnasium and a hired instructor are 
 the acme of possibility in this direction.. Now, 
 with all respect to the gymnasium as a means of 
 social service to certain neighborhoods, the writer 
 is sure that such an external view of boys' work 
 is bound to prove disappointing in result and to 
 discourage the doing of real boys' work, which 
 is hand to hand work. The secret of success, 
 as we have been saying, is personality. The 
 gymnasium instructor may have it, and the fact 
 that he is paid to do his work is no detriment to 
 his possession of the trait, but many boys come 
 to some church gymnasiums with no more sense 
 of loyalty than they have in going to the post- 
 office. 
 
 So the Brotherhood will first find the Man. 
 Then they will find the Place, which may be 
 very modest and apparently inadequate. Then 
 it will help the Man in the Place to find the 
 Method. That is about all. 
 
 Do not misunderstand. A rich church is 
 not excusable in having nothing but a cubby- 
 hole for its boys. A good leader will soon make 
 a small meeting place impossible. The writer 
 has lately been visiting a church which calls 
 
 [32]
 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 itself "the cathedral church" of its section of 
 the country. The church has a thousand members 
 and the meeting house cost a quarter of a million. 
 It hasn't a room where a boy could do anything 
 but sit still. And sitting still is not a boy's 
 specialty. That church ought to be ashamed of 
 itself. 
 
 FOURTH: Special Work with Older Boys 
 
 Social work that is elaborate and continuous 
 can often be postponed to a year before the high 
 school age. That is as soon as the "gang" spirit 
 gets full development, and a strong work with 
 high school boys will hold the younger boys in 
 anticipation. There comes a time when a boy 
 needs to be developed by recognition and by 
 responsibility. The latter element can be fur- 
 nished and should be furnished in the social life 
 of the boys' club and the church. The former 
 can best come by an elder-brotherly attitude 
 on the part of the men. When a boy gets to that 
 awkward age when he is no longer a boy and is 
 not yet a man, it is well to take the presumption 
 that he is prospectively a man, and treat him so. 
 The local Brotherhood will do a large service, 
 not only to these boys but to itself, if it welcomes 
 boys of sixteen or eighteen to full membership 
 and strives at times to accommodate its meetings 
 and its methods to their capacities. It is a splen- 
 did sight to see a father seated beside his maturing 
 son in a church fraternity and it adds manliness 
 to a boy when he can wear the same badge as does 
 his father. Some secret fraternities have been 
 quicker to learn this than the church has. 
 
 (33]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 Most books on boy study, most clubs, most 
 methods deal with and are most successful with 
 boys under sixteen. But where the church, the 
 home, and school most often fail is with boys in 
 "the crazy period," between fifteen and eighteen. 
 No pastor or parent, Sunday-school or Brother- 
 hood should be satisfied that is not solving this 
 difficult and baffling problem. Here is where 
 sense and service, prayer and good methods and 
 money need most to be applied by the modern 
 church. Some special attention is given to this 
 problem in Chapter VI. 
 
 FIFTH: Working to Remove Perils from the 
 Boys' Pathway 
 
 Much social and religious work with boys is 
 a kind of nourishment of health or of a healing 
 of disease, with no attempt to fight contagion 
 that is already abroad. Now it is well to build 
 up a boy so that he will not get tuberculosis, and 
 it is well to nurse him back to health after he is 
 taken sick, but if tuberculosis is a communicable, 
 preventable disease, our best task is to stamp it 
 out. Moral training is excellent as a safeguard 
 to a boy's purity, and moral impetus is the essential 
 aid to recovery if a boy loses his purity, but if 
 houses of ill-fame are a notorious center for resort 
 of high school boys in any given community, it 
 would seem that the Brotherhood there would 
 better be busy in putting a fence at the top of 
 the precipice instead of providing an ambulance 
 at the bottom. 
 
 The duty of informing boys and girls wisely 
 as to the significance and use of their sex-functions 
 
 [34]
 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 has been urged very much of late. The important 
 thing first seems to be to urge parents to do this. 
 In the writer's own city a committee has secured 
 the services of a number of fine family physicians 
 to visit Brotherhoods and church women's clubs 
 and explain to fathers and mothers the necessity 
 and the methods of doing this with their children. 
 Next best are consultations between young people 
 and their family physicians privately, and next 
 are quiet talks by such physicians to boys' and 
 girls' clubs or classes. In the writer's own 
 Sunday-school he has introduced such informa- 
 tion naturally and unexpectedly in a girls' class, 
 making a knowledge of their own bodies a part 
 of a child-study course which they were taking. 
 In a boys' club he has had this talk given by his 
 family doctor as one of three which were obligatory 
 in taking a higher degree. 
 
 The church of today has no more important 
 and delicate task, in its endeavor to help young 
 people to a healthy environment, than the atti- 
 tude it takes toward their amusements. This 
 attitude ought to be consistent and constructive. 
 The modern church, instead of easily accepting 
 a conventional list of taboos from the past, must 
 try to discover what are the particular and actually 
 dangerous amusements toward which its own 
 young people are now being tempted. And it 
 ought to meet these dangers not by denunciation 
 so much as by replacing them with more whole- 
 some pleasures. This matter is so important 
 that a few further and definite words may well 
 be spoken. 
 
 Three forms of amusements have traditionally 
 been placed under suspicion: cards, dancing, and 
 
 [35]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 the theater. The worker with young people, in 
 city or country, who realizes how large a part 
 pleasure plays in young people's lives, is somewhat 
 dismayed to realize that these three embrace 
 almost all the available and regular types of 
 amusement in the ordinary community, and that 
 he is at some loss to know what to substitute for 
 them. Stripped of some unfortunate associa- 
 tions, they also seem to represent almost the 
 fundamental as well as the most varied forms of 
 amusements : cards, the rigor of spirited intellectual 
 contest, the joy of facing contingencies, and the 
 opportunity for relaxation from pressure; dancing, 
 the joy of grace, motion, and carefree social inter- 
 course between the sexes; and the theater, the 
 study through the mimic world of the human prob- 
 lem, and the restfulness, by means of visions in 
 the house of dreams, of scenes that relieve this 
 life's monotony or gild its commonplaceness. 
 He wonders if the church that has no word for 
 these ancient and racial sources of joy but a frown- 
 ing "No" is actually meeting and solving the 
 real situation. The church that would substi- 
 tute other amusements for these has a task taxing 
 its inventiveness and patience. The church that 
 uses one or all of these for the purposes of right- 
 eousness has indeed a delicate, a skilful, but an 
 inspiring and a hopeful social mission. 
 
 Let one state frankly what seems to him the 
 probable attitude of the churches in our own 
 cities at least in the near future, an attitude to 
 which a few have consciously arrived. It may 
 be put in this phrase, "We will not manufacture 
 sins." To play games of skill or chance, to dance 
 under proper restrictions, to go to clean dramatic 
 
 [36]
 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 entertainments is not essentially wrong. These 
 pleasures are often misused, but they are too in- 
 fluential, too important, too valuable, and indeed 
 too capable of fine uses to be either blindly 
 opposed or foolishly ignored or indolently toler- 
 ated. We are dealing today in our cities, not 
 with young people who know nothing of these 
 things, but largely with those who do. The 
 homes have accepted these amusements, too care- 
 lessly, it is true. It is the business of the church 
 not to allow the tolerance of the home or the com- 
 mercializing of pleasure to degrade or deprave 
 our young people. We will study those pleas- 
 ures, we will use them as they ought to be used, 
 and we will make them help, not hurt our boys 
 and girls. 
 
 In the statements that follow, some wise and 
 earnest people will be unable to accord the writer 
 their agreement. For the matter is truly a most 
 complex and delicate one. But the positions to 
 be stated deserve at least this consideration, that 
 they are the evolution of twenty consecutive 
 years of careful observation and experience as a 
 father, a teacher, and a friend of boys. 
 
 Card-playing is chiefly a matter of the home. 
 Churches are not called upon to introduce it in 
 their social work, and churches, like settlements, 
 do not need to encourage it in their social 
 buildings. The play of the playroom or the 
 gymnasium is too lively for the need. It is the 
 business of the church to keep cards in their 
 proportionate place in life. For young children 
 they are, like "Authors" and "Parcheesi," a 
 merry play with chance. For young people they 
 are an occasional, but not regular bond for home 
 
 [37] 
 JLO 97 &
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 parties. They are not a fitting profession for 
 men or a steady afternoon vocation for women. 
 They are serviceable to pass the time on long 
 rail journeys and on restless evenings after a 
 crowded day. The abuse of them is a mark of 
 intellectual rather than moral deficiency. The 
 author has played cards at his boys' camps, but 
 has encouraged them only when other resources 
 failed. He has played them in homes, but has 
 with even more readiness suggested other games. 
 He has made them a matter of course with his 
 children and has watched with pleasure their grow- 
 ing indifference to them as they have outgrown 
 them. They could not conceive how they can 
 be wrong. They have become eliminated as a 
 form of temptation from their lives. 
 
 This attitude about cards is not an unusual 
 or difficult one to maintain in the city, where 
 they are a part of the social paraphernalia. 
 But what shall we say of the country districts, 
 where they are still regarded sometimes as "The 
 Devil's picture books"? The attitude of an 
 educator of public opinion, and especially of one 
 who undertakes to reverse it, is a difficult and 
 thankless one. And yet is it not the surrepti- 
 tiousness of card-playing in the country that 
 constitutes its mischief? If the boys did not 
 have to go behind the barn, to the club room, 
 or to the village groggery to play, does anybody 
 suppose that cards would really be dangerous? 
 Away with this unnecessary glamour of conceal- 
 ment, revive the habit of evening home parties 
 with varied games, suffer cards to come with 
 other games, but not to supplant all other games, 
 and educate the country community to a whole- 
 
 [38]
 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 some intellectual and social life that shall cause 
 cards to cease to exist as a moral problem. 
 
 The dance, after all is said, is objected to by 
 those who write books against it, because of the 
 physical contact of the sexes that is involved. 
 Frankly, one may ask if the objectors suppose 
 that they discourage such contact by its pro- 
 hibition, or that the substitutions that arise, 
 in the way of kissing games, house parties, and 
 private acquaintance, are less objectionable. The 
 dance is probably the most skilful way of turning 
 this instinct for physical contact toward whole- 
 someness that could be invented. Its conven- 
 tionalisms and gallantries are themselves a barrier 
 against impure thoughts and its publicity is in 
 itself protective. Children should be taught to 
 dance before the sex-instinct becomes conscious, 
 as an exercise of grace and joy in motion. The 
 homes, of course, ought to guard the character 
 of the places and occasions where dancing is held, 
 the company that gathers, the costumes that 
 are worn, but if it does not do so, the church ought 
 to be vigilant, chiefly as to two matters the 
 character of the dancing schools and of the dancing 
 parties attended by its young people. It is con- 
 ceivable that, in default of any other possible 
 course, as a few country churches have already 
 done, a church might take these two institutions 
 into its own charge. The writer has in mind a 
 hill town in New Hampshire where one-third of 
 the births in a given year were illegitimate, and 
 where the loose morals of the young people were 
 distinctly attributable to the unchaperoned dan- 
 cing parties held every winter, tabooed and 
 fulminated against by the local church. He 
 
 (39)
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 knows of a town in Massachusetts where similar 
 conditions were impending, but where the local 
 church met the issue by engaging a dancing master 
 and opening its school rooms to dancing classes. 
 This has gone on now for many years. Dances 
 in that village begin at eight in the evening and 
 close at midnight and are attended by young and 
 old together. The morality of the town is notably 
 high. Which was the wiser and more practical 
 attitude? 
 
 There are many finer ways to spend the time 
 than in dancing; a vigorous and varied social life 
 in the local church may make the action outlined 
 above unnecessary. The writer acknowledges 
 also the possible risks of exposure to draughts, 
 danger to health by excessive indulgence, danger 
 to morals by immodest dress, but he regards 
 these as incidental and unnecessary, and believes 
 that there are strong psychological reasons for 
 holding that, under wise restrictions, dancing 
 may be made a relief to sexual stress rather than 
 a means of its excitement. He would urge, with 
 President G. Stanley Hall, the earnest revival of 
 folk and figure dancing and of the festival, in which, 
 as anciently, dance and song and the dramatic 
 portrayal of heroes together express broadly and 
 beautifully the social feelings of the populace. 
 
 The theater today is manifesting great power 
 both to bless and to curse humanity. The Ameri- 
 can stage, commercialized, disgusts its friends as 
 often as it does its enemies. The men of the 
 church can censor the plays that come to their 
 cities, so far as to keep that which is obscene 
 and disgusting away, but the insidiousness of 
 fashionable plays and of luxurious musical 
 
 [40]
 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 comedies performed in our most exclusive play- 
 houses may be even more pernicious, just 
 as the morality of the popular illustrated novel 
 is often more dubious than that of the nickel 
 library. Pastors and leaders of boys may work 
 for a sane and sensitive dramatic criticism in the 
 local press which shall not be hesitant in setting 
 the danger signals by which parents may be 
 forewarned of pernicious coming attractions. 
 The pulpit and the boys' club ought to emphasize 
 the sin of causing the springs of imagination to 
 be defiled. But all this is merely negative. 
 In some churches it may be advisable, with cau- 
 tion, to call attention to plays whose moral worth 
 and inspiration are unmistakable. The moving 
 picture show is in the main wholesome, and the 
 influence of this inexpensive amusement is 
 enormous, because it is becoming universal. It 
 deserves a better setting than the dirty, unven- 
 tilated halls where it usually exhibits. A whole- 
 some religious and social life in the local church 
 is no mean antidote both to the spirit of sen- 
 sationalism and of melodrama. The man who 
 left a city church one Sunday evening, after the 
 pastor had tramped up and down the platform, 
 contorted his face and his body, and spent the 
 evening in firing off rhetorical pyrotechnics, and 
 who exclaimed merrily, "This is the best show 
 in town tonight," would be more apt to be found 
 in a playhouse the next evening than in the prayer- 
 meeting. Some churches have broken up the 
 habit among their boys of attending the cheap 
 shows Saturday evenings by making that the 
 great basketball night of the week. Others have 
 found that the development and utilization of 
 
 [41]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 the neglected dramatic instinct among boys by 
 giving plays and entertainments has led them to 
 prefer action to being acted upon or has given them 
 a taste for the best in dramatic art. The theater 
 as an institution would probably be more power- 
 fully effective for good in a given community 
 by an organization of a respectable body of men 
 who would patronize no play in which the situa- 
 tion or the language was not suitable for discus- 
 sion with women than in any other way. 
 
 These remarks, brief as they are, can only be 
 suggestive. Experiments in this direction have 
 satisfied those who have been pioneers that the 
 church that would live for its own day, really 
 take care of the young people who live in our 
 opulent age in modern homes and conditions, 
 and give them guidance toward righteousness, 
 will move along some such lines as these. The 
 problem cannot wisely be ignored or shirked, 
 neither can it be temporized with. It is not an 
 easy thing, but it is the only eventually possible 
 thing. We must rescue the amusements of our 
 young for their good and service! 
 
 Often these amusements are not the real dangers 
 at all. Where are our school boys and girls after 
 dark? What goes on at unchaperoned evening 
 parties? What is the program of the local high 
 school "frat" or sorority? Each generation de- 
 velops new temptations and dangers for the young. 
 No church discipline could forecast today's perils, 
 and often its restrictions are simply a dead hand 
 laid on a dead issue, while new and unwritten ones 
 demand strict moral vigilance and activity. 
 
 A danger greater than that of amusements 
 is one that is fundamental, the possession or 
 
 [42]
 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 the envy of great riches. We have boys in our 
 public high schools who walk to school who are 
 mates of other boys who ride to school in four 
 thousand dollar limousines. There is a problem 
 of the boy who walks, to keep him calm and 
 content, to nurture him in the real values, to 
 prevent him from spending what he does not have. 
 There is also a more difficult problem in the boy 
 who has the automobile, in keeping him from 
 being a snob or a reveler, in sobering him to his 
 responsibilities, and in teaching him the life of 
 service. 
 
 These suggestions illustrate the possible pro- 
 tective work of the Brotherhood. Many a group 
 of men that has been in the habit of discussing 
 social evils in a dilettante way Sunday noons 
 would be stung to action if the fathers present 
 had put up to them the appeal to do something 
 to save their own sons. 
 
 Here is a field for vital discussion and real 
 work. 
 
 SIXTH : By Encouraging Helpful Forces 
 
 It would be easy to indulge in commonplaces 
 about sustaining the local Y. M. C. A. and juvenile 
 court and farm school, and taking more interest 
 in the public schools. Better will it be for the 
 local Brotherhood to confine its interest for one 
 year to one practical issue. Probably the livest 
 thing in education just now is the agitation for 
 better vocational education for our boys. The 
 word vocational is better here than the word 
 industrial, which is often used, because it is broader. 
 What is meant is the endeavor to find ways to 
 
 [43]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 help the public schools more directly to assist 
 the boy to find his calling and to get ready for 
 it. It is an appeal that interests the professional 
 men as much as those of the industrial classes. 
 For, after all, the first thing we have to do in life 
 is to get a living, and to show us how to do this 
 is what school is for. But our schools are not 
 doing it. 
 
 The writer was criticised for remarking recently 
 that too many church men's classes engage in 
 a discussion of social problems "with the scientific 
 accuracy of Ralph Connor and the vague benevo- 
 lence of Lydia Pinkham." The remark was not 
 intended to be flippant. The writer measures 
 greatly the new social enthusiasm that has come 
 into the hearts of the men of the churches, but 
 he believes that there is often apparent more 
 zeal than discretion. Many men's classes discuss 
 social questions in an amateur way that shows 
 that they are not familiar with the simplest 
 text-books of sociology. Alliances of denomina- 
 tions with working men, expressed by honorary 
 memberships of ministers in trades unions and 
 vice versa, alliances which are gracious in peace, 
 but which are forgotten during days of industrial 
 warfare, have some value, but they too often 
 expose the church to the suspicion of being inter- 
 ested in the workman as a prospective church 
 member rather than as a man and a brother. 
 Without discounting the value of these social 
 experiments on the part of the church or of any 
 other effort to deal directly with the industrial 
 ranks, the writer is persuaded that just here and 
 now the professional man in the church and the 
 working man who is too often outside the church 
 
 [44]
 
 THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS 
 
 may find their long-sought common bond of 
 interest upon the field of the schools, which they 
 both support, in seeking, through education and 
 the cooperation of the professions and the manu- 
 factories, for a vocational education for their 
 sons. Here the classes will cross and coalesce 
 in the men of tomorrow. 
 
 WHAT OTHERS SAY 
 
 "The school that will hold its boys at sixteen will 
 do so by beginning to hold them at twelve." 
 
 EUGENE C. FOSTER. 
 
 "If your Brotherhood does not assume the responsi- 
 bility for the boyhood of your church, who will?" 
 
 FRANK DYER. 
 
 "This being the sort of a person to be with children 
 is a very great secret." 
 
 MARIE HOFER. 
 
 HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY 
 
 How is your own church solving the problem of 
 leaders for its boys? Is it providing for classes, now 
 taught by women, that will be coming out into the 
 main room in a year or two, needing men teachers? 
 Just how can that need be anticipated? 
 
 Would or would not a better type of man come 
 forward for service in response to better methods and 
 the chance of a finer type of work? 
 
 What is the proportion between the money annually 
 spent in your church for music and that spent for the 
 religious education of its boys and girls? 
 
 How, in your own church, could the modest sum 
 needed for boys' work best be provided? 
 
 How, in detail, would it best be spent? 
 
 [45]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC 
 
 What the Sunday-school Can Do, and What It Must Not 
 Be Expected to Do. 
 
 A Critique of the Text-book Now Used in a Boys' Class in our 
 School. 
 
 Biblical Courses that We Need. 
 
 Non-Biblical Courses that We Need. 
 
 Gathering up the Results of the Sunday-school. 
 
 What More Can We Do for Our Older Boys? 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 
 UPON THIS TOPIC 
 
 Lilburn Merrill, Winning the Boy. New York: Fleming H. 
 Revell Co. 
 
 Eugene C. Foster, The Boy and the Church. Philadelphia, Sunday- 
 School Times Co. 
 
 A list of books upon the social problems of boyhood 'for men's 
 discussion classes is given at the end of the book. 
 
 46]
 
 V 
 
 HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' SUNDAY- 
 SCHOOL CLASS 
 
 Not very many particular lessons that are taught 
 in Sunday-school are likely to be remembered by 
 a boy. This does not mean that a school is 
 absolved from teaching a lesson well, or that a 
 teacher is to be simply an amiable care-taker 
 of a joyful Sunday mob, or that what is called the 
 "influence of the school," in a vague and hazy 
 sense, is going to make up to a boy for the lack 
 of a religious education. Some lessons, by a 
 curious pertinacity, do stick always, probably 
 because they answer questions that the boy 
 happens to be asking. And the best teacher is 
 one who finds out the questions the boy is asking, 
 whether he knows those in the quarterly or not. 
 
 The functions .oi the school are really two: 
 to be a religious matrix and to be a laboratory of 
 religions. By the best selected material, the 
 best methods of instruction and the best teachers, 
 the school, especially during the habit-making 
 years, will give the boy not so much a system 
 of facts as a system of life, imbue him with 
 the Christian way of looking at things and the 
 Christian way of doing things. Then the school 
 will, especially in the adolescent years, become a 
 laboratory. It will show him how goodness looks 
 
 [47]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 when it is lived, in the school officers and teachers, 
 and it will give him an opportunity to labor at 
 goodness in the school activities and benevolences 
 and through the school's weekday institute, the 
 boys' club. 
 
 A few words may be helpful about the practical 
 details of conducting a Sunday-school class of boys. 
 
 In the first place, seclusion is absolutely neces- 
 sary. It is best secured by means of a separate 
 room, and surely the boys of a church deserve 
 and would appreciate such a privilege more than 
 any other class in the school. If this is imprac- 
 ticable, privacy may be obtained by means of 
 inexpensive curtains, hung on wire, or by portable 
 Japanese screens. At the very worst, the boys' 
 class can be placed in a corner, their seats being 
 arranged to face the corner. 
 
 The writer has found that class decorum and 
 the teaching of the lesson are immensely improved 
 by some simple class organization. Let there 
 be a class president, who calls the class to order, 
 conducts brief exercises of business, and then 
 introduces the teacher. Let the secretary and 
 treasurer sit near the exit, so that they may pass 
 out the collection and records to the school secre- 
 tary without requiring his entrance. Let the 
 announcements of club meetings and other good 
 times, and the briefest discussion of future plans, 
 be done before the lesson. All these, carried on 
 within a time limit, will prepare the class good- 
 naturedly to give the teacher their undivided 
 attention. These extraneous matters are of great 
 social importance, and if the teacher honors them 
 with his attention, the boys will be willing to 
 honor him with theirs. 
 
 [48]
 
 HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS 
 
 The class should be seated in a circle. This 
 is to be done, not simply for its symbolism, but 
 also for its practical effect. If the class is small 
 it should be seated about a table. Boys who put 
 their elbows together on a table feel a sense of 
 fellowship, such as does not come when they are 
 separated from one another, and a table is abso- 
 lutely necessary if any manual work is to be done. 
 In a class where handwork is performed, or if 
 other visual methods are used, it is better for the 
 teacher to stand. In a class where didactic or 
 debating methods are used, he would better be 
 seated. 
 
 The central question which the teacher has to 
 ask, as he completes his preparation of the lesson, 
 is this: "Is it worth while?" The whole endeavor 
 of the teacher is to produce real interest. The 
 common feeling which boys have is that they 
 go to Sunday-school, not because what they are 
 to study is of inherent interest or value, but 
 simply because they are sent. Every real Sunday- 
 school teacher will wish to teach a lesson that is 
 worth teaching. If he finds that the subject 
 matter assigned him in his text-book does not 
 present a point which seems to him worth pre- 
 senting to that class, let him completely discard 
 the subject and choose another. If a teacher 
 can appear in a class every Sunday with a topic 
 which seems to him of value, he is going to be 
 pretty sure of being able to make his class also 
 believe in its value. There is an old distinction 
 in architecture and in literature, between con- 
 structing adornment and adorning construction. 
 No real teacher is willing simply to construct 
 adornment, that is, to illustrate a lesson that 
 
 [49]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 is not worth illustrating. True teaching is the 
 adorning of construction, that is, the making 
 rich and beautiful that which is already worth 
 while. 
 
 In teaching boys there are, roughly speaking, 
 three possible methods, the manual method, 
 the biographical method, and the debating method. 
 The manual methods that are possible in a Sunday- 
 school class are of considerable variety. There 
 are text-books like Gates' "Life of Christ," which 
 suggest the filling in with pencil of blanks, in 
 answer to questions. There is the process of 
 constructing a junior Bible, utilized in the new 
 Blakeslee lessons. There is map making, executed 
 with pencil, crayon, or the use of paper pulp or 
 plasticine. There is also the illuminating and 
 adorning of text-books, and the making of curios 
 and small illustrative Oriental articles. In all 
 this work it is important for the teacher to dis- 
 criminate between methods that actually make 
 the lesson plainer, and those which are merely 
 attractive or distracting. Elaborate handwork 
 is better done at home by individuals, as an 
 elective. The plan of creating a class or school 
 museum will often secure the cooperative manu- 
 facture of a number of attractive articles, which 
 will be useful in several classes. The simpler 
 method of writing answers to questions is probably 
 the most reliable and educative of all these hand 
 methods as the basis of work, although the live 
 teacher will avoid monotony even in this, and 
 will not depend upon the bare material furnished 
 in any text-book. The writer firmly believes 
 that the work in these new manual method text- 
 books is better performed in the class than at 
 
 [50]
 
 HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS 
 
 home. The class thus comes to the lesson with 
 a freshness of interest, each is helped by the 
 suggestions of others, and the method really 
 turns out to be a laboratory in the class. The 
 trouble with preparing lessons at home is that 
 the industrious boy has his work done before 
 he arrives, and so has nothing to occupy him but 
 mischief while the others are doing their work. 
 There is also danger that these handbooks, which 
 are more expensive than the old-fashioned ones, 
 will be lost or mislaid if they are taken home. 
 
 It helps immensely, especially in the years 
 between eleven and thirteen, if an exhibit of 
 school work is announced in connection with the 
 week of Children's Day. It has been the writer's 
 custom to call together the boys and girls of the 
 younger adolescent years three or four times 
 in the early spring, and show them how to color 
 the pictures in their text-books with water colors, 
 and to designing covers with an elaborate amount 
 of red and gold paint. This tends to give the 
 children pride in completing their work as well 
 as possible, and in cherishing it after it is finished. 
 The awarding of gold and silver seals for work 
 of the best quality, at the time of the exhibit, 
 is also helpful. 
 
 The biographical method involves a certain 
 amount of research on the part of the pupil, and 
 here the methods of teaching are similar to those 
 of teaching history in the public schools. We 
 shall soon have available some helpful text- 
 books of other than Biblical characters. One 
 of these, which has already appeared, compares 
 characters in the Bible with similar ones in later 
 history. This method is bound to be interesting 
 
 [Si]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 and inspiring. The Bible is chiefly a book of 
 biographies, and it is the biography in it that is 
 the chief object of interest among children until 
 the later adolescent years. The trouble with 
 most such text-books is that a great life is divided 
 into a number of small sections, and is subjected 
 to tiresome homiletic discussions which retard 
 the current of the heroic story. The wise teacher 
 of boys, realizing that they like to deal with a 
 great life in a mass, will teach the entire life of 
 David in two lessons, instead of ten; will cover 
 the story of Jesus in a quarter, rather than a year; 
 and will dispose of the minor characters, each in 
 one lesson. The moral message of a life is much 
 more effective by this method of teaching. 
 
 The only didactic method of teaching boys 
 that seems possible is that of debating, and the 
 only time when this is applicable is in the later 
 high school years. The writer has watched, with 
 great interest, the successive steps by which a 
 fine young college man has taken a group of such 
 boys, who have been accustomed to listening with- 
 out enthusiasm to sermonettes from their teacher, 
 and inspired them to get on their feet and discuss 
 hotly with each other and with their leader. 
 Instead of being the central figure in the class, 
 he now sits quietly at one side, rather as an umpire 
 of the discussion than as its leader. The result 
 is that the class seems to go on almost as well 
 when he is absent as when he is present. The 
 writer is certain that the tendency of most classes 
 to hear a series of lectures by prominent poli- 
 ticians and religious leaders is entirely in the 
 wrong direction. The historic method of the 
 debate, which Socrates fostered, which Jesus
 
 HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS 
 
 encouraged, and which is the very heart of the 
 New England town meeting and of popular 
 government everywhere, is the priceless method 
 of arriving at moral decisions among young men 
 who are upon the verge of their careers and life 
 missions. 
 
 Behind the matter of method and device and 
 the graded curriculum and even the Scripture 
 that is studied should loom up constantly to the 
 teacher of boys the greater question, What am 
 I really trying to teach? It is no mere trick 
 of words to answer, We are teaching, not lessons, 
 but men. To put it more definitely, the real ques- 
 tion is, How ought we to teach to affect the con- 
 duct and relations of these boys this week, next 
 year, and always? To the teacher who feels 
 that he is getting lost in his details or devices or 
 growing stale because of use, let such questions 
 as these constantly appear: How can I make 
 these boys this week more respectful to their 
 mothers? How may I help them to be more 
 useful in their homes? How can I get out of 
 their minds this horseshow attitude toward life? 
 How can I uplift their thought of the nobler 
 uses of money? How can I make them face 
 soberly the industrial order? How can I 
 persuade them to get ready for life? What 
 can I say which shall begin to make them 
 of public service? Such considerations glorify 
 teaching and will often enable a teacher to utilize 
 or rise superior to inadequate materials and un- 
 comfortable environments. Everything else is 
 his instruments, but these are the things that 
 spell life. And more and more he will realize 
 that these are truths that cannot be told, they 
 
 (53]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 must be lived, they must be arrived at through 
 discussion and moral and mental struggle. This 
 will make him less a preacher and more an inciter 
 of debate, a promulgator of dissatisfaction, a 
 comrade and a friend. 
 
 Methods of gathering up and conserving the 
 fruits of religious education are of import to us 
 all. The writer does not object to Decision 
 Day, if those who lead in observing it realize 
 what a tremendously serious work they are 
 engaging in. There is no greater responsibility 
 on earth than for one person to undertake to 
 focalize and determine the life choices of another. 
 Such work ought not to be carelessly undertaken 
 by anyone. The day is properly chiefly a census 
 day or a day of quiet committal or witness, con- 
 fined to the adolescent years. The writer's 
 own experience is that the results, no matter how 
 carefully guarded, are distinctly "gang" decisions, 
 by classes and social groups. The actuality of 
 what is obtained by the cards signed is somewhat 
 puzzling to discover. Probably some weaker 
 spirits are encouraged by the example of the 
 stronger ones to come out on the side of right, a 
 decision which life and experience will make 
 real and effective later. Care ought to be taken 
 that those who are not ready to take the step 
 and those who object to "being converted in 
 rows" are not discouraged or alienated. Decision 
 Day should in no case be made a lazy substitute 
 for personal work by teachers with the scholars. 
 At its best it is a manifestation of group witness 
 and the utilizing of the group spirit for the benefit 
 of the hesitant and timid. 
 
 The writer finds that he has increasingly made 
 
 [54]
 
 HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS 
 
 it a habit to bring boys into a conscious religious 
 experience in connection with the church life by 
 working through their parents. Is not this the 
 divinely intended way by which a boy should be 
 made conscious that he is a Christian? Indeed, 
 has an outsider the right to approach a boy about 
 so sacred a matter, unless in very exceptional 
 circumstances, without the permission and if 
 possible the cooperation of the home? It has 
 been his constant joy to have boys presented to 
 the church by their fathers and mothers, often 
 without any previous interview by himself with 
 the boys at all; these parents have been invited 
 into the counsels when the officers of the church 
 met with these lads; they have sat beside them at 
 their first communion, and thus in every way 
 family religion was honored and the old Scriptural 
 idea was maintained that the religion of a boy 
 is a covenant and a family blessing. The pastor 
 is often guided by the observation of the parents 
 as to the maturity and sincerity of their children, 
 and while sometimes, with much caution, he needs 
 to disabuse their minds of unreasonable expecta- 
 tions regarding their children, on the other hand 
 he needs their loving alertness to help him help 
 them in the further stages of their religious 
 development. 
 
 By work with parents and by a watchful 
 observation of the "gang" influences which were 
 likely to work among definite groups of boys, 
 the writer has not recently found the Decision 
 Day plan necessary. He has, however, utilized 
 a strong point of the Decision Day plan, namely, 
 the statistical study of the school, by keeping 
 before him lists of boys emerging into adolescence, 
 
 [55]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 with careful notations of their home influences, 
 club relations, church activities, etc., and making 
 these lists the subject of frequent conference with 
 their teachers. 
 
 One embarrassing result of Decision Day, with 
 its implication of joining the church, in the 
 average Sunday-school of today, is that a number 
 of young people are apt to become church members 
 who have actually never formed the habit of church 
 attendance, and as there is nothing magical in 
 mere membership to create this habit, one wonders 
 if a reversal of order of methods is not indicated. 
 Ought we not to get children to come to church, 
 and then ask them for committal and member- 
 ship? Will not this plan produce a finer type of 
 church members? The writer has found that 
 an earnest presentation of church-going to the 
 scholars of ten and over and their parents and 
 teachers, with a quarterly enrolment card, presen- 
 tation of small sermon note-books, and some 
 simple recognition of the younger ones, has soon 
 brought a large number of boys and girls to church. 
 He has followed up this attendance by explaining 
 carefully to them the reasons for the various parts 
 of the service, he has occasionally given them a 
 talk or asked them to sing, but he has found that 
 a monthly young people's sermon was rather 
 better than a sermonette, and that it was, even 
 with the adults, the most popular sermon of 
 the month! Indeed, the whole service tends to 
 become brighter and more real if pastor and 
 people are conscious that they have with them 
 the young people as guests of God. True it is 
 that, "Those that be planted in the house of the 
 Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." 
 
 [56]
 
 HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS 
 
 Church-going young people are almost certain to 
 become church members. 
 
 The matter of definite preparation for church 
 membership is one worthy of careful study. In 
 the liturgical churches confirmation is a regular 
 stage in the system of religious education. In 
 other churches it is the writer's observation that it 
 is usually a matter of "gang" action, stimulated 
 either by outside or inside influence. Just what 
 value definite catechetical instruction has in 
 helping to develop the religious nature of a boy 
 is problematical. Boys are certainly not so well 
 adapted for catechisms as girls are. A commun- 
 ion class, conducted with informality and reality, 
 no doubt impresses the young with the seriousness 
 of the step they are taking and perhaps leaves 
 some deposit of information. It is probable 
 that no answers are effective in religious educa- 
 tion that do not answer questions the boys and 
 girls are actually asking. Those who write cate- 
 chisms and who conduct classes will probably 
 be successful in proportion as they bear this fact 
 in mind. In supplement to this method, the 
 writer has believed that it was helpful to take 
 up in order briefly at the morning service the 
 same sort of topics which he would naturally deal 
 with in such a class. The fact, mentioned above, 
 that it is church-attending children who are most 
 likely to make good church members, suggested 
 that this would be a good time for them to hear 
 these things, and the fact that their parents heard 
 the talks too made it seem probable that they 
 would be talked over familiarly in the home. 
 
 One who has followed the standpoints of this 
 book carefully will realize that the author does 
 
 [57]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 not believe that mere church membership is 
 the goal of Sunday-school or church effort. It is 
 to be regarded as a significant and influential 
 step of progress, but it is the days that follow 
 that are the most neglected and important ones 
 in the life of a boy. Then it is that, if he is allowed 
 to suppose he has reached his haven when he has 
 merely set his sails, or that he has done his work 
 when he has work yet to do, he starts to become 
 a futile Christian. The quality of character 
 which the church develops in its boy members 
 will depend chiefly on the kind and quantity of 
 work it gives them to do. Here the church boys' 
 club becomes the supplement as it has already 
 been the adjunct of the Sunday-school. And 
 there is very much church work that cannot 
 be done in even boys' clubs. 
 
 The leader of boys must learn not to expect 
 too little or too much from boys. He will be sur- 
 prised to find how accessible, apparently how 
 fickle, shallow or even brutal boys are to tender 
 influences. He will also be equally surprised to 
 find how distinct are the limitations of juvenile 
 religious development. As has been pointed 
 out elsewhere, the boy is living on the ethical 
 rather than the spiritual level until he is pretty 
 well along in adolescence. He needs homely 
 virtues more than spiritual graces. We are to 
 try not to make little men manikins but 
 to produce the promise of manliness. 
 
 WHAT OTHERS SAY 
 
 "One of the best definitions of education is, to teach 
 us to delight in what we should." 
 
 G. STANLEY HALL. 
 
 [58]
 
 HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS 
 
 "Truly speaking, it is not instruction but provoca- 
 tion that I can receive from another soul." 
 
 R. W. EMERSON. 
 
 "The test of the efficiency of the Sunday-school 
 will be not, how much of the Bible the child has learned, 
 but what he has become." 
 
 GEORGE A. COE. 
 
 "It is the moral function of the school, not to teach 
 ethics, but to get right things done." 
 
 NATHANIEL BUTLER. 
 
 "He will respond in his own way if you will forget 
 that you are a moralist and remember that he is a 
 child." 
 
 J. J. FlNDLAY. 
 
 "The higher education is a finish, but the highest 
 education is a start." 
 
 THE COUNTRY CONTRIBUTOR. 
 
 HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY 
 
 Go into a class that you believe to be well taught. 
 (Don't watch any poor teaching.) Go not once, 
 but twice, or as many times as may be necessary, in 
 order to see the class as it normally is and to discover 
 the secrets of the teacher's power. Try to put down 
 on paper definitely the teacher's general purpose in 
 teaching and his special purpose for the day. Analyze 
 his methods, noting whether they are likely to prove 
 of continuous and general value. Note the character 
 of the response he is winning. Close by noting down 
 things to avoid, and improvements of purpose and 
 method you would make if you were as good a teacher 
 as he. Do this in other classes. 
 
 Send for the complete material of the text-book that 
 seems to you best adapted in subject, plan, and methods 
 
 [59]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 to the boys you have in mind. Read, first, the teacher's 
 introduction, then the first lesson from the teacher's 
 standpoint, then the same lesson from the pupils' 
 standpoint. Do for preparation of the first lessons 
 exactly what he asks the pupil to do, and decide whether 
 your class would like or would be able to do what he 
 suggests. Do the same with a lesson of three months 
 later date, and ask yourself whether the suggested 
 methods would lessen or improve in value and interest. 
 Is the plan too monotonous? Are the questions too 
 self-explanatory or too difficult? Is the illustrative 
 material appropriate? Would the book be useful if 
 you should add your own wisdom and ingenuity to it? 
 Is it the best thing available on the subject? If not, 
 find what is. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 
 ON THIS TOPIC 
 
 Henry F. Cope, The Modern Sunday-school in Principle and 
 Practice. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York and Chicago. Chapters 
 on grading and method of teaching. 
 
 Milton S. Littlefield, Handwork in the Sunday-school. The Sunday- 
 school Times Co., Philadelphia. 
 
 Edward P. St. John, Stories and Story-Telling. The Pilgrim Press, 
 Boston and Chicago. 
 
 Eugene C. Foster, Starting to Teach. Y. M. C. A. Press, New 
 York. 
 
 George H. Trull, Missionary Methods for Sunday-school Workers. 
 New York Sunday-school Department of the Presbyterian Board of 
 Foreign Missions. 
 
 A list of recommended text-books for a graded curriculum will be 
 found in the Bibliography at the end of the book. 
 
 60]
 
 VI 
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH 
 BOYS' CLUB 
 
 Whatever the special methods used in any 
 church boys' club, there are some ideals common 
 to all. These should be stated. 
 
 I. The purpose of the club, as has already 
 been said, is to form character in the boys by their 
 living out a portion of the moral life, helpfully, 
 together. Play is not a bait for work. The 
 game is not an allurement toward religion. The 
 leader believes that play and games are themselves 
 character-making forces and he uses them for 
 their own sakes and not as secondary to some- 
 thing else. He believes in his methods. 
 
 II. The definite shaping of ideals in a club 
 comes by the familiar mingling of boys with boys 
 and of the boys with their leader. The club 
 should not be so large as to be a mob, and the 
 methods should not work so much in the mass 
 that the leader cannot know and be known by 
 each individual. A club in a church generally 
 should begin small and enlarge gradually. The 
 leader should early ask himself if he is getting to 
 know each member well. If he is not doing this, 
 he may well leave out some other things and do 
 this first. 
 
 III. The membership of the club should be 
 
 [61]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 of boys of nearly the same age, and should consist 
 at the start of a single class or of two or more 
 similar classes in the Sunday-school. The church 
 which sustains a strong boys' club, composed of 
 boys from fourteen up, will hold its younger 
 boys sufficiently by anticipation. The first club 
 inaugurated should be of the oldest boys whom 
 the leaders can hold. The most successful years 
 for organizing are probably from thirteen to four- 
 teen, the culminating years of the "gang" period. 
 
 IV. The club should be controlled by the 
 church, and should, at least at first, be restricted 
 to boys of the congregation. It should generally 
 meet somewhere in the church building. It 
 should be plain that this work is being done by, 
 through, and at least partly for, the church. 
 
 V. The expenses of the club should largely 
 be met by the members, and they should not 
 be beyond the reach of any individual. The 
 club should also meet the needs of each member 
 by avoiding study hours, late hours, and too long 
 or too frequent meetings. 
 
 VI. In order to develop a genuine group 
 instinct and the qualities of initiative and responsi- 
 bility, there should be considerable self-govern- 
 ment. But there needs also to be the background 
 of authority that shall maintain reasonable 
 decorum, respect for church property, and a con- 
 secutive program of some value. "The adult 
 should guide from the rear." No boy has anything 
 but contempt for a club in which he is permitted 
 to "rough house" or in which he does nothing 
 but play. 
 
 VII. Its plans should be progressively educa- 
 tive. To march around a room behind a drum 
 
 [62]
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 corps is an inspiriting exercise to a boy of eight, 
 but one would not wish or expect to see the same 
 boy enraptured over this same thing five years 
 later. The club should always be able to keep 
 just a little ahead of the boy. Never must he be 
 allowed to feel he has outgrown it. It should 
 not shoot over his head, but it should exercise 
 him in the best way for which he is willing at any 
 given time. At the close of this chapter a scheme 
 for graded boys' clubs is given, through which a 
 group may successively pass. 
 
 VIII. Contrary to the opinion of many, 
 the writer holds that the best time to organize 
 work with boys is in the summer time. Base- 
 ball, hiking parties, camps, furnish a natural 
 initial acquaintance and an esprit de corps which 
 are invaluable for a winter's work. Next to the 
 summer, that time in the fall when it begins to 
 get chilly at dusk is indicated as the good time 
 to bring boys together. The winter will pass so 
 rapidly that a club holding its sessions only once 
 a week needs the whole season to do a good 
 winter's work. 
 
 The writer will now state, as impartially as 
 possible, the strong points of the social methods 
 and organizations which seem to him most likely 
 to be useful with boys in our churches. 
 
 i. THE CLASS CLUB. 
 
 The simplest social method is for a Sunday-school 
 class to become a club. Such a club, adopting 
 the meagerest constitution that will hold a body 
 together, can constitute every session of the class 
 a club meeting and hold extra meetings outside. 
 The advantage is that it gives the class a helpful 
 
 [63]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 self-consciousness and enables its members to 
 make entrance to the class a coveted privilege, 
 by arranging that outsiders must be elected and 
 not dumped into the class. The writer's experi- 
 ence is that such a simple organism is a great 
 help to decorum and attention in the class, the 
 president calling the class to order, and, after 
 announcements and business, introducing the 
 teacher, the secretary and treasurer quietly making 
 their records and collections and passing them 
 out to the school secretary without disturbing 
 the class. Out of even so little an organism as 
 this a sense of class loyalty develops, which assists 
 the moral impression of the teaching, and through 
 it the class performs its chosen benevolences and 
 arranges its week night and vacation fellowships. 
 It is usually well to affiliate even a modest 
 class club with one's denominational Brotherhood. 
 It gives the class a wholesome self-consciousness 
 to become related to the great masculine move- 
 ment of the church. It helps the boys personally 
 to the same fraternity as their fathers. It gives 
 them strength to feel that they are joined by the 
 same ideals and purposes as boys of their own 
 age in other churches. Most of the Brotherhoods 
 have a junior or boys' department and furnish 
 helpful suggestions to local clubs. They usually 
 enroll such clubs without change of name or 
 methods. 
 
 2. THE ATHLETIC CLUB. 
 
 The interest of athletics is one that will arouse 
 immediate enthusiasm among boys, and many 
 leaders, who have some skill in this direction, 
 will find it most easily usable with boys. The 
 
 [64]
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 mere skeleton of an organization is necessary. 
 The ten-cent handbooks of all the principal 
 outdoor and indoor games are the authorities gen- 
 erally used. 
 
 3. THE BOYS' BRIGADE. 
 
 The Boys' Brigade has been tried out in this 
 country for twenty years and in England and 
 Scotland, where its prosperity has been greater, 
 even longer. Although it is not so much talked 
 of as formerly, it still has its strong place in the 
 hearts of those who have been successful in 
 maintaining it. There is the initial advantage 
 that the plan appeals immediately to nearly 
 all boys, because the glamour of the soldier is 
 upon them, and that younger boys especially are 
 easily held by it, without other attractions. The 
 strongest feature of the Brigade is, undoubtedly, 
 the summer camp; which, though by no means 
 unique with Brigades, is more conveniently 
 run on military lines than on any other. It 
 is sometimes difficult to secure a drill master 
 who combines military knowledge, authority of 
 demeanor, and character, but such a man has, 
 in the Brigade, a plan well adapted to his gifts. 
 The expense is somewhat greater than in some 
 other kinds of work, for uniforms are practically 
 necessary for an enthusiastic company, but it 
 is considerably less than that of equipping a 
 gymnasium, for example. It is estimated at 
 two dollars a boy, for a company of forty. The 
 gradual accumulation of this amount, through 
 gifts, dues, and the purchase of each part of the 
 uniform piece by piece is not found difficult. 
 The manual of information costs twenty-five 
 
 [65]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 cents, the necessary printed matter about a dollar, 
 and there are various helpful publications and 
 supplies available later. 
 
 4. THE BOYS' LIFE BRIGADE AND THE FIRST 
 
 AID ASSOCIATION. 
 
 These two plans of work are so similar that 
 they may be yoked together. The first is English 
 and is the outgrowth of the Boys' Brigade, being 
 a protest against the supposedly warlike influences 
 of that organization. The second is American 
 and is a development of the Red Cross, having 
 been devised by Miss Clara Barton as a means 
 of educating our citizenship in methods of emer- 
 gency life-saving. Each organization furnishes 
 interesting and instructive drills for boys in 
 treating accident cases, rescuing from fire and 
 water, and first aid. The drills can be conducted 
 in military uniforms if desired, and the plans are 
 useful, not only in a special organization, but as 
 an attractive feature for any boys' club or camp. 
 The only apparatus necessary in either organiza- 
 tion is an inexpensive handbook. 
 
 5. THE WOODCRAFT INDIANS AND BOY SCOUTS. 
 
 Again, two similar plans, one American and the 
 other English, may be placed side by side. The 
 Woodcraft Indians is an imitation of the nobler 
 qualities of the red men, devised by Ernest Thomp- 
 son Seton, the naturalist. The Scouts is an out- 
 door method of reproducing the life of outdoor 
 men, red men, hunters, and scouts, devised by 
 General Sir R. S. S. Baden-Powell. Both plans 
 have swept through the countries in which they 
 originated and have developed of late not so 
 
 [661
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 much into distinct clubs as into the encourage- 
 ment of the more stalwart and skilful elements 
 in the outdoor play and camping of all sorts of 
 boys' organizations. The methods are worked 
 out with ingenuity and are distinctly manly and 
 wholesome. They have in themselves hardly 
 enough of winter time activity for indoor clubs, 
 but they are very suggestive to all those who con- 
 duct summer camps. 
 
 6. THE BROTHERHOOD OF DAVID. 
 
 This is a boys' society, based on the Bible, 
 intended for younger boys, but worked out 
 elaborately by older ones. The boys are a 
 "Camp" of the devotees of David, and meet 
 in a literal or imaginary "cave," as he did when 
 an exile. Boys preparing for kingliness through 
 hardship, discipline, and manly exercise this 
 is the thought of the society. The activities 
 consist in the handwork of making and using 
 slings, spears, and "Goliath swords" in various 
 physical exercises, initiations, which are simple 
 dramatizations of the David stories, and some 
 painless acquisition of knowledge about David 
 and his companions, outdoor life in the Holy 
 Land, the customs of various races in the shepherd 
 stage, and other heroes of the David style. Each 
 boy assumes the name of his favorite hero. The 
 plan is adapted to winter as well as summer. It 
 interlocks well with the Woodcraft Indian scheme. 
 
 7. HANDICRAFT AND NATURE STUDY CLUBS. 
 
 These two are naturally grouped together, 
 because one is a winter and the other a summer 
 employment. In Mr. George E. Johnson's "Play 
 
 [67]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 School," 1 which was epoch-making in its influence 
 upon the playground movement, handicraft and 
 nature study were correlated both winter and 
 summer. In the rural regions the leader of boys 
 may be enabled by some attention to these subjects 
 to supplement the deficiencies of the public school, 
 especially in hand-training. In the city, where 
 such subjects are in the school curriculum, the 
 club leader will find that the boys are chiefly 
 interested, in their handicraft, in cooperative 
 tasks in fitting up their club rooms, or in forms 
 of bench work that are larger and more immedi- 
 ately serviceable for play or use than the school 
 sloyd. The few books on these subjects, men- 
 tioned at the end of the last chapter, and the 
 literature of vacation schools and playgrounds 
 will be helpful to those who use these methods. 
 Woodworking and printing are the two forms of 
 handwork that seem to be most popular. Nature 
 study runs almost insensibly into camping out. 
 
 8. PHI DELTA Pi. 
 
 While secrecy is hardly safe in organizations 
 of immature lads, it may be presumed that the 
 secrets of this fraternity, devised by Mr. H. W. 
 Gibson of the Massachusetts Y. M. C. A. as an 
 antidote to the high school fraternity, for use in 
 the church and Y. M. C. A., are not very porten- 
 tous. In communities where this particular need 
 ought to be met, this plan may well be investigated. 
 
 9. THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF KING ARTHUR. 
 
 This fraternity, the largest for boys in the 
 world, is a non-secret society, based on the Round 
 
 Described in "The Boy Problem," pp. 82-86. 
 
 [68]
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 Table legends and intended for the encourage- 
 ment of the manly qualities suggested by Chris- 
 tian chivalry. The boys take the names of 
 knights or other heroes and bear them in all 
 meetings of their "Castles." They are supposed 
 to personate there and elsewhere uphold the 
 ideals of knightly fraternity. Each boy is initi- 
 ated, with much merriment, into the humble 
 degree of page. After a season, when he has 
 been instructed in the virtues of purity, temper- 
 ance, and reverence, and has taken appropriate 
 vows, he may become an esquire. After he is a 
 church member he is made a knight. Thus the 
 processes of the "Castle" lead consistently 
 upward. The ideal set up is one of wholesome 
 self-respect. The members are knights; they are 
 above meanness and low habits. They are chiv- 
 alrous gentlemen. Religion is unobtrusive but 
 integral. There are higher ranks still accessible 
 to unusual courage or strength of character. The 
 conclaves may take the form of debates, athletic 
 drills, study classes, games, and so forth. Here 
 the greatest flexibility is allowed. There are 
 to meet the boys' fancy insignia, grips, pass- 
 words, and secret signs, but no secrets are kept 
 from the parents of the members. There is 
 much opportunity for handwork, athletics, dra- 
 matics, and music. The plan is refining, but 
 not effeminate, and seems to appeal to all classes 
 of boys. The method is extremely elastic and the 
 plan has been much enriched by the suggestions 
 of people from all over the world who have thought 
 of attractive modifications of it. In practise, 
 the organization is inexpensive and is easily 
 self-supporting. 
 
 [69]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 The distinctive features of the plan are most 
 successful with boys in the early years of high 
 school, but the older boys who have attained 
 the "peerage" often become a "House of Lords," 
 with parliamentary practise and some oversight 
 of the younger boys. 
 
 The handbook costs a dollar and a complete 
 castle outfit (which includes the handbook) three 
 dollars. 
 
 10. THE CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR SOCIETY. 
 
 The oldest and largest of all the young people's 
 movements presents a variety of plans suited to 
 several grades of maturity. This organization, 
 unlike the others mentioned, makes its religious 
 meeting the central feature, yet it is fair to say 
 that it is only the local societies that really 
 "endeavor" that continue to have strong religious 
 meetings. This is in accord with an important 
 law of the spiritual life. Many churches sustain 
 various boys' clubs, as outlined above, and use 
 the Christian Endeavor meeting as the rallying 
 points of all their young people's work. To those 
 who want to work with boys apart from the girls 
 the question may be asked, Why not organize 
 a Boys' Christian Endeavor Society? 
 
 The Christian Endeavor Society has proved 
 its worth chiefly as a co-educational society for 
 adolescents. An overloading of a local society 
 with adults tends always to be a barrier to actually 
 reaching the young people, and the features- of 
 the Society that are characteristic are not so 
 wholesomely applied to children in the so-called 
 "junior" societies. The normal Endeavor Society 
 is the first social grouping of adolescent boys and 
 
 [70]
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 girls continuously together. It is a delightful 
 and a delicate opportunity for a pastor. The 
 watchful adult notes the sex-influence at every 
 point. It is this which helps stimulate to verbal 
 witness the reticence of many a bashful lad, 
 and the unconscious preenings and posings which 
 accompany both the social and religious activities 
 must be winsome to all grown-up people who are 
 not misanthropic. The adult guide will be quick 
 to remember that the sex-life and the religious 
 life are never more closely parallel than now. 
 Many a boy has been brought into the kingdom 
 by the mere presence there of an innocent girl. 
 Yet here is a limitation of the society which makes 
 separate effort for boys still necessary. It is largely 
 only the boys who like girls that go to the Chris- 
 tian Endeavor Society. 
 
 The splendid idealism of the Endeavor move- 
 ment is needed to redeem some of our boys' 
 clubs from pettiness and selfishness, and in many 
 churches the old Societies will, by furnishing 
 leaders or supervising committees, conduct the 
 boys' work. 
 
 The movement has been criticised for certain 
 faults and tendencies of its life, but these are 
 largely the faults and tendencies of lack of 
 guidance by leaders, and the sufficient answer has 
 always been made that a pastor will get out of 
 his Christian Endeavor Society just as much as 
 he puts into it. 
 
 ii. THE BROTHERHOODS. 
 
 Almost every denomination now has its national 
 Brotherhood. Some of these have a boys' 
 department. In the Congregational Brother-
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 hoods boys' clubs of whatever sort are enrolled, 
 without change of name or plan. This makes 
 possible federation for denominational causes, 
 and makes easy the transition of the boys at 
 the proper age to the men's brotherhood of the 
 local church. Some Brotherhoods, like that of 
 St. Andrew and that of Andrew and Philip, have 
 a distinct junior department, in which the methods 
 of the senior branch are adapted to boys. This 
 plan, in the writer's judgment, is not usually 
 successful. The Junior Brotherhood of St. 
 Andrew stands very strongly for the idea of a 
 select band of Christian boys segregated into a 
 society for the purpose of winning boys who are 
 outsiders. Most of us work rather by regarding 
 the Christian boy, as in the rest of life, as part 
 of the community of boys among whom he lives 
 his life in fellowship and influence. 
 
 12. BOYS' CAMPS. 
 
 Among the wholesome ways of living with boys 
 none equals the living with them in tents in God's 
 out-of-doors. A week of such association is worth 
 a year of meeting them once a week in the winter. 
 There is no culmination better for any of the forms 
 of social organization mentioned above than a 
 church camp. If all leaders of boys knew how 
 easy, how inexpensive, and how safe (with strong 
 boats, guarded bathing, and no firearms) such a 
 fortnight can be, more of them would try it. 
 
 Boys mature and change so fast that most 
 leaders find, whatever their club may be named, 
 it needs to change its plans every two or three 
 years. After a while its old records and para- 
 phernalia may be left to the " kids " who are coming 
 
 [72]
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 on. We may summarize our analyses by present- 
 ing an ideal 
 
 GRADED SYSTEM OF CHURCH BOYS' CLUBS 
 
 10-13. The Boys' Brigade, or 
 
 The Boys' Life Brigade, or 
 
 The Woodcraft Indians, or 
 
 The Brotherhood of David. 
 14-18. The Knights of King Arthur. 
 1 6-2 1. The Christian Endeavor Society. 
 1 8- The Brotherhood. 
 
 How shall one start a church boys' club? 
 The prospective leader will look about him first 
 and study his field and his resources. He will 
 select the prospective members, who will, as has 
 been said, probably constitute one or more than 
 one Sunday-school class. With some knowledge 
 of their home conditions, their schools, the 
 neighborhood advantages, and temptations, he will 
 begin to frame his conception of the kind of a 
 club that will be likely to appeal to them and 
 hold them. He will consult as many of their 
 parents as possible, as their counsel and coopera- 
 tion will become invaluable. He will talk with 
 their Sunday-school teacher probably he will 
 be that teacher himself. After he has formu- 
 lated his plans somewhat he will take a few of 
 the leading boys into his confidence, and will 
 try to arrange things so that they themselves 
 will suggest organization and support his plans. 
 In the meantime he will have secured the hand- 
 book of the form of organization which he pro- 
 poses to use or will develop his own, tentatively, 
 and will have a definite and intelligible proposi- 
 
 [73]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 tion to put before the boys. Upon the first night 
 of meeting he will plunge at once with the boys 
 into plans of work. Endeavoring to make the 
 movement self-propulsive from the start, he 
 will insist that he is not to be expected to endow 
 the club either with money or with ideas. It is 
 not his club, it is theirs, and it will succeed only 
 as they recognize this fact from the start and all 
 along. Still, while the tendency of an adult 
 leader is to assume too much responsibility and 
 power, and to leave too little to the boys, it will 
 be more or less necessary the first winter to help 
 a group that has not hitherto worked seriously 
 together both with suggestions and with incentive. 
 The problem of order in the club is one that 
 need never come up seriously more than once. 
 The leader should refuse to hold any office him- 
 self, unless it be that of secretary, and there 
 should be someone, the president or the mar- 
 shal, whose business it is to keep the meeting 
 under discipline. If, when disorder occurs, the 
 leader rises and remarks kindly that it is obvi- 
 ous that interest in the club must be impossible 
 if it continues, and that the members will no 
 doubt both recognize this fact and act accord- 
 ingly, the public sentiment will at once mass 
 itself against the offender, and things will move 
 along peaceably. The matter of order after the 
 first few meetings will depend almost entirely 
 upon the interest. When club meetings are 
 uninteresting, someone is sure to want to "start 
 something." Misbehavior therefore becomes a 
 danger signal to the leader that he must renew 
 his energy in getting a program. It is neither 
 an indication of total depravity nor of a desire 
 
 [74]
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 to insult himself it is the wholesome appeal 
 of the boys for what is worth while. The Club 
 leader who goes home after an unsuccessful 
 evening and blames anybody but himself is 
 pulling the wrong doorbell. It was not his busi- 
 ness to pull the load, but it was his business to 
 generate power. 
 
 It may be helpful if the author brings out some 
 of the details of club work by describing a typical 
 evening in a church boys' club. This description 
 is a composite picture from his own current 
 experience in a club of twenty-five boys of the 
 average age of fifteen. 
 
 The leader arrived first. This statement is 
 both literal and symbolic. He did not enter 
 a room full of boys who had already "started 
 things." He started things himself. He unlocked 
 the door and admitted the boys. While one 
 turned on the lights, he despatched another to 
 bring the paraphernalia, and, picking out a third 
 who seemed to be especially exuberant, he set 
 him to arranging the chairs. He began the session 
 at the appointed moment, regardless of whether 
 all were present or not, and had the regular pro- 
 gram in motion before someone started an ex- 
 temporaneous one. All the officers were boys. 
 The leader sat near both the presiding officer and 
 the secretary, to guide both, but he never pre- 
 sided himself. There was a boy sergeant-at-arms. 
 The leader did not preserve order; he asked the 
 sergeant to do it, and if he failed, called the atten- 
 tion of the house to the matter. This massed 
 the public sentiment against the offender. It 
 might be remarked that there was not very much 
 order to preserve, by which is meant that there 
 
 [751
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 was the constant stir and murmur of interest, 
 but little or no confusion. During the opening 
 exercises the Lord's Prayer was said. This was 
 done kneeling, with closed eyes. The writer 
 does not lay much stress on devotional exercises 
 in a boys' club, but if they occur, they ought to 
 be reverent. There was a little union business 
 and some discussion. The president refused to 
 recognize anyone who did not properly address 
 the chair. Matters of parliamentary procedure 
 were explained by the leader, and were quite 
 carefully remembered afterward. The boys had 
 agreed upon a five-cent weekly tax and a similar 
 fine for unexcused absence. This was cheerfully 
 paid and created all the revenues needed. The 
 member who was latest to arrive was designated 
 as "Jester" at the next meeting, and his witti- 
 cisms, delivered when ordered, served to relieve 
 any tension. There was not any consecutive 
 program. The leader often wished he could 
 secure one, but it was his first winter with these 
 boys, and he expected better things another 
 season. The boys were busy in school and had 
 been confined all day, so the meetings were quite 
 informal and varied. One evening there was an 
 initiation, another a visitation from a neighboring 
 club, once an hour of progressive games, again a 
 family physician gave an instructive talk. Often 
 the session closed with a hide-and-seek about 
 the darkened parish house or some indoor athletics. 
 The club had no gymnasium and owned no 
 athletic material except a baseball. The whole 
 damage which they did to the building during the 
 winter amounted to less than two dollars. This 
 was accidental and was cheerfully paid for. They 
 
 [76]
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 met but once a week from October to June on 
 Monday evenings, from seven to eight. Appar- 
 ently they did not do much. But at the end of 
 winter several assets were counted. They stuck 
 together. They insisted on meeting after the 
 leader was willing to stop. After the first sifting, 
 the attendance averaged over eighty per cent. 
 They grew increasingly to initiate plans for them- 
 selves, and were ready in the spring to sustain a 
 ball nine and to conduct a camp. Nothing 
 was said in the club about Sunday-school, but 
 not one of them left the school during the year and 
 their attendance became more regular. Nothing 
 was said in the club about the church, but several 
 joined the church at Easter. They had made a 
 voluntary contribution to beautifying the church 
 building. The minister, their leader, and one 
 of their Sunday-school teachers, who were with 
 them all winter, had gotten acquainted with them 
 all pretty thoroughly, and were now known by all. 
 These were the superficial results. It may also 
 be supposed that they had been educating each 
 other, that they had become a little more fair, 
 honest, and loyal to each other, that they were 
 now capable of joint action, that they had grown 
 to think of the church as their home, as during 
 the winter in several small ways they began to 
 serve it, and that there was to each a beginning 
 of an interpretation of the Kingdom of God as 
 the Church, as the minister and the club had 
 revealed it. This was to be regarded as only one 
 step in the process of educating a group of boys 
 into a life of wholesome religion and of generous 
 devotion to the church of Christ. In itself it 
 was worth while, but as an early part of a sys- 
 
 [77]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 tematic, sensible Christian method it was regarded 
 by its leaders as of indispensable importance. 
 
 It is interesting and sometimes amusing to 
 watch the education of the members of a club 
 by attrition. The boy who has been quite a 
 hero in the Sunday-school class because of his 
 ingenuity in annoying his teacher is surprised 
 to find that he is regarded as a nuisance when 
 he starts operations in the club. The lad who 
 has shone in the Christian Endeavor meeting is 
 chagrined to find that his club fellows are not 
 much interested in his oratory. The boys who 
 are always talking and always proposing something 
 are quieted by seeing their pet plans voted down 
 or by being delegated to carry them into execu- 
 tion, while the silent members are stirred, by 
 real interest, into discussion and are encouraged 
 to find that they can think on their feet. In- 
 stinctively the leader finds himself challenged by 
 the most difficult and the least winsome boys, 
 and he is helped daily both to understand them 
 and to bring out the best that is in them by 
 the revelations and the support of the club. It 
 is the writer's earnest testimony that, after he has 
 given a most proportionate attention and affection 
 to such boys he has been rewarded in later years, 
 not only by the warmest appreciation from them, 
 but by the distinct evidence that his help and the 
 club life were actually crucial and transforming 
 in their development. 
 
 Of course a longer experience will give a pro- 
 portionately more important result. The writer 
 recalls such an experience of seven consecutive 
 years with a certain group, with whom he played 
 and prayed, sat up nights, camped out and played 
 
 [78]
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 games, sharing as much of their life as was not 
 spent at home or in school. He has abundant 
 reason to believe that his guidance was in many 
 ways directive of their later living and that they 
 went out into life distinctly marked by his per- 
 sonal touch. This kind of work does not always 
 seem to be appreciated, but in this instance even 
 this reward was not withheld. The last evening 
 brought an expression which may be quoted, 
 not only because it was so satisfying, but because 
 it seemed to define the very nature and quality 
 of the influence that had been exerted. A fare- 
 well social evening had finished, a presentation 
 had been made, with an awkward speech by the 
 boy orator, and an equally awkward one by their 
 leader. Then came forward the finest fellow of 
 the lot, and leaning over into the circle, said, 
 "What this ring means, Mr. Forbush, is that not 
 one of us fellows is ever going to disappoint you!" 
 
 "Who builds in Boys builds lastingly in Truth, 
 And 'vanished hands' are multiplied in power, 
 And sounds of living voices, hour by hour, 
 Speak forth his message with the lips of Youth. 
 
 " Here, in the House of Hope, whose doors are Love, 
 To shape young souls in images of right, 
 To train frail twigs straight upward toward the Light; 
 Such work as this God measures from above! 
 
 "And faring forth, triumphant, with the dawn, 
 Each fresh young soul a missioner for weal, 
 Forward they carry, as a shield, the seal 
 Of his example so his work goes on. 
 
 "Granite may crumble, wind and wave destroy, 
 Urn, shaft or word may perish or decay, 
 But this shall last forever and a day 
 His living, loving monument, a Boy!" 
 
 [79]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 WHAT OTHERS SAY 
 
 The author has asked a few persons whom he knows 
 to have had long and successful experience with boys 
 to seal this chapter with their testimony as to the 
 value of church boys' clubs: 
 
 "The church needs both the Sunday worshipper and 
 the weekday worker. What that work is, and what 
 that worship means, can be taught most easily and 
 practically in the freedom and intimacy of the boys' 
 club. 
 
 "Our club started in 1889 and it has done its simple, 
 healthy work ever since, being today in charge of a 
 man who eighteen years ago entered the club as a small 
 boy of nine or ten years. 
 
 "I believe with all my heart just what I have 
 written." 
 
 Miss A. B. MACKINTIRE. 
 
 "During the last twelve years I have come in contact 
 with many boys, in various church clubs, where I 
 have been fully persuaded of the very great value of 
 such work. Many of these boys I know intimately, 
 having found the club, preeminently the Knights of 
 King Arthur, the most effective means to such personal 
 acquaintance. I think I can hardly overestimate 
 the force of a wisely conducted club, both for visible 
 results and for the greater permanencies of life in 
 character." 
 
 (REV.) RAYMOND M. Dow ADAMS. 
 
 "The manly associations afforded by church clubs 
 are serving as a powerful factor in arousing within 
 boys the disposition to become men. In these clubs 
 Christian leaders, together with their younger brothers, 
 practise quite fraternally the real spirit of the Christian 
 life. Two years' work with boys in two church clubs 
 has convinced me that if more such work had been done 
 
 [80]
 
 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 
 
 twenty years ago, men approaching middle life would 
 now be in our churches in far greater numbers." 
 
 (REV.) HERBERT L. PACKARD. 
 
 "After twenty-three years' work with boys as teacher 
 and pastor (six years of which were spent in a boys' 
 boarding school), I am glad to give my testimony 
 that the one who would do most for the boy must 
 keep close to him for a long time. To win his confi- 
 dence before he enters the period of adolescence and 
 to keep "next" during all those tremendous years is 
 the sure way to the greatest service. 
 
 "I am very glad that you are bringing this to the 
 mind of our workers. The notion that one can take 
 a fresh group of lads each year, or even every two 
 years, and then drop them for others, is one which I 
 fear is not uncommon, but one which in my judgment 
 can never lead to the finest nor the most permanent 
 results." 
 
 (REV.) ELLIOTT F. TALMADGE. 
 
 "For three years I have been using 's methods 
 
 with from thirty to forty boys between the ages of 
 twelve and eighteen. I was satisfied that from the 
 psychological standpoint the idea was all right; now I 
 know that it works. It has done wonders for our boys, 
 physically, mentally, and spiritually. I like it for its 
 manly appeal and for its appeal to a boy's honor. 
 Best of all, it makes for the ideal manhood of Jesus 
 Christ, and leads the boys naturally on to church 
 membership." 
 
 - (REV.) T. C. RICHARDS. 
 
 HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY 
 
 Send for the material of the particular forms of 
 organization that seem most likely to be adapted to 
 the boys you have in mind. Study the ideals and
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 methods of each in view of the facts you have just 
 learned. 
 
 Try out one plan with some boys. Do the author 
 of it the justice to follow his directions patiently, 
 unless you find they actually defeat your purposes. 
 As you assimilate his ideas, begin to be original and use 
 your own. Look out that the machinery of the organ- 
 ization does not obscure your view of the boys them- 
 selves or tend to prevent your knowing individuals. 
 When it does, get somebody else to tend the machinery, 
 while you go after the boys. 
 
 OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC 
 
 Feasible Restrictions of Membership of a Church Boys' Club. 
 Methods of Meeting the Expense of a Club. 
 The Governing Board: its personnel and powers. 
 A Five Years' Program for one Church Boys' Club. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 
 ON THIS TOPIC 
 
 As the organized forms of work with boys issue pamphlets of 
 information, many of which are ephemeral, the reader is simply 
 directed to the following addresses for further advice: 
 
 The International Sunday-school Association, Hartford Bldg., 
 Chicago. 
 
 The Boys' Brigade, Central Savings Bank Bldg., Baltimore. 
 
 The Boys' Life Brigade, 56 Old Bailey, London, E.G. 
 
 The First Aid Association, 6 Beacon St., Boston. 
 
 The Woodcraft Indians, Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. 
 
 The Boy Scouts of America, 124 East 28th St., New York. 
 
 The Brotherhood of David, 171 Taylor Avenue, Detroit. 
 
 Phi Delta Pi, State Y. M. C. A. Bldg., Boston. 
 
 The Knights of King Arthur, Taylor and Third Avenues, Detroit. 
 
 The Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, Tremont 
 Temple, Boston. 
 
 82
 
 VII 
 BOYS AND THE KINGDOM 
 
 Having studied pretty carefully the methods 
 of religious nurture in the church, school, and club, 
 let us now turn to the problem of training boys in 
 religious expression through service. There are 
 naturally three fields for such service: the home, 
 the church, and benevolence or missions. 
 
 The religious life of a boy must chiefly be lived 
 in his home. Not very much of the journey to 
 heaven can be taken in congregations. It is 
 rather difficult, however, for the church worker 
 to do very much consciously affecting a boy's 
 home conduct. He can arrange the hours of 
 meeting for his boys' club so that they will not 
 interfere with home work or home study, and 
 incidentally he can teach lessons or make sugges- 
 tions from his observation of an individual boy's 
 conduct which will modify the boy's ideals and 
 life. Probably the most important thing which 
 the school teacher or club leader can do for the 
 home is to exalt the authority of the boy's father 
 and the sacredness of motherhood. A close and 
 hearty sympathy, expressed by frequent confer- 
 ences between teachers, church workers, and 
 the parents of the boys, will be sure to form a 
 three-fold cord of inspiration and influence. It 
 is the happy testimony of many church workers 
 
 [83!
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 that fathers and mothers have come to them to 
 say that because of the church school or club 
 the boy's conduct in the home has noticeably 
 improved. 
 
 In the field of church work the important thing 
 to say seems to be that it is necessary to give 
 boys work suited to the different grades of their 
 development. The plan of messenger service 
 in a Sunday-school is a good one for younger 
 boys, but it is not applicable for very many years 
 in a boy's life. The older boy would prefer to 
 be an attendant at the church door, or to become 
 an usher. Younger boys like to distribute church 
 bulletins, but it would be more agreeable to older 
 boys to print the bulletin, or to publish a church 
 paper. Young lads are easily organized into 
 boys' choirs, but as there are a number of years 
 later when boys ought not to sing, the plan of 
 a boy choir cannot be made continuous. Probably 
 the most useful field of service in the church 
 for boys is as Sunday-school teachers. It may 
 seem heretical these days, when the highest require- 
 ments are being held up for teaching religion, 
 that one should suggest boys as teachers of religion. 
 It is the writer's experience, however, that they 
 are quite as willing to take preparatory courses 
 of study as adults are, and their sympathy for 
 younger boys and their interest in them, espe- 
 cially in athletic lines, is so much keener than 
 that of grown people, especially of women, that 
 a group of boys of sixteen or seventeen will often 
 make an admirable corps of teachers for the junior 
 department. Just as a class begins to get hard 
 to hold in the main room is a good time to suggest 
 to them the delight of volunteering as a group 
 
 [84]
 
 BOYS AND THE KINGDOM 
 
 to take charge of their younger brothers in the 
 school. Not all can teach, but nearly all can be 
 used in the administration of the department. 
 The "gang" spirit of older boys and girls can 
 sometimes be used by sending them off as a 
 chorus to sing in a mission or a hospital. Such a 
 preliminary service often enlists young people in 
 an enthusiastic way in further and continuous 
 service. I have in mind a downtown church of 
 limited field from which a young people's society, 
 going as a body into the foreign section, has not 
 only built and administered successfully a social 
 settlement, but has actually saved its own life and 
 that of its mother church. That church is alive 
 because it has found something worth living for. 
 The great field of missionary benevolence is 
 one in which it is practicable to interest boys 
 at every stage. One who has hopes for a future 
 generation devoted to the work of the Kingdom 
 needs no argument to convince him of the im- 
 portance of developing such interest. Those 
 who have watched boys who are being addressed 
 by some live missionary or social worker have 
 realized that the subject was one not inherently 
 alien to them, and has learned from a skilled 
 presentation what qualities in it are most likely 
 to appeal to boys. They are interested in heroic 
 personalities. They are unprejudiced against mis- 
 sions as a cause, and they are generous in heart. 
 They are, however, poor in purse. While it is 
 probably more important to get a boy to make 
 personal sacrifices for the causes in which he is 
 interested than anything else, this is a matter 
 which must largely be inculcated in the home. 
 There is another kind of giving which may be per- 
 
 [85]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 formed in the church, and in this church workers 
 have the part of leadership. The "gang" spirit 
 can be used in missionary interest in giving, as 
 much as anywhere else. It inspires a boy, even 
 in his personal sacrifices, if he can earn money, 
 together with other boys, and give with them, 
 and the collective amount is so much more respect- 
 able than what he can do unaided that it dignifies 
 his own small contribution. 
 
 In selecting the causes to which a group of boys 
 should be asked to contribute, the studies which 
 we have made of their dispositions and certain 
 applications of common sense may guide us. 
 Other things being equal, it is better to encourage 
 the boys to give to causes supported by their 
 own denomination. Picturesque as undenomina- 
 tional benevolences often are, they are usually 
 well supported financially. The church to which 
 the boys belong has causes that are just as pic- 
 turesque, which are in infinitely greater need, 
 and if a boy is to grow up an intelligent church- 
 man, he should have a hearty loyalty to the 
 agencies for which his church is alone responsible 
 and which must perish without his aid. The 
 causes to which boys should be asked to con- 
 tribute should have the following qualities: 
 First, they should be specific and concrete. 
 We ought to begin with a person who is on the 
 field, the place where he is working, and the 
 task which he has. Do not begin with a society, 
 a country, or a history. Second the causes 
 should be varied. While the boys may give to 
 only one at a time, these should be selected, in 
 a course of years, so as to educate broadly. They 
 should present a number of countries, and a 
 
 [861
 
 BOYS AND THE KINGDOM 
 
 number of racial situations in .America, and 
 represent the work of several, if not all, of the 
 national boards of the denomination. Third, 
 they should be continuous. They should enable 
 boys to become well acquainted with the person- 
 alities in charge, and demand increasingly an 
 interest in the development of the work itself. 
 Fourth, they should be picturesque. While 
 value is not to be sacrificed to attractiveness, it 
 is important to emphasize to young people, who 
 are at a rather blase and fickle period, that the 
 church societies are doing some of the most 
 picturesque work on record. Usually the objects 
 of help should be boys and girls, so that young 
 people may be giving to young people. Fifth, - 
 the causes chosen should be abundantly able 
 to supply fresh information, which will keep up 
 interest and inspire the spirit of eagerness and 
 anticipation of more news. Sixth, the interest 
 should be cooperative. The boys should not 
 only know, they should know together. They 
 should not only give, they should give together. 
 One of the oldest ways of encouraging cooperative 
 giving that has been established by the mission- 
 ary boards is that of issuing a certificate with 
 "shares of stock" in some united young people's 
 missionary cause. Probably the missionary ship 
 in the Pacific, the "Morning Star," was the first 
 enterprise to which young people were thus ever 
 asked to subscribe stock. Most of the denom- 
 inational boards have plans of this sort. In 
 the Congregational Brotherhood, for example, 
 a certificate has been printed in the national 
 colors, bearing the facsimile signatures of the 
 Brotherhood leaders. The share represented by 
 
 [87]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 these certificates are ten cents each, so that a 
 certificate for ten dollars represents one hundred 
 shares. The boy who gives ten cents through 
 his club or class may feel that one of those hundred 
 shares is his own. 
 
 The shares are graded in a rather ingenious 
 manner by a series of seals, as a recognition of 
 the amount given, as follows: 
 
 Certificate to a Club Certificate to an Individual 
 
 Twenty-five Cents a Member Red Seal 
 
 Fifty Cents a Member White Seal 
 
 One Dollar a Member Or One Dollar Gift Blue Seal 
 
 Two Dollars a Member Or Two Dollar Gift Bronze Seal 
 
 Three Dollars a Member Or Three Dollar Gift Silver Seal 
 
 Five Dollars a Member Or Five Dollar Gift Gold Seal 
 
 As an illustration of possibilities in this direction, it may be 
 helpful to enumerate the causes which were selected after careful 
 study by the writer, as President of the Congregational Boys' Brother- 
 hood. The first of these was a work in the Shanshi Province of 
 China. This province is both the Pennsylvania and the Minnesota 
 of China. Because of its natural resources it is in the line of first 
 evolution of the awakened China, and it is destined to become one 
 of the world's greatest industrial centers. Its ground is also sacred 
 with the blood of the martyrs in the Boxer massacres. Here, in a 
 province practically alone, two young American ministers and two 
 doctors, with their wives, are pioneering in one of the most interesting 
 and hopeful fields on earth. The boys are invited particularly to 
 give to a hospital work for boys and girls, which is alleviating pitiable 
 conditions and saving the lives of thousands, and also to elementary 
 village schools, which are the bases of the great scheme of Chris- 
 tian education that culminates in the North China Union College. 
 Fifteen dollars takes care of a hospital cot or a village school for 
 a whole year. The second, the boys are being interested in a 
 Philippine mission in the Island of Mindinao, which, with its million 
 souls, has been entirely assigned to Congregationalists. The people 
 are mostly raw savages, and the interior of the island is scarcely 
 explored. It is the only foreign station of the denomination that 
 is under the Stars and Stripes, and it is the only mission of the 
 church now ministering to untouched savages. Third, of course 
 there is a boys' mission to Indians. The Santee Training School 
 in North Dakota is said to be the best Indian School in America. 
 The picturesqueness of Indian life is echoed in the school cata- 
 
 [88]
 
 BOYS AND THE KINGDOM 
 
 logue, in which such poetic Indian names of the students are 
 retained as "Cuts the Cloud," "Beautiful Spring Flower," "Flying 
 Eagle," etc. The industrial work is also practical, and the training 
 of teachers for the native schools is most important. Fourth, 
 the boys are being interested in the South, in the institution 
 at Tougaloo, Miss., where negro boys in the heart of the black 
 belt are struggling to secure an industrial education, and that is 
 helping to solve one of our most serious national problems. 
 Fifth, our last frontier is Montana. Its mines, its irrigation and 
 reclamation projects, and its water power, make it indeed "the 
 Treasure State." Here still linger the Indian, the cowboy, the 
 miner, and the forester. Sixth, the most backward portion of 
 continental America is New Mexico. In ignorance, cruelty, and 
 immorality it represents much that is a shame to the republic. 
 Yet this great domain, which is to be a State, has an old and roman- 
 tic history, wonderful architectural achievements, beautiful native 
 handcraft, marvels of scenery, and great undeveloped resources. 
 The mixture of Indian and Spanish has produced a race whose 
 histories, character, and possibilities are quite unknown. Boys are 
 being asked to give the boys and girls of New Mexico a chance 
 to escape the bondage of darkness that surrounds them, in the new 
 industrial school near the border line between America and Mexico. 
 Finally, the problem of the city and the alien is being brought to 
 the boys' attention by telling them of a most unique and heroic 
 man, a Slav by birth, who is on the firing-line of the problems of 
 immigration and poverty in the industrial city of Duquesne, Penn. 
 
 Other denominations, of course, have equally attractive causes 
 to present to boys, but these paragraphs may be helpful to leaders, 
 as suggesting the kinds of objects which are available. 
 
 Those who find the adult missionary magazine 
 and adult missionary literature uninteresting 
 may, with a little care and some correspondence, 
 sift out just the right object in which they can 
 interest themselves and their boys. 
 
 There are two possible ways in which boys can 
 cooperate in the benevolent movements of their 
 church. They may give to all the causes. They 
 could divide their gifts among the different 
 treasurers in a series of objects, such as have been 
 mentioned above. The advantages of this method 
 are the opportunities it affords for a broad and 
 continuous missionary education, preparatory to 
 
 [89]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 a lifelong loyalty to all the varied work of the 
 church. Or they may choose one or more of 
 such causes. The advantage of this plan is that 
 the interest felt naturally becomes intensified, 
 and, the gifts to the single cause becoming larger, 
 the young people are more likely to reach the 
 point where they can become personally related 
 to their chosen field. 
 
 As to methods of money-raising a few suggestions 
 may be given. While the best way to raise money 
 everywhere is to give it, a mutual gift made 
 from the proceeds of an entertainment is a good 
 way, because it represents partnership, and because 
 there are many wholesome ways in which the 
 dramatic instinct of boys may be exercised. Some 
 kind of dramatic entertainment, which will take 
 a great portion of the winter to prepare, has its 
 own educative value, and brings the season to 
 a triumphant climax. A short list of such avail- 
 able entertainments is given at the close of this 
 book. 
 
 Out of the hundreds of reports of boys' clubs which come to 
 the writer every year, he has selected a few ingenious methods which 
 may be suggestive, both by their novelty and by the large success 
 and results which have been reported. 
 
 Several boys' clubs have given exhibits of boys' work, veritable 
 expositions of boy life, including on one occasion boys' pets, boys' 
 collections, boys' manual work, and an evening of boys' music and 
 oratory. 
 
 A boys' club in Provincetown, Mass., has purchased a vacuum 
 cleaner and are renting it, with two boys to operate it, at fifty cents 
 per hour. After three weeks' toil the machine is almost paid for, 
 and several of the boys have earned encouraging amounts. Their 
 leader gives the boys fifteen cents an hour until the machine pays 
 for itself, and after that each boy will get twenty-five cents an hour 
 for his labor. 
 
 The church boys held a "Farmer's Supper," in connection with 
 the girls' society, in Rutland, Vt., which was profitable and enjoyable. 
 A small food fair and entertainment which the boys gave raised $35. 
 
 [90]
 
 BOYS AND THE KINGDOM 
 
 A group of Durham, N. H., boys netted #30 from a lecture given 
 for their benefit by a war correspondent. 
 
 The boys' Club of Sackett Harbor, N. Y., has introduced a printing 
 press. The club members print the church calendar and church 
 notices, and do some paying job-work. 
 
 A boys' club of Andover, Me., won a game of baseball at Andover 
 Fair, which gave them $15. 
 
 An Olean, N. Y., boys' society g?.ve a military entertainment 
 which was a great success. They sold tickets in advance, which, 
 with donations from a few interested men, raised $33?. 
 
 A boys' club of Dodge City, Kans., gave a pie supper and cleared 
 over 10. Inside the hall door was set a table from which the 
 guests bought their tickets, which were eight-inch strips of card- 
 board. Along the strip was printed, "Coffee, Pie, Plate, Napkin, 
 Fork," etc. As the customers passed along the table, they were 
 served with the different articles by several boys, who tore off that 
 part of the slip which had on it the name of the article he had served. 
 Only fifteen cents was charged for a quarter of a pie, two doughnuts, 
 a cup of coffee with cream and sugar, but a good profit was made. 
 
 Just before the holidays a boys' club of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., 
 held a successful "Art Exhibit" and cleared over #30 selling Copley 
 prints and other pictures. 
 
 From Andover, Me., comes a report from the boys of a remu- 
 nerative day of wood chopping. 
 
 In Malone, N. Y., a boys' club collected waste paper and sold it, 
 for which $78.85 was realized. A food sale netted them $20. The 
 club members have been conducting an entertainment course costing 
 $200 for talent. 
 
 Is it too much to expect that these entertain- 
 ments shall not only become a joint means of 
 joy, expression, and beneficence, but that they 
 shall also be uplifting? There is great need for us 
 to study the possible place of the festival in life, 
 and especially in church life. The writer saw 
 an announcement of a boys' Bible-class exhibit 
 in a church, conducted by its teacher, who is a 
 boys' Y. M. C. A. secretary, a few days ago, 
 in which, with a number of excellent items, was 
 a blackberry pie-eating contest. Such merry ex- 
 ercises probably do no permanent gastronomical 
 or moral harm, but it must be possible to be just 
 as merry and keep just as close to boys and yet
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 make even their church festivals a contribution 
 toward what we in America need so much to 
 learn, the beautiful ordering of life. 
 
 WHAT OTHERS SAY 
 
 "If a boy has gone through his teens and has not 
 formed the habit of service, we may try to break him 
 in when he is twenty-five or thirty, but it is a difficult 
 
 task." 
 
 EDGAR M. ROBINSON. 
 
 "The way to make a boy's conscience braver is to 
 reinforce it with a commission." 
 
 GEORGE A. COE. 
 
 "The implanting of the missionary spirit so as to 
 give it control of the life of every pupil may fairly be 
 said to be the chief and sole purpose of the Sunday- 
 school." 
 
 CHARLES G. TRUMBULL. 
 
 HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY 
 
 Choose a definite missionary cause and begin to col- 
 lect material in the way of information and illumination 
 upon it. Get all the juvenile literature about the field. 
 Read over the adult literature with boys solely in mind. 
 Look for strong personalities, picturesqueness, adven- 
 ture and heroism, elements for pity, lively incidents, 
 each in turn. Try to prepare this field as a cause to 
 present to boys. Begin with its persons. Illuminate 
 its conditions. Have ready a tangible plan for relief. 
 Eliminate everything that is unnecessary and dis- 
 tracting. Present your data at a meeting for business 
 and discussion, and listen carefully to what is said, 
 for future guidance. After a plan has been decided 
 upon, push it patiently and for a sufficient period to 
 
 [92]
 
 BOYS AND THE KINGDOM 
 
 have secured from it missionary education for the boys 
 and for it some measure of interested, sacrificial sup- 
 port from the boys. 
 
 OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC 
 
 The Boys' Field of Service: 
 
 The Home, 
 
 The Church, 
 
 Benevolence or Missions. 
 
 How Much More Can our Boards Afford to Do to Develop the 
 Interest of our Boys? 
 
 Methods of Money-Raising from Boys. 
 
 The Sources of a Boy's Interest in Missions. 
 
 Making Youthful Interest in Missions a Permanent Life Principle. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 
 ON THIS TOPIC 
 
 George H. Trull, Missionary Methods in the Sunday-school. 
 This contains an abundance of plans and methods and a graded list 
 of missionary books for young people's reading. New York: Presby- 
 terian Board of Foreign Missions. 
 
 Emma E. Koehler, The Boys' Congress of Missions. New York: 
 Westminster Press. 
 
 93
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. A SELECT REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS UPON THE 
 NATURE AND NURTURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 
 BOY: 
 
 For fathers, teachers, pastors, and workers with boys. 
 
 THE BOY'S BODY: Stuart H. Rowe, The Physical Nature of the Child 
 and How to Study It. New York: The Macmillan Co. J. M. Tyler, 
 Growth and Education. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. Winfield 
 S. Hall, From Youth into Manhood. New York: The Y. M. C. A. 
 Press. The best help in sex instruction. 
 
 BOYS' PLAY: George E. Johnson, Education by Plays and Games. 
 New York: Ginn & Co. Jessie H. Bancroft, Games for the Play- 
 ground, Home, School and Gymnasium. New York: Macmillan Co. 
 
 BOYS' CAMP: Charles S. Hanks, Camp Kits and Camp Life. Chi- 
 cago: Sports Afield. Horace Kephart, Book of Camp and Wood- 
 craft. New York: Field and Stream. Francis H. Buzzacott, The 
 Complete Campers' Manual, published by the author. Chicago. 
 Brief but adequate. 
 
 BOYS' HANDICRAFT: D. C. Heath, The American Boys' Handy 
 Book. New York: Charles Scribncr's Sons. A. Neely Hall, The 
 Boy Craftsman. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 
 
 THE BOY'S MIND: Frederick Tracy, The Psychology of Childhood. 
 Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. A standard account of child develop- 
 ment. Edgar J. Swift, Mind in the Making. New York: Charles 
 Scribner's Sons. Brilliant, separate essays. G. Stanley Hall, Youth: 
 Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene. New York: D. Appleton Co. 
 
 BOYS' NATURE STUDY: Clifton F. Hodge, Nature Study and Life. 
 New York: Ginn & Co. 
 
 STORY-TELLING: Sarah Cone Bryant, How to Tell Stories to 
 Children. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. 
 
 BOYS' READING: Books for Boys: lists in Work with Boys, Decem- 
 ber, 1909. Fall River: Thomas Chew. C. B. Kern, Selected Books 
 for Boys. New York: Y. M. C. A. Press. 
 
 THE BOYS' SPIRITUAL NATURE: H. M. Burr, Studies in Adoles- 
 cent Boyhood. Springfield: The Seminar Publishing Co. 
 
 BRINGING UP BOYS: George A. Dickinson, Your Boy: His Nature 
 and Nurture. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Kate Upton Clark, 
 Bringing up Boys. New York: Crowell. 
 
 [951
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 BOOKS OF ADVICE TO GIVE BOYS: Winfield S. Hall, From Youth 
 into Manhood. New York: The Y. M . C. A. Press. Sex information. 
 Charles F. Dole, The Young Citizen. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. 
 N. C. Fowler, Jr., Starting in Life. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 
 On the choice of a calling. David Starr Jordan, The Call of the 
 Tzoeniieth Century. Boston: American Unitarian Association. On 
 the kind of a man the world wants to-day. Choosing a Career, pre- 
 pared by the New York High School Association, 75 Jefferson Ave., 
 Brooklyn. A helpful booklet on the subject, with a valuable list of 
 books on the different vocations. 
 
 II. A SELECT REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS UPON THE 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF BOYS: 
 
 For Men's Classes and Brotherhood Discussions. 
 
 JUVENILE CRIME AND PROBATION: Thomas Travis: The Young 
 Malefactor. New York: Thos. Y. Crowell & Co. Our best book on 
 delinquency. Homer Folks, The Care of Destitute, Neglected and 
 Delinquent Children. New York: Macmillan Co. The Survey, 
 the magazine of social and philanthropic progress. New York, 
 22nd St. and 4th Ave. Current new items. Judge Ben B. Lindsey, 
 The Beast and the Jungle, a book on his experiences with boys and 
 politics. 
 
 PLAYGROUNDS: Ernest B. Mero, American Playgrounds. Boston: 
 American Gymnasia Co. 
 
 EDUCATION: Paul H. Hanus, Educational Aims and Educational 
 Values. New York: Macmillan Co. Frank Parsons, Choosing a 
 Vocation. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. George A. Coe, Edu- 
 cation in Religion and Morals. New York: Fleming H. Re veil Co. 
 
 0. J. Kern, Along Country Schools. New York: Ginn & Co. 
 RELIGIOUS NURTURE: Charles E. McKinley, Educational Evan- 
 gelism. Boston: The Pilgrim Press. 
 
 LOCAL WORK FOR BOYS: A Survey of the Boys of Detroit, in "Asso- 
 ciation Boys," for October. New York: The Y. M. C. A. Press. 
 A study of what needs to be done in one city, not thorough, but 
 suggestive. 
 
 III. SPECIAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES FOR WORKERS WITH 
 BOYS: 
 
 1. AN IDEAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM FOR BOYS, with refer- 
 ences to the text-books which at the date of writing appear most 
 useful for teaching these subjects: 
 
 9-11. BIBLE STORIES, with sketch, color and picture work: The 
 
 International Graded Lessons, Junior Series (Old Testament). The 
 
 Junior Bible (Bible Study Lessons: Old, followed by New Testament). 
 
 12-14. BIBLE BIOGRAPHY, with writing and other notebook 
 
 v work: The Life of Jesus, by Gates. The Story of Paul of Tarsus, by 
 
 [96]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Atkinson. Heroes of the Faith, by Gates (Biblical and Christian 
 Biography). 
 
 15-18 BIBLICAL AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND HISTORY, with 
 discussions. Life Questions of High School Boys, by Jenks. The 
 Comrades of Jesus, by Perkins. The Gospel of the Kingdom, by 
 Strong. Life Problems, by Doggett-Burr-Ball-Cooper. The Conquer- 
 ing Christ, by Boone. 
 
 These special text-books and others are analyzed in the list follow- 
 ing: 
 
 2. AN ANALYSIS OF SOME RECENT SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 
 FOR BOYS. 
 
 It is coming to be realized by teachers of boys that the Interna- 
 tional uniform lessons, prepared to be used in all grades, are really 
 adult lessons in purpose and plan of selection. Those who use them 
 should know that the weekly articles in the Sunday-school Times, 
 Philadelphia, by Eugene C. Foster, entitled "My Class of Boys," 
 the ingenious devices suggested in "The Boys' Teacher," Chicago, 
 and the articles of high standard and the varied helps in "The Pilgrim 
 Teacher" are the best teaching material published. 
 
 Teachers of boys will look forward with eagerness to the complete 
 International Graded Lessons, which are now published for boys only 
 up to their twelfth year. 
 
 I. JUNIORS: 9-12. 
 
 The International Graded Sunday-school Lessons: Junior Series, 
 prepared by Josephine L. Baldwin. Published by the denominational 
 houses. 
 
 These beautiful handbooks, including teachers' book, picture 
 cards and pupils' folders, represent the triumph in the International 
 Sunday-school movement of educational ideals. The material is 
 arranged to be used beginning in October and closing in June, but 
 there are lessons for summer time also. The Scripture is chosen 
 wisely for the grade, the stories are charmingly told, the pictures have 
 artistic merit and the teachers' helps are plain and adequate. 
 
 This, the third and last of this series now ready, adds to the mate- 
 rial of the earlier series a little more varied handwork. These 
 lessons, like the others, are selected mainly from the Old Testament. 
 Being undated, they can all be used at any time, though they are 
 written with some relation to the seasons and the church festivals. 
 
 The Life of Jesus, by Herbert W. Gates. The University of 
 Chicago Press. 
 
 This material, which includes a teacher's manual and a beauti- 
 fully printed pupil's workbook, with a set of pictures, is the best 
 yet published for the later years of this department and is used suc- 
 cessfully even beyond this period. Each lesson contains blanks in 
 the text which the pupil fills out and a space for a pasted picture, and 
 there is some map work and memorizing. By doing the written 
 work the boy composes a paraphrase of the Scripture story and when 
 
 [97]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 he is through he has become co-author of a life of Jesus. The 
 teacher's book introduces fine literary allusions and is of strong 
 spiritual fervency. The optional use of stereographs is regularly 
 provided for. 
 
 Heroes of the Faith, by Mr. Gates, a text-book in Biblical and Chris- 
 tian biography. The Bible Study Publishing Co., Boston. In this 
 book, published in quarterly form, Bible characters and those of 
 modern history are brought into ingenious contrast, and the meth- 
 ods are interest-provoking and original. 
 
 Early Heroes and Heroines, by Harold B. Hunting and Charles 
 F. Kent. The Bible Study Publishing Co., Boston. 
 
 The teacher's manual is in pamphlet form and the pupils' folders 
 are sections of a Junior Bible to be filled in and bound by the pupil. 
 Each section includes a colored Tissot picture, than which no more 
 vigorous Old Testament illustrations exist. The course is arranged 
 so as to be complete in a year with or without the summer months. 
 The Scripture is chosen with a recognition of historical criticism. The 
 teacher's helper is admirable and is indispensable to the use of the 
 course. There is nothing better on the Old Testament for this grade. 
 Succeeding courses, three in number, are announced in this series, 
 to follow this book, the four including the whole Bible story. 
 
 Budget of Manual Work for Sunday-school Teaching, by Preston 
 Fiddis. The Newell Press, Baltimore. 
 
 This elaborate scrapbook of handwork was designed for guidance 
 to teachers desiring to do what the International people call "sup- 
 plemental" work, which in many cases has proven to be fully as 
 interesting and important as the regular work. It constitutes the 
 best help we have on teaching elementary knowledge of the contents 
 of the books of the Bible and the outlines of Bible geography, and it 
 is worthy to stand as a text-book for a year's work in those subjects. 
 The book, which is for the teacher, contains beautiful examples of 
 actual work done, and is the best guide to handwork that exists. 
 It tells where to buy the various materials that may be used by the 
 pupils. 
 
 An Introduction to the Bible for Teachers of Children, by Georgia 
 L. Chamberlin. The University of Chicago Press. 
 
 A difficult thing to do, carefully done. The reviewer is convinced 
 that the work could be used successfully in a month older grade 
 than the author has planned, and hence he places it nearer the seventh 
 than the fourth grade of school. Fiddis' manual would be better 
 for earlier years, with this as a book of reference for the teacher. 
 
 Child Life in Mission Lands, by Ralph E. Diffendorfer, &nd China 
 for Juniors (also Japan, Alaska, Africa, and Coming Americans), 
 by Katherine E Crowell. All published by the Young People's 
 Missionary Movement, New York. 
 
 All these, though intended for Mission Bands, are well written 
 and well illustrated handbooks which would also be suitable for 
 missionary education in the Sunday-school. 
 
 [98]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 II. INTERMEDIATE: 12-14. 
 
 Men who Dared, by Charles Gallaudet Trumbull. The Y. M. C. A. 
 Press, New York. 
 
 These eighteen studies in Old Testament manhood include a 
 teacher's book, some scholars' slips for home study and some fairly 
 well chosen pictures. The strength of the course is the live, thought- 
 provoking questions and colloquial material in the teachers' book. 
 The study is ethical, not at all historical in purpose. The teacher 
 will be helped by the book's simplicity. The danger to be avoided 
 in its use is preachiness. 
 
 What Manner of Man is This? by William D. Murray. The 
 Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. 
 
 Nineteen lessons. A teacher's book and pupils' study slips. 
 Suggestions are made for picture work, the use of stereographs and 
 drawing, map making and pulp work. These useful exercises are 
 made optional and are not very well related to the main current of 
 the teaching, but a bright teacher could find them suggestive. 
 
 Men of the Bible, by W. H. Davis. The Y. M. C. A. Press, 
 New York. 
 
 Of this course, of twenty-five lessons, the same praise and the 
 same criticism would need to be made. 
 
 The Story of Paul of Tarsus, by Louise Warren Atkinson. Uni- 
 versity of Chicago Press. 
 
 This consists of a text-book, a pupils' book for home work, and 
 another for class use. It resembles in plan and method Gates' 
 Life of Jesus. It emphasizes the boyhood and the education of 
 Paul, and places the various parts of his history in the proportions 
 in which they are valued by a young person's mind. It is an admi- 
 rable piece of work, the only satisfactory juvenile text-book on the 
 life of Paul ever published. 
 
 Heroes of Israel, by Theodore G. Scares. The University of 
 Chicago Press. 
 
 A dignified text-book for teacher and another for the scholar, 
 including thirty-five lessons, a year's work. The American Revised 
 Version is used and the selections are chosen so as to avoid critical 
 and moral difficulties. The method is that by which English classics 
 are introduced to high school students and the historical and Oriental 
 background are clearly painted. An intelligent teacher would make 
 this course of great educational value to a class of boys. The ethical 
 teaching is wholesome and constant. It excels other books in its 
 emphasis upon actual Bible reading. 
 
 Travel Lessons on the Old Testament and Travel Lessons on the Life 
 of Jesus, by William Byron Forbush. Underwood & Underwood, 
 New York. 
 
 The plan is to enter into the very atmosphere of Bible life by 
 visiting the places in order, through the only instrument that gives 
 the third dimension to pictures, the stereoscope. The Old Testa- 
 
 [99]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 ment outfit consists of the teacher's book, the stereoscope and a col- 
 lection of fifty-one stereoscopic photographs of the Old Testament 
 places. The New Testament book is accompanied by thirty-six 
 such standpoints. Suggestions are also made for a class "log" of 
 the travel and individual notebooks and handwork. 
 
 The Life of Jesus, by Herbert W. Gates. The University of 
 Chicago Press. 
 
 This text-book is so good and has been found so useful for this 
 grade, as well as the one previous, for which it was prepared, that it 
 is named again. In this grade the teacher would introduce varied 
 suggestions beyond the assigned written work. 
 
 III. HIGH SCHOOL YEARS: 14-18. 
 
 Life Questions of High School Boys, by Jeremiah W. Jenks. The 
 Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. 
 
 Professor Jenks has composed the most usable text-book for the 
 discussion of Christian ethics that has yet been published. It is 
 most suggestive. Any live teacher will rejoice in it, because it 
 gets the boys to talking. 
 
 The Gospel of Mark, by Ernest D. Burton. The University of 
 Chicago Press. 
 
 This study presents the Gospel text with notes and questions 
 in the same form as a Shakespeare text is issued for high school 
 students, and a teacher who could interest a class in the latter ought 
 to be able to in the former. It is the writer's conviction, however, 
 that most teachers cannot at present depend upon an initial interest 
 from high school boys in such a thoughtful course. We need very 
 much a course that emphasizes the heroic and practical elements of 
 Jesus' character in terms that will attract boys. 
 
 The Men of the Old Testament, by Leon Kurtz Williams. The 
 Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. 
 
 A teacher in the Hill School has prepared this book from experi- 
 ence in the required Bible study classes of that school. It is the 
 first constructive study for boys written from the modern view of 
 the Old Testament. It is constructive, informing and devotional in 
 character. There is no special teacher's manual, but the same kind 
 of a teacher who could use Burton's book, mentioned above, would 
 be successful with this one. The Y. M. C. A. and the private school 
 of course get a quality of attention which the voluntary class in 
 Sunday-school seldom reaches. 
 
 In this connection we may name a book of similar plan and 
 quality from the same publishers, The Life of St. Paul, by Arthur G. 
 Leacock. 
 
 Life Studies, by various authors. The Unitarian Sunday School 
 Society, Boston and Chicago. 
 
 A teacher's handbook, pupils' leaflets and some pretty good picture 
 slips for a yearly study in Christian biography. The heroes studied 
 are chosen each as an illustration of a Christian life and the emphasis 
 
 [ 100 ]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 is ethical rather than biographical. There is much attractive and 
 intelligent material and these studies are a commendable endeavor 
 in the too much neglected field of the pedagogy of biography. 
 
 Starting in Life, by N. C. Fowler, Jr., and What Can a Young Man 
 Do ? by Frank W. Rollins. Both by Little, Brown & Co. 
 
 These two, though not prepared as text-books, would be excellent 
 as guides to personal preparation and discussion in a class of young 
 men who wished a course in the choice of a vocation. Mr. Fowler's 
 book takes up thirty-three topics in 411 pages; Mr. Rollins', fifty- 
 four topics in 339 pages. They seem to be of very equal value. 
 The teacher would wish to supplement these books by the 
 useful bibliography in the ten-cent pamphlet, Choosing a Career, 
 to be obtained of E. W. Weaver, 25 Jefferson Ave., Brooklyn. 
 
 The Comrades of Jesus, by Richard R. Perkins. The Y. M. C. A. 
 Press, New York. 
 
 A brief, practical discussion-study of the characters of the disciples 
 of Christ written by a schoolmaster for high school boys. It com- 
 bines the biographical and the ethical, the suggestive and the co- 
 operative, in a skilful way. A very attractive and useful feature 
 is a bookmark study-slip for the use of the boys who might be scared 
 by a text-book. 
 
 The Bible Study Union, of Boston, announces for publication 
 January, 1911, a new course on Christian Conduct, based on a com- 
 parative use of the Bible and of modern instances, which has been 
 outlined by Professor George A. Coe. 
 
 IV. OLDER BOYS: 18-21. 
 
 The Gospel of the Kingdom, by Josiah Strong. The Institute 
 of Social Service, New York. 
 
 An excellent series of studies, published in monthly instalments 
 for men's discussion classes, on the relation of Christians to all the 
 pressing social problems of the day. Informing, constructive and 
 inspiring. 
 
 Life Problems, by Doggett-Burr-Ball-Cooper. The Y. M. C. A. 
 Press. 
 
 Vigorous discussions of the most intimate questions of personal 
 morals, intended for debate in groups of young men. A course for 
 youths a little older than those using Professor Jenks' book. 
 
 The Y. M. C. A. Press publish a variety of texts for men's Bible 
 classes, of which they will be glad to send a catalogue. These, being 
 beyond our purview, we have not examined. 
 
 The Conquering Christ, by Ilsey Boone. Bible Study Publishing 
 Co., Boston. 
 
 A study in quarterly form, and with a teacher's helper, of com- 
 parative religion and of present missionary problems. The course, 
 though advertised for adults, would be a very rich one for older boys 
 and would introduce into the school a subject of most important 
 interest, the kingdom-idea in its worldwide movement. 
 
 [101]
 
 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 
 
 3. RECOMMENDED DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENTS FOR BOYS. 
 
 A Dramatization of Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, by Florence 
 Holbrook. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. It will take weeks of 
 time in club sessions, if desired, in the wholesome handicraft of making 
 the Indian costumes. For boys 10 to 14. 
 
 The Young Knight, or How Gareth Won His Spurs, by James 
 Yeames; also, Gawain and the Green Knight, by the same author. 
 Detroit: Knights of King Arthur. Stirring and somewhat humorous 
 dramatizations of the most boylike of the King Arthur stories, which 
 can be given with simple paraphernalia. For boys 14 to 18. 
 
 The Drama of Joseph. New York: William Beverly Harrison. A 
 reverent and dramatic rendering of the best Old Testament story. 
 For boys 10 to 14. 
 
 How the Missionary Came to Bfar Camp. Boston: Woman's 
 Home Missionary Rooms. A short home missionary sketch, with a 
 strong boy interest. For boys 12 to 14. 
 
 A Town Meeting, by Frank E. Hiland. Walter H. Baker & Co., 
 Boston. For boys 14 to 20. 
 
 Roll Call of the Nation: patriotic, with singing; by Caroline E. 
 Dickenson and Stanley Schell. Edgar S. Werner & Co., 45 E. igth 
 St., New York. 
 
 Sailors' Entertainment, by Stanley Schell. A musical play. Edgar 
 S. Werner & Co., New York. For boys 14 to 18. 
 
 Valley Forge, a war play, by E. S. Lovejoy. Edgar S. Werner & 
 Co., New York. For boys 14 to 18. 
 
 "Books About Boys," being the July number, 1909, of Work 
 With Boys. Thomas Chew, Fall River. 
 
 A larger list of books about boy nature, boys' physical, intellec- 
 tual, social and moral activities, boys' organizations and periodicals 
 about work with boys. Those who wish to go even more deeply 
 into the subject are urged to secure this number. 
 
 102 ]
 
 INDEX 
 
 Adolescence 7, 10, 25, 55 
 
 Amusements 35, 36, 42 
 
 Athletic clubs 64 
 
 Benevolences of boys 85 
 
 Big Brother movement 29 
 
 Biographical method of Sunday-school teaching . . . . 10, 50, 51, 52 
 
 Books of advice to give to boys 96 
 
 Books of boys' reading 95 
 
 bringing up boys 95 
 
 camps 95 
 
 dramatics for boys' clubs 102 
 
 education of boys 96 
 
 for Sunday-school teachers 95 
 
 for Sunday-school teaching f. . . 96 
 
 the "gang " 2 
 
 handicraft 95 
 
 juvenile crime 96 
 
 local work for boys 96 
 
 nature study 95 
 
 play 95 
 
 playgrounds 96 
 
 probation 96 
 
 religious nurture 96 
 
 social education of boys 96 
 
 story-telling 95 
 
 the boy's body 95 
 
 the boy's mind 95 
 
 the boy's spiritual nature 95 
 
 Boys, allegiance 9 
 
 " crazy period" 34 
 
 environment 14, 15 
 
 epochs 9 
 
 Boys and the kingdom 22, 83 
 
 Boys' brigade 23, 65, 73 
 
 clubs 3 
 
 clubs, church 61 
 
 life brigade 66, 73 
 
 Boy scouts 66 
 
 Brotherhood discussions 71 
 
 work with boys 5, 28, 3 1 , 43 
 
 of David 67, 73 
 
 [I0 3 ]
 
 INDEX 
 
 Brotherhoods, denominational 71, 72 
 
 Camps 63, 67, 72 
 
 Card-playing 35, 37, 38 
 
 Catechetics 57 
 
 Certificate plan for benevolence, the 87 
 
 Christian Endeavor Society, the 20, 70, 73 
 
 Church attendance of boys 56, 57 
 
 Church boys' clubs 61, 62, 73 
 
 Church control of its boys' work 62 
 
 Church, functions of the, for boys 14 
 
 Church membership of boys 56, 57 
 
 Church work for boys 84 
 
 Class clubs 63 
 
 Criminality among boys 1 1 
 
 Curricula for Sunday-schools 53, 96 
 
 Dancing 35, 39, 40 
 
 Decision Day 15, 54, 55, 56 
 
 Debating method of Sunday-school teaching 50, 52 
 
 Development of boys, chart of 9 
 
 Dramatic instinct, the 42 
 
 Dramatics in boys' clubs 102 
 
 Educational ideals in boys' clubs 73 
 
 Environment of boys 14 
 
 Evening in a boys' club 74 
 
 Exhibits in Sunday-school work 51 
 
 Expectancy, influences of 13 
 
 Expenses of boys' clubs 62, 76 
 
 First aid association, the 66 
 
 " Fool Age," the 143 
 
 "Frats" 42 
 
 Friendship, utilization of 22, 24, 26 
 
 "Gang," action of the 57 
 
 allegiance 9 
 
 characteristics 9 
 
 culminating year of . . 62 
 
 influence of 13? 55 
 
 instinct of 5 
 
 spirit of 33 
 
 Graded boys' clubs 63, 73 
 
 Habit, period of 15 
 
 Handicraft 67 
 
 Home, the 14 
 
 Individual, the 4, 8, 12 
 
 [104]
 
 INDEX 
 
 International Sunday-school lessons 30, 97 
 
 Knights of King Aithur 23, 68, 73 
 
 Leadership in work with boys 20 
 
 training of 28 
 
 Manual method of Sunday-school teaching 50, 98 
 
 Missions and boys 87, 88 
 
 Modifying influences in boys' development 13, 58 
 
 Money-making in a boys' club ox> 
 
 Messenger service 84 
 
 Nature study 67 
 
 Older boys, special work with 33 
 
 Perils of boys 34 
 
 Periods of boys' development 8, 9, n, 13 
 
 Phi Delta Pi 68 
 
 Play . . 22, 25, 61 
 
 Preparation of boys for church membership 56 
 
 Racial prototypes of boys' development 9 
 
 Religious development of boys 9, 13 
 
 Religious nurture 96 
 
 Reserve of boys 2, 14 
 
 Resourcefulness, period of 9, 16 
 
 Revivals 10, 14 
 
 Self-assertive period 9, II, 13 
 
 Self-government in clubs 62 
 
 Sentiment, period of IO 
 
 Sex, influence of 13 
 
 Sex-instruction 34, 35 
 
 Stages of boy lif 9 
 
 Summer work with boys 63 
 
 Sunday-school courses 3 3 * 9^, 97 
 
 extension 19, 20 
 
 function of the .... 47 
 
 methods 30 
 
 Temperament, influence of 13 
 
 Text-books for Sunday-schools 97 
 
 Theatre, the . .36, 40, 42 
 Training leaders 28 
 
 Vocational training 4> 43 
 
 Will-progress of boys 9 
 
 Woodcraft Indians, the 66, 73 
 
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