The Minister and the Boy | Page 6

a bodyguard whose loyalty will outmatch every foe.
In the hour of reaction from intense and unrewarded toil the empty chambers of the preacher's soul may echo in bitterness the harsh misanthropy of a scheming world. Then it is that he needs the boys, the undismayed defenders of his faith. Let him name their names until the ague goes out of his heart and the warm compassion of the Man of Galilee returns. To be a hero and an ideal in the estimate of anyone is indeed a great call to the best that is in us; and when the minister, in the dark day or the bright, hears the acclaim of his bodyguard let him believe that it is the call of God to manhood that has the triple strength of faith, hope, and love.
All of this and much more they surely can and will do for him, and if the pastor who thinks that he has no field or who is getting a bit weary or professional in the routine ministry to unromantic middle life could but behold within his parish, however small, this very essence of vital reality, this allurement of unbounded possibility, this challenge of a lively paganism, and this greatest single opportunity to bring in the Kingdom of God, he would, in the very discovery of the boy and his significance, re-create himself into a more useful, happy, and genuine man. Is it not better to find new values in the old field than to pursue superficial values in a succession of new fields?
CHAPTER II
AN APPROACH TO BOYHOOD[1]
If the minister is to do intelligent work with boys he must have some knowledge of the ground plan of boyhood and he must believe that the boy both demands and merits actual study. Specific acquaintance with each one severally, alert recognition of individuality, variety, and even sport, and an ample allowance for exceptions to every rule will greatly aid in giving fitness to one's endeavor; but beneath all of these architectural peculiarities lies the common biological foundation. To know the human organism genetically, to have some knowledge of the processes by which it reaches its normal organization, to appreciate the crude and elemental struggle that has left its history in man's bodily structure, to think in large biological terms that include, besides "the physics and chemistry of living matter," considerations ethnological, hereditary, and psychological, is to make fundamental preparation for the understanding of boyhood.
For the family to which the boy belongs is the human family. His parents alone and their characteristics do not explain him, nor does contemporary environment, important as that is. His ancestry is the human race, his history is their history, his impulses and his bodily equipment from which they spring are the result of eons of strife, survival, and habit. Four generations back he has not two but sixteen parents. Thus he comes to us out of the great physical democracy of mankind and doubtless with a tendency to re-live its ancient and deep-seated experiences.
This theory of race recapitulation as applied to the succeeding stages of boyhood may be somewhat more poetic than scientific. Genetically he does those things for which at the time he has the requisite muscular and nervous equipment, but the growth of this equipment gives him a series of interests and expressions that run in striking parallel to primitive life. If the enveloping society is highly civilized and artificial, much of his primitive desire may be cruelly smothered or too hastily refined or forced into a criminal course. But memory, experience, observation, and experiment force one to note that the parallel does exist and that it is vigorously and copiously attested by the boy's likes and deeds. At the same time the theory is to be used suggestively rather than dogmatically, and the leader of boys will not imagine that to reproduce the primitive life is the goal of his endeavor. It is by the recognition of primitive traits and by connecting with them as they emerge that the guide of boyhood may secure an intelligent and well-supported advance.
Such an approach favors a sympathetic understanding of the boy. To behold in him a rough summary of the past, and to be able to capitalize for good the successive instincts as they appear, is to accomplish a fine piece of missionary work without leaving home. Africa and Borneo and Alaska come to you. The fire-worshiper of ancient times, the fierce tribesman, the savage hunter and fisher, the religion-making nomad, the daring pirate, the bedecked barbarian, the elemental fighter with nature and fellow and rival of every kind, the master of the world in making--comes before you in dramatic and often pathetic array in the unfolding life of the ordinary boy.
Our topmost civilization, although sustained and repleted by this original stuff, takes