Now then to the point. As I understand you, your difficulty is that
you feel that you must devote yourself to strengthening a very few men
who are already Churchmen, and to whom you can talk in the language
of the Church of things which you know they want to hear about, or
you must appeal to the crowd of those who are merely good fellows and
often sad scamps too, who must be caught with buns and cinemas and who
are very difficult to get any farther.

I fancy that you, like me, when you see a fine dashing young fellow,
with a touch of honesty and recklessness and wonderful mystery of
youth in his eyes, love him as a brother, and long to do something to
keep him clean, and to keep him from the sordid things to which you
and I know well enough he will descend in the long run if one cannot
put the love of clean, wholesome life into his heart. But how to get
at him? If you talk to him about his soul you disgust him, and you
feel a sort of sneaking sympathy with him too. It does not seem the
thing to make a chap self-conscious and a bit of a prig when he is
not one to start with. On the other hand, if you just keep to buns and
cinemas you never get any farther. Well, it is a big difficulty. The
only experience that I have had which counts at all is experience that
I gained while trying to run a boys' club in South London, and you
must not think me egotistical if I tell you what seems to me to have
been the secret of any power that I seem to have had over fellows.

At first I used to have a short service at the close of the club every
evening, to which most of the boys used to stay. I also had a service
on Sunday afternoon. Something of the same sort might perhaps be
possible in the Y.M.C.A. tent if there is one where you are. When I
was talking to them at these services I always used to try and make
them feel that Christ was the fulfilment of all the best things that