world it can accomplish in the teaching of religion. If young America is
irreligious today it is because we have sown the seed and left it to
itself. In the soil of young hearts are the elements which make a sane,
full output of religious life possible--but cultivation is _necessary_
and, if we are to raise the type of our girlhood, _imperative_. We shall
be compelled to resist the temptation to give up because the seed does
not grow faster.

Those entrusted with the cultivation of this human soil into which the
seed has been dropped must know what that seed needs as it
develops--urging forward here, that through self-expression it may grow
strong, restraining there, that it may not spread itself out and through
over-expression become weak. Only loving personal knowledge of each
individual life will make possible this guidance and restraint. They
must know the environment in the midst of which the good seed is
striving to climb to fruition, else they cannot know just what to drop
into the soil to stimulate the seed in its fight for strength, nor how
to protect it from growths that threaten to choke it.

Those entrusted with the cultivation of this soil, if they are to be
successful, must learn to use the mighty stimulus to growth that comes
from simple friendship. Seed which can come to fruition under no other
conditions springs into vigorous life under the power of warm
friendship. Many a seed which might have developed and borne rich fruit
has shriveled and dried in the chill of unfriendliness and
misunderstanding. These cultivators of the heart soil must learn very
quickly the value of sunshine. Young life needs the rain and has it, but
young life loves the sunshine, it blossoms in the presence of hope and
expectation, it droops in the atmosphere of distrust.