the birthday greetings, the flowers and stories, these things in the
majority of cases sum up the little girl's conclusions. There enters
into her religion in many cases that name which seems so often to sound
sweeter when murmured by baby lips than at any other time. The little
girl has learned to love the Baby asleep in the hay, the Child before
whom the Magi knelt, the obedient and lovable boy who played in
Nazareth. Then the new outlook comes and the little girl sees Jesus the
Redeemer and God the Father. She listens with eager fascinated interest
to the stories of what He did and said, tries to obey the commands He
gave, suffers for her sins of commission, prays and hopes to be
forgiven. The One who searches the hearts of men must find as honest,
devoted faith among these little girls as anywhere in His army of
believing followers.

Then the spirit of altruism begins to awaken. She is no longer a
_little_ girl. She begins to understand the meaning of _sacrifice_, she
is stirred with the desire to serve. Christ the Messiah, the Savior and
Master, claims her interest and her heart is filled with desire to serve
and to prove her love to Him. She pledges herself to His service,
strives to be faithful, suffers agonies of remorse over her failures.
Among all the hosts who follow Him there are none more loyal and loving
than this girl in her teens.

The years pass and in the later teens and early twenties another world
forces itself upon the girl. It is the world of sin and evil, of
selfishness, greed and hypocrisy. She shrinks from it but it is bound to
be revealed. She catches a glimpse of a world of suffering and pain that
makes her heart ache. And while these worlds are pressing hard she is
plunging into the secrets of things. The revelation of biology,
astronomy, chemistry, the history of peoples, languages and books, the