giving and not of getting, to get self into the background and live for
love and service--to employ your great gift for the sake of the giver
of it. I suspect that it must need a great deal of self-discipline--
perhaps more than a man can understand. I am sure it must need a great
deal of prayer. But it has been done, and can be done again.

And that leads me naturally to the last thing I want to say in this
chapter. I have already said in the chapter specially addressed to men
that the great help for the difficult early days of life is to be found
in religion. [Footnote: Cp. p. 80ff.] And of course that is equally
true for girls.

Religion means having a great and worthy interest at the center of our
lives, which gives meaning to the whole of them. Being religious means
that the essential and eternal part of us is coming into life, and it
almost necessarily follows then that the other parts of our
personalities slip into their proper places. It means having an object
for our affections more than worthy of all our deepest emotions, and
more than able to fill our empty hearts. Religion in the early days of
life is generally very emotional. I believe that that is perfectly
right and natural, provided we also make efforts to be sincere and to
love the truth. Because it is emotional, its value as an outlet for
feeling is very great. It does not remain at its first emotional level.
Later on there comes an inevitable change when many think, quite
wrongly, that they are losing their religion. But at the stage I am
thinking of religion naturally and normally expresses itself in intense
feeling. We are all hero worshippers at that stage of life. Hero
worshipping, however, is apt to get us into trouble, for our heroes
fail us in time. The one perfect hero who never fails us is Christ. He
alone never disappoints, and to love Him is to have all the nobler