President Butler and Dr. A. A. Butler; Professor James and Edwin F. See; Dr. William B. Forbush and Professor Haslett, in fact every writer on this subject to-day accepts Starbuck's Curves, so that practically they can be considered as standard. These are the Curves. They are worth careful study and copying.

Somewhere between thirteen and sixteen, differing with boys and girls, comes the rise in the Curve, sharp and distinct. There is no mistaking it. The signs will be the Doubts, the Ideals, the Mind Wandering and Storms and Stress, and the sudden Desire to do something for the Church or for mankind.

It may come with a life that is very inconsistent, for practically it has very little to do with life, it is an inclination to altruism, to do good, to do better service. The child may be very inconsistent and seemingly indifferent to religion. You say, "Oh, that child is not fit for Confirmation." Yet, it is undoubtedly the leading of the Spirit. It is undoubtedly the time when the iron is white-hot. Now remember that the iron does not become white-hot because you are going to mold it. It becomes white-hot because it is in the fire. So it is with conversion. This storm and stress period, this upheaval, this grace, does not come properly from a religious motive. It comes from a physiological and psychological one, as we have said before. It is the time when the iron is white hot, when the child is moldable, when the instinct of religiosity can be reached and touched. It

is the time to strike for God. The change of life and conduct will follow after, not come before.

We have often asked, "How can you expect a child to be good until you have given him God's power in Holy Baptism and Confirmation?" How can you expect him to be good any more than you can expect a sick person to walk without strengthening his muscles? If one has lain in bed for a month, he can readily say: "I cannot walk." No, nor would he ever be able to walk until he got up and practised.

This period may last two weeks, two months, possibly a year, but is more likely to be very short than at all long. The iron does not stay white long. Then there is a sudden drop of indifference. Then somewhere between seventeen and nineteen there is a second rise in the Curve, not so high as before, nor so sharp and strong; but longer and broader-that is, extending over a greater period. This is a second chance to reach the child. Not being so sharp, it may be overlooked; whereas it would take a blind man to overlook the first curve. The drop occurs again, and somewhere between thirty and thirty-three there is a last rise, not so high as the second time, and about the same length, but if the man has not been reached then, where is he? He is in the home, sleeping late on Sunday mornings, or reading the Sunday newspaper, or perchance playing golf or riding the automobile. He is usually not in a place where he can be reached. And the woman, where is she? In the home, occupied by home duties, in society with its distractions; but by a beautiful coincidence, it often happens that the woman, marrying young, has her little child, now in the first period at twelve or thirteen. This child is reached, and "a little child shall lead them" is shown by mother and child coming hand in hand to God's altar. Scarcely well is it to run the risk of waiting for this last period, however, for the Y. M. C. A. figures show that only five per cent. are reached after the age of twenty-one.

During this period of adolescence the child now passes out of the stage where the whole family or the entire race is initiated into a religion because of the belief of the chief or leader. He no longer speaks of "our church," or "our" position whatever it may be, in the impersonal way so customary a year or two earlier. He forms his own views. He is a Christian because

he personally embraces Christianity. He must stand on his own feet. This is the natural and appropriate time to put the question, "Do you believe?" It is the natural and appropriate time for the personal assumption of the vows made for one in baptism, or for otherwise uniting with the Church.

Only two points in this connection can be touched upon here. The first is an eagerness for service. The young person is now ready, not only to follow a leader, but to fight for and champion

a cause.

If, on the other hand, the scholar arrives at the period for grasping a specific truth and does not find that truth, if he is ready for a new stage of spiritual development and is still fed only on thought suitable for earlier stages, his spiritual development is in danger of being impoverished or even permanently arrested.

Dr. O'Shea, referring to the religious phase of adolescence, says: "Adolescent religious instruction should relate more to action, to doing, than to speculation. What the boy particularly should hear in the Sunday School should have reference mainly to worthy tasks to be undertaken in the world, great deeds to be done. But, not realizing the nature of the adolescent boy, teachers have presented religion as the source of peace and rest, rather than as the armor with which hard battles are to be fought, and in the course of events the young man drifts away from the Sunday School because there is more in the world outside that appeals to his love of action, of daring, of bravery, and of enterprise."

"Another curious fact," writes Forbush, "about the maturing life is that it comes on in waves. Between these are Lulls. These lulls were called to my attention by some heads of reformatories before I read about them. What is the explanation? If you chart out all these rhythms, physical, mental, social, and moral, you will find that they closely correspond. Their explanation is largely physical. When physical growth and energy are near their flood-tide, the other friendly energies respond likewise, but during these reaction times which the good God gives so that the child's body may gather power to grow again, all the other energies hibernate. This law of rhythms probably acts to a lesser degree all through life. It is not confined to

adolescence. Middle-aged people have testified to having regular fluctuations of religious interest once in two years; others, during successive winters. Some of these cases are explainable, some are obscure. The tendency of nervous energy to expend and then recuperate itself; the fact of a yearly rhythm in growth, greatest in the autumn and least from April to July, pointed out by Malling-Hansen; the influence of winter quiet and leisure upon religious feeling-these are suggestive. In boyhood it is probable that the first lull is a reaction from the shock of the pubertal change, the second a reaction from the year of greatest physical growth, and the third a reaction from the year of doubt and re-creation. The boy, then, who suddenly loses his interest in religion or work or ideals is not to be thought in a desperate condition, and somebody ought to tell him that he is not. There is nothing to do but wait for this condition, which is natural and helpful to over-wrought energies, to pass, as it surely will."

Professor See summarizes the results: "The history of national and ecclesiastical customs, as well as the result of scientific investigations, point to the period between twelve and sixteen as one of critical religious importance. We are told that it has been a world-wide custom to celebrate the advent of adolescence with feasts, ceremonies, and mystic rites. This is the age of confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, the Episcopal Church in America, the Lutheran and other churches."

When, therefore, Dr. Stanley Hall speaks of conversion as "a natural regeneration" and "a physiological second birth," and Dr. Starbuck calls it "a distinctively adolescent phenomenon," they are simply reducing this critical religious experience to the terms of physiology or psychology, but recognizing that in the orderly development of the life of the boy, according to the laws of God, the physiological and psychological changes which come to him at this period are part of a religious experience as well. As Dr. Coe says: "When the approaching change has heralded itself, the religious consciousness also tends to awaken. When the bodily life is in most rapid transition, the religious instincts likewise come into a new and greater life."

The So-called Gang Age. The use of this word "Gang" applied to boys is one of those singularly inconsistent lapses of

speech which do more harm in a single word than many labored chapters can correct. "Give a dog a bad name and hang it": Give defenceless and ingenuous boys at this age a class name that allies them with criminals and they will hardly thank you: nor will instructors who have any conception of auto-suggestion. The boys are going in gangs and the girls are going in cliques. The father suddenly awakens to the fact that his lad and he have grown apart. The peculiar self-centeredness and sensitiveness of this period are the cause of it. And yet the adolescent youth is yearning for sympathy. As we noted under the preceding period, they yearn to be loved, but they will not show it. Wise are the parents who keep in touch with their children now, who encourage confidences, who never scold or repel them, but who do advise and guide them; who get them to tell even of wrong doings and wild oats and shady actions, aiming all the while to guide and lead and help them. The child will form an attraction for one older and wiser than himself and when he respects and loves, will devotedly yield his life rather than be untrue. The best teacher now is an older woman, or man who remembers his own adolescent age. The unfortunate trouble with men at this time is that they do not remember it.

The extreme danger of following a harmful, wicked leader is obvious. "Leading straight" is a prerequisite of a friend. Only genuine sympathy on the part of a teacher can hold a class at this age. "The follies of youth," the lad's "conceit," the girl's "frivolity," become unbearable to any save one who can "understand."

Use this gang instinct in class organization. The gang instinct means two things-following the leader, and self-government. The day school recognizes it, and in New York we get the leader of the gang, with his gang, into the club, in the night school and from there to the educational classes below. Form every class in the Sunday School into the nearest approach to a gang, and give it a name. You cannot call it St. Philip's Gang, St. George's Gang, St. Bartholomew's Gang-that will scarcely do. Nor do the names "class" and "club" quite satisfy. A good plan is to call every girls' class a "Guild," and every boys' class a "League." Let them elect their own officers, but not the teacher as one. Let the teacher be merely the director, the