142 County Young Men's Christian Association 



can finally achieve a degree of spiritual development 

 that may prove a permanent and fixed part of his 

 adult life. Yes, there will be some Bible study, an 

 occasional short prayer, and now and then a real 

 sermonette in connection with the work of the or- 

 ganization, but much more frequently the Christian 

 life and character will come as a sort of discovery in 

 the boy's life and that through his own conduct. 



Through all this wholesome exercise of his better 

 and cleaner interests, the youth will gradually be 

 led away and kept away from those things which 

 contaminate both the body and the spirit and intro- 

 duce the individual to a coarse, debauched life. In 

 other words, Christianity will be a thing achieved and 

 that through the young man's efforts rather than a 

 thing instantly caught in some emotional revival 

 meeting only gradually to waste away in the months 

 immediately following. One well-built specimen of 

 Christian manhood a character of the sort which 

 the ideal work of the County Y.M.C.A. may finally 

 construct is worth a dozen of those suddenly con- 

 verted men whose secret lives are so often embittered 

 with the consciousness of backsliding and following 

 ever after the old evil ways. 



It will be observed at a glance that in the foregoing 

 outline there is an avoidance of the heavier workaday 

 tasks and problems. It is the thought of the author 

 that the boys have quite enough of such labor as it is 

 and that the County Y.M.C.A. can do its best serv- 



