Hence this problem of vocational guidance which is so agitating the educational world comes home to the minister in his work with youth.  It may be that he shall find new and practical use for the maligned doctrine of election and that he shall place under intelligent, and heavenly commission the ideals and hopes of later adolescence.  At any rate where the life career hinges, there the religious expert should be on hand.  For what profit is there in society’s vast investment in early and compulsory education if at the crucial time of initial experiment in the world’s work there be neither high resolve nor intelligent direction nor sympathetic coaching into efficiency?

But the importance of vocational choice does not turn upon the doubtful supposition that there is one and only one suitable task for a given youth.  Probably there are groups or families of activities within which the constructive endeavor may have happy and progressive expression.  Nor, from the minister’s point of view, is the economic aspect of the problem paramount.  It is true that an investment of $50,000 worth of working ability deserves study and wise placing and it is true that the sanction of public education is to return to the state a socially solvent citizen who will contribute to the common welfare and will more than pay his way; but the immediately religious importance of this commanding interest consists in the honest and voluntary request for counsel on the part of the youth himself.

Fortunately in the very midst of a reticent and often skeptical period there comes, through the awakened vocational interest, an inlet into the soul of youth.  No religious inquisitor or evangelistic brigand could have forced an entrance, but lo, all at once the doors are opened from within and examination is invited.  It is invited because the boy wishes to know what manner of person he is and for what pursuit he is or may be fitted.  When once this issue is on and one is honored as counselor and friend, the moral honesty and eagerness of youth, the thoroughgoing confession on all the personal and moral phases of the problem in hand are enough to move and humble the heart of any pastor.  Such conference solemnizes and reassures the worker with boys, while to have spent no time as an invited and reverent guest within this sacred precinct is to fail of a priesthood that is profoundly beautiful.

Several experiences with both individuals and groups are fresh in mind at this writing.  On one occasion a guild of working boys in later adolescence were living together in a church fraternity house, and it was their custom on one evening of each week to have some prominent man as guest at dinner and to hear an informal address from him after the meal.  It chanced that on the list of guests there was, in addition to the mayor of their city and a well-known bishop of the Episcopal church, the manager of one of the greatest automobile factories in America.  On the occasion on which this captain of industry spoke, he told in simple fashion his own experience in search of a vocation.