Prisons and Prayer; Or, a Labor of LoveWheaton, Elizabeth Ryder
Religion
Prisons and Prayer; Or, a Labor of Love
Wheaton, Elizabeth Ryder
Evangelistic work; Prisons
God knows how much your letters cheer me and brighten the prison
gloom. After twenty years of infidelity, with all its direful
train of evils, leading on from bad to worse, the prison gate
threw its protective barrier between society and one who had
become almost a devil in human form, thus showing that a just God
had taken account of my iniquitous course and had said, "Thus far
and no farther." Then followed four years of hopeless misery,
borne with the sullen stolidity of despair, while in thought,
intent and purpose I sank lower and lower into the horrible
cesspool of criminality, and farther and farther away from God.
Then, in His infinite mercy, He sent you with the message of
salvation, which He crowned with His invincible power of
conviction and a realization of my lost and hopeless condition.
My prayers shall ever be with you, dear sister, and if I might
send a message by you to all the prisoners from the pine-shadowed
shores of Maine to the far Alaskan mountains it would be this:
"Ye captives, look aloft to the Star of Bethlehem, and whatever
betide, do not fail to grasp the hand stretched out to you from
Calvary." Hoping to hear from you soon and praying God to ever
bless you I remain,
Yours for God and humanity,
G. H. COLGROVE.
* * * * *
Waupun, Wis., Sept. 4, 1892.
My Dear Mother:
How many, many times I have thanked our kind Father above and
praised His Holy Name for sending you to our prison gate on that
November night in 1888. Three years and ten months ago today the
radiant light of Calvary, fresh from the throne of the Infinite,
came, through your ministrations, down into the dark recesses of
my sin-burdened heart and crime-laden soul, while mingled with
the music of the sweet hymn you and your companion were singing
the heavenly strains of an angelic accompaniment so entrancingly
and irresistibly soothing and lovely that my hardened heart
melted like frost before the noonday sun.
Can you believe that I stayed to that after-meeting when every
nerve in my body thrilled to get up and run out of the chapel?
Yes, I desired to flee; yet an irresistible power restrained me.
I know now it was Satan urging me to flee away from there; for
he, of course, readily understood that he was in danger of losing
an active member from his minions of evil. But thanks be unto
Jehovah, who ruleth over all, Satan failed. God and His servant
held the field and a soul was redeemed from death. Glory to God
forever and ever. Amen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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