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
By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,
Who had no strength for the strife,
The world's highway is cumbered to-day;
They make up the item of life.
But the virtue that conquers passion,
And the sorrow that hides in a smile--
It is these that are worth the homage of earth,
For we find them but once in a while.
--ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
PREJUDICE.
I find but little difference between humanity in prison walls and the
humanity outside. Prisoners are our brothers and our sisters. We must
soon meet them all at the judgment. They are naturally supposed to be
guilty of crime of some kind. But they are not all criminals. Wicked
men, willing to shield themselves, oftentimes throw suspicion on
others, who are placed under arrest and convicted by circumstantial
evidence or false testimony. Others, of course, are of the worst types
of humanity. Some of them seem unworthy of the name of man or woman,
yet even these Christ died to save, and God is able to deliver them
and how shall His name be better glorified or His power be more
manifest, than in their transformation?
Very many are so prejudiced against all those who are counted as
criminals that they believe them to be utterly incapable of any good
and are quick to believe that they see in them evidences of the
deepest depravity.
A sad yet amusing illustration of this fact comes to my mind. Chaplain
H., of the Reformatory for Boys at Kearney, Nebraska, is an
honest-faced, true-hearted young man, full of zeal in the service of
God. At one time when I stopped at Kearney he called for me at the
train. As I looked at him he said, with a smile, "Did you think it was
one of the boys whom the superintendent had sent for you?" I replied,
"Yes; I did at first; you are so young, Mr. Chaplain;" and then he
related to me the following circumstances which I give as nearly as I
can in his own words:
"At one time Prof. Mallalieu and myself had been to Lincoln on
business, and were returning together. We were quietly resting,
and I was sitting with closed eyes, meditating, when a lady
happened along and recognized the Superintendent, and said 'Have
you got a boy there, taking him to the Reform Schools?'
"Considerably amused, he replied: 'Yes; this is a very bad
fellow; I have had a lot of trouble with him, and have just
recaptured him, and now I am watching to see that he doesn't make
his escape.' The woman leaned over and, scanning my face and
features, said: 'He has an awful bad look on his face; you can
see he is a criminal and needs to be under strict discipline.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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