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
I bless God, and will through all eternity, that the dear Lord ever
called me to work in the prisons as well as in other lines of
Christian work. There are many all over this land now serving God,
leading good, honest lives, a blessing to their country and an honor
to God's cause, who were found in prisons and slums, discouraged and
having given up all hope of ever being anything but miserable and
wretched. They are now serving the blessed Christ who came to seek and
to save that which was lost, and destroy the works of the devil, not
willing that any should perish, but rather that all should be saved. O
reader, many are the lives we might rescue from the ranks of the enemy
if we were more in earnest and lived in close touch with God, and more
under the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Once in a meeting I was attending, the minister in charge took another
young preacher by the hand, and said: "I want you to preach for us."
The one addressed came to the front of the platform and said: "Yes, I
will; but first I want to say I was once in an insane prison, an awful
place. No one will ever know all we had to suffer there. I was insane
through drink--no one could help me. I was sin-hardened and
hard-hearted, but this Mother (pointing to myself) came to our
criminal prison and sang and prayed and talked to us, and was kind to
us, and my heart was melted, and I wept--something I could not, would
not do until then. Her kindness won me, and I was saved, truly
sanctified, and I have been preaching the Gospel for four years."
A CASE OF CRUEL NEGLECT.
At the best, life in prison is hard. How much worse when cruelty and
neglect are added to the necessary restrictions that are placed upon
those in confinement. I knew of one young colored man in prison in the
south who was compelled to endure the winter weather without proper
clothing or covering. His one blanket was so short that his feet were
so badly frozen they had to be amputated. Think you that such things
as these do not cry to God for vengeance?
ANOTHER SUICIDE.
Well do I remember a promising young man, who, when I was preaching in
a prison in a southern state, began trembling and ran back into his
cell and called for an officer to bring me to him. I found that he was
quite weak from a bullet wound he had received in a drunken row in a
saloon, he having killed a man in the fight. He was a young man with
bright prospects before him, but bad company and a love for strong
drink had wrought his ruin. He told me of his uncle who was a
minister, a prominent evangelist. I was much surprised that a nephew
of so popular a minister should be in state's prison for such an awful
crime, crushed with shame and remorse. Could it be possible? His
mother was a rich lady.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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