Twice-born Men in America - or The Psychology of Conversion as Seen by a Christian

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Title: Twice-born Men in America - or The Psychology of Conversion as Seen by a Christian - Psychologist in Rescue Mission Work
Author: Monroe, Harriet Earhart
Language: English
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Twice-Born Men in America
The Psychology of Conversion as Seen by a Christian Psychologist in
Rescue Mission Work

HARRIET EARHART MONROE

ALSO AUTHOR OF “CONVERSATION AS A SCIENCE AND AN ART,” “HEROINE OF THE
MINING CAMP,” “HISTORICAL LUTHERANISM,” “THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS,”
AND “WASHINGTON—ITS SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS”

PHILADELPHIA, PA.:

THE LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY

PREFACE

I taught psychology for fifteen years at the Atchison Institute, the
predecessor of Midland College, located at Atchison, Kan. I was there
greatly impressed by the fact that the books gave no adequate analysis
of the psychology of the greatest mental and moral change which can come
to the human mind, namely, conversion and regeneration; yet these
changes make the great difference which we see between men and nations.

A Rescue Mission gives a great opportunity to study mental and moral
changes, and my observations and conclusions, made from years of study,
are herein embodied.

This book is sent forth with the earnest hope and prayer that it will
lead many souls to Christ; also that it will show earnest laymen just
how to bring about that psychological change which we call conversion. A
Sunday school teacher who brings only ninety per cent of her students
through the process of conversion and regeneration is ninety per cent a
success and ten per cent failure. The same is true of a pastor with a
class of catechumens.

“Ye must be born again,” is just as true to-day as it ever was, and if
we believed it as Paul believed it, what live wires we would be.

This book is to remind us that Jesus saves to the uttermost in our day,
just as He did when He visibly walked this earth.

HARRIET E. MONROE,
204 A Street, S. E., Washington, D. C.

JULY 29, 1914.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

HOW I HAPPENED TO BECOME INTERESTED IN RESCUE MISSION WORK 7

CHAPTER II

RESCUE MISSION WORK 22

CHAPTER III

INCIDENTS SHOWING THE POWER OF GOD TO SAVE 29

CHAPTER IV

AN ELEMENT OF HUMOR IN RESCUE WORK 36

CHAPTER V

BIG FEET 44

CHAPTER VI

HOW WE GOT A NEW MISSION BUILDING 49

CHAPTER VII

VARIETIES OF WORK IN A GOSPEL MISSION 59

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEED OF RESCUE WORK 69

CHAPTER IX

THE PENNY LUNCH AND FREE DISPENSARY 82

CHAPTER X

THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL 94

CHAPTER XI

HEREDITARY SIN 107

Twice-Born Men in America

CHAPTER I
HOW I HAPPENED TO BECOME INTERESTED IN RESCUE MISSION WORK

In January, 1908, a great calamity came to me in the form of destruction
by fire of most of my earthly property and the death in the fire of a
loved sister. The event had in it some other elements of great pain not
necessary to mention here. If my soul had not been anchored in Jesus,
the combination of sorrows would have broken down my mentality and sent
me to the asylum. As it was, I stood steadily trusting God, knowing that
all things worked together for good to those who love God. I was sure I
was a lover of God, and so, while every fiber of my body and soul ached
with unspeakable pain, I never doubted God's love, care and sympathy.

In the midst of this grief I received a letter from Mr. George W.
Wheeler, the President of the Executive Board of the Gospel Mission,
saying about this, “Come down to the Gospel Mission, look it over and
see if you care to come in with us in the work of saving souls. Unless
we secure a woman of large executive ability, our work can scarcely go
forward.”

I answered that I would be glad to join them, and the next week, the
first week of September, 1908, I received a letter from the Secretary,
S. M. Croft, saying I had been elected to the Executive Board of the
Gospel Mission, which met once every week.

The following Monday I met with the Board, where I heard a letter from
Mr. Tyson, saying that he withdrew from the Board because the
dormitories were badly kept. Then followed a letter of the same kind
from a Mr. Fritz, and another from Mr. Sidell. As soon as the session,
which was largely a prayer service, was closed, Mr. Wheeler accompanied
me to look over the dormitories.

I never saw or dreamed of such conditions. The very walls were alive
with vermin. In the story above the chapel were fifteen vile beds, and
on the third story above us we saw a floor covered with dirty, wrinkled
newspapers. I said, “Where do the men sleep?” “On the beds you saw in
the third floor and on these newspapers.”

In my heart I said, “Dear Lord, surely not here, amid this vileness?”
The answer was as sharp and distinct as though spoken through a trumpet,
“Prepare ye the way of the Lord.”

“Mr. Wheeler,” I said, “I see conditions, and I take charge.” He left
for his work in the United States Treasury, and I went to the street and
hired a force of cleaners, whitewash men, scrubbers, sweepers, etc., and
called up Mrs. Claude Myers, the wife of a Presbyterian minister, and
two other fully consecrated women who were not afraid of work. I asked
them to come at once and bring with them buckets, scrub brushes, rags,
soap, etc., while I put in a supply of chemicals for the vermin.

Those women helped to burn the bedding and to send away some as trash.
They helped me clean the beds; the whitewashers even entered into the
spirit of it, and every crack was filled with plaster of paris; they
went over the walls three times with lime and carbolic acid. The Health
Bureau in the Municipal Building gave me a preparation used on floors in
jails and in hospitals for contagious diseases. Some redeemed men came
to our help, and by Saturday night we turned over a clean house.

Every one of us cleaners was obliged to go to the Turkish bath and have
our clothing brushed and fumigated before we could go to our own homes.

On Saturday evening I told Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Gordon that besides the
good men and women who had helped us for the cause for five days, we had
spent twenty-five dollars. Never will I forget the dismay of those two
good men. “What! Twenty-five dollars! Where do you think we will get
that?” I answered, “Fortunately I belong to a church that lives and
works by faith, and to-morrow, being Sunday, I shall tell the Sunday
school of the Luther Memorial Church, and we'll see about that
twenty-five dollars.”

The next morning I went to the pastor, Rev. J. G. Butler, D.D., and he
secured permission from the superintendent of the Sunday school for me
to speak three minutes. The superintendent hated innovations, but I can
say a lot in three minutes, especially when I state the needs of the
lost men of the community. After the school was dismissed nearly every
teacher and grown student gave me something, and in less than five
minutes I had twenty-seven dollars.

Sunday night I told what the Lord had done for us, and I began to ask
all persons present to contribute sheets and pillow-cases. I did this so
much and so often that season that a little four-year-old girl of Mrs.
Claude Myers upset the gravity of an entire meeting by saying out loud
one Sunday evening, “There comes Mrs. Sheets and Pillow-cases again.”
Well, before winter was over we had about fifty clean, well-equipped
beds for which, when they had it, men gladly paid ten cents per night.
If they did not have it, the beds were given as long as they lasted;
but, after the beds were filled, often fifty men slept on the floor with
only the boards under them and no covers.

We had no heat in the dormitories, but one day Mrs. Richard Butler, a
wealthy woman of the city, was ordered by the Spirit to visit the
Mission. She came by Mr. Gordon's office in her carriage and he took her
through our building. She saw our first need was heat. She sent
immediately to a hardware store and ordered a large stove for the third
floor with a drum for the fourth story, and through her kindness the men
were given heat, but not until after two deaths, caused by cold, hunger
and wet clothing, had about broken our hearts.

I remember a young, fair-haired man from Virginia, evidently well born
and bred, coming in one night, slightly under the influence of liquor.
It was a rainy, snowy night; his clothing was wet and he was suffering
from a severe cold. When the meeting was over he started to go up
stairs, which had nearly a zero temperature. I begged him to stay by the
fire and sleep on a bench, if needed, but he petulantly refused. He was
dead by nine o'clock next morning. I had wept all the way home, for I
feared just what happened.

Mrs. Butler's stove put an end to that. She furnished coal for the
entire winter.

Now that we had beds and heat, I saw we could not keep the beds clean
without bathing facilities. So at our next Board meeting I said,
“Brethren, we need a good shower-bath with warm and cold water so that
men soiled and weary can have the comfort of a warm bath.” All the
members of the Board demurred on account of the expense. Then I said,
“Brethren, if I make myself responsible for the eighty-five dollars
needed and you are in no way held for it, may I have the bath put in at
once?” Of course, they wanted the bath, as they saw how much it was
needed, and gave cordial consent. I purchased a rubber stamp, and on the
outside of our first circulars which we issued I stamped the words, “I
have made myself personally responsible for the cost of a shower-bath.
Help a little.” And with my own contributions the bath was paid for as
per contract.

That fall we put out a circular folder, of which the following is the
open letter, and is introduced only to give the continuity of this work
so that my friends may know the aim, object and history of the Mission
from the beginning:

GOSPEL MISSION,
1230 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, N. W.
WASHINGTON, D. C.

DEAR FRIEND:

Under the blessing of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a
Rescue Mission has been opened at No. 1230 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.
W., where nightly gospel services will be conducted and the Lord
Christ held up to view as a Saviour “mighty to save and strong to
deliver.”

Our corps of workers is composed of consecrated and Spirit-filled
men and women, many of whom have had long experience in efforts of
this character. On the occasion of the opening service (Saturday
evening, May 12) God set His seal to the work by drawing seven
earnest seekers to our altar for prayer.

Street meetings will be held nightly, and an earnest and aggressive
work carried forward for the betterment of society and the salvation
of lost men and women.

Our hall is well located on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue,
N. W., in the midst of saloons and pool-rooms and in close proximity
to that section of the city almost wholly given up to evil, and it
will be the constant effort of the Mission and its workers to seek
out and rescue the erring girls and reckless men who are found in
large numbers in this immediate neighborhood.

The management is determined that the expenses of this work shall be
kept at the minimum figures—not exceeding $100 per month—and they
confidently appeal to their Christian brethren and friends and to
the public for such funds as shall be found necessary to carry
forward this work. Can you, will you, aid us?

With great respect,
G. W. WHEELER, _Chairman_,
J. S. MEWSHAW, _Secretary_,
H. D. GORDON, _Treasurer_,
_Executive Committee_.

These good men are at this writing (1913) yet connected with the work.
Mr. Mewshaw is an employee of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and has charge
of a station some distance from Washington, but contributes and comes
with us occasionally. But no organization was ever more fortunate than
the Gospel Mission in its officers.

TREASURER, MR. H. D. GORDON

is a prominent lawyer of the city. He really gives more time to the
Mission than his business can afford. When we are under strain to make a
payment on the building, he and Mr. Wheeler can go to their friends and
raise $1000 more readily than the remainder of the Board can raise $100.
They ask largely of their friends. The others of us ask for one dollar
monthly contributions, and we each receive as we ask. Mr. Gordon's
devotion cannot better be illustrated than by the following: Mr. Gordon
is a most effective singer. I have heard many singing evangelists, but
none with a finer pathos of voice than Mr. Gordon's. One evening in the
fall of 1909, when each evening we were privileged to hold our outdoor
meetings in front of the city post-office, I was passing on the street
car when I saw Mr. Gordon with his guitar standing all alone, trying to
sing salvation to some passing sinners. I found the tears coursing down
my cheeks, so I got off at the next corner and went back to help him,
but by that time other workers were on hand and it was less sacrifice
for me to speak for him. I acknowledge here a mean pride (which the Lord
has had to thrash out of me with many hard knocks) against speaking on
the street. I have had to remember many times that Jesus was an outdoor
preacher all His days, and all the Apostles, and who am I that I am
ashamed to follow where He has led! But Brother Gordon can stand alone
anywhere for Christ. He is greatly in demand in other cities as a
successful evangelist.

I want to here bear testimony to the great good done by outdoor
meetings. If all evangelical churches who believe in conversion and
regeneration would hold their meetings outdoors in the summer, they
would bring many souls, for which they will be held responsible, to
Christ. If young people would hold alley meetings in the alley nearest
their church they would bring sinners to Christ, there would be no slums
and the young Christians would grow in grace.

PRESIDENT, GEORGE W. WHEELER

President, George W. Wheeler, of the Executive Board, is one of God's
best gifts to the city of Washington. He is the very best City Rescue
Mission worker I have ever seen, and I have seen most of the city
missions of the United States and Europe. In the summer of 1910, in
company with Mrs. M. P. Spindle, I visited all the great cities of
Europe, especially Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Paris, Berlin and Rome,
to obtain suggestions for improving our work, as we thought, at that
time, to plan for erecting a great mission building unequaled in all the
world. Most mission buildings are mere adaptations of old buildings. We
hoped to do better, but God ordered otherwise. Among all these great
mission workers I have seen none superior to George W. Wheeler in Rescue
Mission work and in conducting an interdenominational organized work for
God. First, his consecration is marvelous. He had been thirty or more
years in government service, to lose time means not only loss of money,
but even endangers a man's tenure of office.

But when Mr. Wheeler is called to see a soldier, a sailor, a sick man in
the hospital, who must be seen in business hours, he never, as all other
government members of the Board do, pleads loss of any kind, but goes at
once on the errand of love and mercy. Then he gets on well with his
Board of Directors; if debate runs high and a measure is carried without
his favor, he holds no grudge, he is universally kind. That means much.
Then his acquaintance is so large he can secure good talent for helpers
in every line; he has the absolute confidence of the community (which he
richly deserves), and by the blessing of God secures funds for our great
work; and, best of all, he leads many souls to Christ. He has probably
seen more souls born into the kingdom of God than any other living
rescue worker.

(Mr. Wheeler died January 19, 1914. “He buries the workers, but the work
goes on.”)

MRS. M. P. SPINDLE

is a Christian woman whom I found connected with the Mission when I went
there. My attention was first attracted toward her by her liberality
when I made the calls for bedding, so now I borrowed $85 from her and
put in the bath. She was kind enough to let me pay it back in driblets,
and from that day to this she has given more money than any other
worker. She has loaned or given the money to go forward in each venture
of mine, and, above all, I have had the benefit of her counsel and her
favor in every form, and together we have prayed through many an
obstruction which seemed an impassable barrier.

THE FUMIGATOR

No sooner did we get the bath in place than I saw the necessity for a
fumigator, not only that men should have their clothing purified from
disease and from vermin, but for the sake of the beds. I found that they
could not be kept clean without the men bathed and had their clothing
fumigated.

The Board again did not feel able to put in the fumigator, which cost
$125. In this work I found a friend in Mr. Ernest Gichner, who invented
a sheet-iron room with suitable fire-box and chimneys, which he anchored
on the roof of the building.

It did good service and added to the comfort of the men and the
cleanliness of the house, not only while there, but later he moved it
over to our new building. Mr. Gichner permitted me to make payments in
installments of $25, which I was able to collect mostly from my friends
in the Luther Memorial Church and the Mission workers themselves, who
are always liberal even beyond their means.

ENLARGEMENT

I became Chairman of the House Committee in September, 1908, and the
following December Mr. H. W. Kline was made Superintendent. As soon as
we had nice beds to offer for ten cents a night, we had a steadily
increased patronage, so that by the fall of 1909 we were obliged to rent
a large room back of us. That winter we had eighty-four beds filled
nearly every night.

A friend in California sent me $25 as a Christmas present, and I put
white spreads on the twenty-five best beds. Some members of the Board
laughed at me so much that I was obliged to remind them that the money
of the Mission was not used. Long ago they have come to see that a white
bed is a necessity if we are to keep a clean house.

By October, 1909, our expenses for rent, fuel and necessities had
increased from $100 to $150 each month.

Our statistics for 1908, as shown by our circular, were as follows:

_Statistics of the year and of the last quarter—From January, 1908, to
January, 1909_

_Statistics of three months of 1908, as follows_:

Attendance Req. for Prayer Seekers Conversions Services

Dec. 1908 1961 165 86 14 41
Jan. 1909 2487 217 73 37 46
Feb. 1909 1245 51 34 13 28
———— ——— ——— —— ———
Total 5693 433 193 64 115

(Now we care for over 50,000 persons a year.)

During the year employment was found for probably 300 men.

We accept it as a great privilege to have presented the gospel of Jesus
Christ to this number of people.

Our little circular of that period thus sets forth:

THE NEED OF RESCUE WORK

“Washington is a dreadful place for a man out of work. The city having
no manufactories, and all rough work, such as excavating, is let by
contract to men who prefer Italians or Negroes as diggers, while stores
and offices have room for only the efficient young person, so that, when
from age, inefficiency or lack of political influence, people are
dropped from the government service, we are often at our wit's end to
provide means of subsistence for these worthy persons most anxious to
labor. We have some old men whose working days are over. These are for
the most part good men, for the wicked do not live out half their days.
A few immigrants from northern Europe, sick men who are able to walk
about, but could not work if they had it; the shoestring man, the
umbrella man, the sandwich man, the men who are half insane for lack of
food and enforced lack of sleep, for they have no place to sleep oftener
than once a week. Then we have the criminal classes, which must be
touched with the Spirit of God, or they will become the dynamite which
will destroy our cities, also the men just out of prison. These are the
special thought of the Mission, for unless they are made to feel that
they are but temporarily sidetracked from the great highway of success,
they will become an ever-increasing menace to society.

“Above all, we have the drunkard, who has lost his grip, lost family,
lost place in society, lost business and has become a mass of putrid
flesh, utterly abhorrent to his fellow-men. When we look at these
people, whose weary eyes have looked long into unspeakable sorrow, our
very souls rejoice that we have proven beyond possibility of doubt that
'the blood of Jesus Christ, His son, cleanses from all sin; that if we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness,' for we have seen some of every
class mentioned redeemed, placed back in society, among the producing
power of the nation.”

“OUR GOSPEL MISSION TIDINGS”

(a monthly paper) was issued first in October, 1909. All members of the
Executive Committee have helped in some measure on it, but the
responsibility has fallen heaviest on Mr. G. W. Wheeler and myself. Our
entire income is the result of our paper, it is our means of
communicating with the public.

THE INDUSTRIAL PLANT

was really brought about by two tragedies. One cold day I went to the
Mission, and on the outside I saw a man, whom I shall call Kelly,
shivering at the door. He looked like death, pale, trembling, the lips
and nostrils drawn as if in extreme pain. “What is the matter, Kelly?” I
said. “I am starving to death; amid all these happy people I am left
out. I have walked the streets hunting work till I can walk no more.”

At that time we did not provide food of any kind, but I said, “Let us go
up stairs to the Mission,” where Mr. Proctor, then acting as
Superintendent, provided bread and coffee. I set the man to
re-whitewashing the dormitories, and we kept him till he secured work.

The other was the case of a young man just released from Moundsville
Penitentiary. After I had given the lesson one Tuesday night, I was led
to tell in detail the story of Valentine Burke, a man converted in the
St. Louis jail, from reading one of Mr. Moody's sermons in a city
newspaper. Mr. Burke afterward became a valuable citizen, held the
position of assistant warden, and led hundreds of lost men into the
clear light of the gospel. When I had finished, a well-dressed man on
the front seat said, “I am just out of Moundsville; no one has spoken a
kind word to me, I have had nothing to eat to-day, I see no way but to
steal again.” He was only about twenty-two years of age. I put my arm
over his shoulder and said, “Son, we will take care of you and get you
work.” The Superintendent took him up stairs, gave him bread and coffee,
then a warm bath, but he was so weary the men had to help him to get to
bed. We all tried to get that boy work, but as soon as the word
penitentiary was mentioned every door was closed. I remember walking up
Capitol Hill, crying aloud to God, “Give us an industrial plant or the
sorrows of homeless, workless men will take my life.”

I paid for the food for a week. He tried also to obtain work, but I
think the sight of my anxious face worried him—I have learned not to
carry sorrow in my face since then. That boy slipped through our fingers
and went back to crime. Now, at whose hands will that soul, anxious for
better things, be required?

Before I went for my summer vacation I urged before the Board an
industrial plant. Mr. Kline strenuously objected. During that vacation I
laid the matter very fully before God in prayer and felt constrained to
urge the starting of an industrial work.

At our first meeting in September Mr. Kline said, “Brethren, I have come
to see the need of an industrial plant, not only so that men can earn
lodging, but where, after conversion, we can keep a man a few days to
teach him the way of life.” A Mission worker often prays himself into
light.

Again I was forced to borrow money with which to purchase a horse and
wagon. Mrs. Spindle loaned me the $150 needed. That fall my little book,
called “The Life of Gustavus Adolphus,” published by The Lutheran
Publication Society, Philadelphia, came out. The house gave me $25 in
cash, if I remember correctly, and 100 copies of the book, which I sold
at 40 cents a copy. So I gave the $65 of my own on the horse and wagon
in paying back Mrs. Spindle for the loan.

In some way we also secured a paper baler, thus we gave two men work in
collecting books, newspapers, etc., and two men at the baler. In the
November _Gospel Tidings_ we announced that the wagon from the Gospel
Mission would call on the first and fifteenth of the month, and would
accept papers, rags, clothes, bottles, etc., saying, “We have old men
who separate these things and label and bale this material.” The money
was used to feed and care for these unfortunates.

The city people responded most generously, and in this way our
industrial branch was started, and greatly benefited the Mission for two
and a half years.

Later we obtained a wood-saw run by a gasoline engine, and we started
the penny bundling industry, where we could use eight or ten men and
make the double purpose of work for unfortunate men and yet make the
industry self-supporting.

When the United States granted wood pulp to be brought into the country
free of duty, our paper industry was destroyed, as we could not sell the
paper, and the government took our woodyard and killed our wood
industry, but they both did much good in their day.

The Gospel Mission in the fall of 1914 will again open a laundry, wood
cutting, rope-making, printing, and chair caning in the line of
industries for men who will gladly work rather than eat the bread of
charity.

CHAPTER II
RESCUE MISSION WORK

When I was called to assist in the Gospel Mission, I was not a novice in
rescue work, having been among the workers of the Sunday Breakfast
Association in Philadelphia, Pa., for twelve years under the direction
of Mr. Lewis Bean, probably one of the ablest mission workers of this or
any other country. The Sunday Breakfast is, so far as I know, the
largest Rescue Mission of this country.

HOW GOD CALLED ME

When I moved from Washington to Philadelphia, I found myself very
lonely. I had been President of a Collegiate Institute at Atchison,
Kan., from 1870 to 1885, when, because of failure of health, I came
East, and took up literary work. At Washington, where I lived from 1885
to 1888, I soon came in contact with literary people, and belonged to
both literary and scientific clubs, some of whose members are to this
day strong personal friends. But in the twelve years in Philadelphia I
never became much acquainted with university people, authors' clubs,
Browning or Shakespeare clubs, although I knew they were all there. God
had to break me loose from too great devotion to that side of life in
order to use me for more spiritual work.

One evening, in the summer of 1888, I came along Arch Street where, in a
basement room at Broad and Arch, some women were holding a prayer
service. I entered and joined with them. Three poor, ragged, soiled men
were converted. I saw the women were even more inexperienced with the
phenomena of sudden conversions than I was. So I stepped forward and
pledged the converts to a Christian life. Then I appealed to the good
men present to see that the converts had a good meal that night, and
asked for work for them. Good men at once promised both.

When the meeting was dismissed a gentleman came to me and said, “We need
you at the Sunday Breakfast Association to speak next Sunday night. We
shall have over 1000 men present, all needing to find God. You are one
of the women who can speak without any of the Little Johnny death-bed
scenes, and we need you.” I replied, “If you asked me to talk on
Dickens, Shakespeare, or any literary character, I could easily do it,
but to win souls to Christ, I am not at all sure I could do it.” He did
not argue, he simply said, “I give you your opportunity.” That startled
me, and I said, “I will try.”

So the next Sunday evening at the Breakfast Association I made my first
talk before an audience largely of the submerged tenth. The galleries
and the platform were filled with well-dressed people, and, instead of
trying to save some soul, I tried to make a fine speech. My rhetoric was
perfect, my periods nicely rounded, my illustrations pertinent, and I
sat down pretty well satisfied with my fine self. Mr. Bean saw what I
had done, so he shook a few grains out of all the chaff I had given
them, made the application, and let me down as easily as he could.

But while I sat there God's Spirit dealt with me. “What if a mother of
one of these lost men had had your opportunity,” said God's Spirit,
“would she have talked platitudes to the galleries and the platform?
Would she? Would she?” I saw my sin. As I fled from the house I nearly
cried aloud in my shamefaced grief. When I got to my room I went to my
knees and I cried to God my deep shame, “Dear Father, I have sinned. I
know now that is not my work. My business is to instruct the intellect.
I will leave the winning of souls to preachers and mothers. Help me to
bear the testimony of a well-ordered Christian life, speaking for you in
my own social set, but I am not equal to facing those who have looked
long into the eyes of sin and suffering and sorrow, and are uncomforted
with a knowledge of Thy grace.”

So I felt I had disposed of that, and determined to keep to literature
forevermore. The next day the card of a woman whom I had met in the
highest social circles of Washington was sent to my room. As I came down
through the hall I saw in front of the house her carriage with footman
and driver and team of Kentucky-bred horses. When I entered she broke
out in a sort of wail, “I hear you spoke at the Breakfast Association
last night.” “Yes, and made a great guy of myself. I do not expect to
ever go there again, except as a spectator. I fear I am more literary
than religious.”

I wish I could describe the next few minutes. Her face blazed. “You,
you!” she said; “why you had a father a minister, your mother a praying
woman, and you not to go there to speak to lost men, if you have the
opportunity! You have had everything which training can give, and you
refuse to reach a hand to lost men.”

“Well, what does that concern you?”

She sat down. The agony in her face became anguish. She turned white,
then red, then back to white, till I feared for her heart. “What does it
concern me! What! What! Well, I must tell you. I have a son who sits
down in that awful crowd!”

It was my turn now to be moved. “You?” I said, “why, you live in a white
marble palace, and can it be that your son is a homeless, friendless
man?”

“Yes,” she said, “I live in a white marble palace and I hate it from
turret to foundation stone, because my oldest son is not allowed under
its roof. He is a drunkard, and will steal everything he can lay his
hands on and sell it for drink, so that his father forbids me to see him
or to give him money. The last time I saw him he was shoveling coal into
a manhole; he looked the part.”

Here she tried to give me a large roll of money, as she said, “Take
this, and please go to the Breakfast Association and find my darling
boy.” “Madam, I am not authorized to take money for the Association. Dr.
Henderson is the Treasurer, do see him!” “I will not. Will know who you
are. I told him much of meeting you in Washington. I want you to take
this money and find and clothe my sorrowful son; and oh, say what I
would like to say if I could talk like you! Tell him when he sees a
light at the top of the house that his mother is in the attic praying
for him, and will you pray for me that I shall not die under this? Will
you pray for my son?”

Then we two kneeled and poured into the heart of a loving Saviour that
story of woe. How she wailed over her own frivolous life, and promised
her God a life for Him. Nearly all the persons referred to have died,
so, though the parties may be recognized in Philadelphia, it cannot now
harm anyone.

I took the money offered. The next Sunday evening I went to the
Association, and my face must have told the story, for when I said to
Mr. Bean, “I have a message,” he let me speak. I selected the words,
“Son, behold thy mother!” I told many incidents of heart-broken mothers
because of the sins of their sons, and then I told of Mrs. W., nearly in
the above language. Probably two hundred men requested prayer that
night, and I saw God could use me for other than literary work.

Mr. Bean said, “That man will not show up till the others have gone,” so
I sat down and waited.

When nearly everyone had left the room a poor, blear-eyed youth came to
the platform. He said, “Mrs. Monroe, I am Will W. Do give me some
money.” I said, “Will, do you intend to break your mother's heart? Do
you intend to keep on drinking?” “Now, see here, Mrs. Monroe, I have
honestly tried to quit.” Then, pushing up his sleeve, he showed me
scars. “There I have signed the pledge with my own blood, and I cannot
quit.” Howard McMasters, one of the Breakfast Association workers,
pointed the way to Christ far better than I could. Then he gave him
tickets where he could get lodging. I met him the next day at a Turkish
bath house. At first they refused to take him, and only by paying a high
price could I secure him a bath and proper barbering. I gave him a
complete outfit of clothes, and he looked very respectable. Mr.
McMasters put a good man on the case to talk with him, to read the New
Testament with him, to explain salvation and to help him find God, and
to keep at his side whenever possible.

My business took me out of town for several weeks; when I came back to
the city, I went, of course, the first Sunday evening to the Breakfast
Association. After the meeting was over Will W. came slouching up to the
platform as vile as when I first saw him. He had sold every article I
had given him for drink. This sorrowful experience was repeated about
five times, but as good is stronger than evil, the prayers of God's
people prevailed, and Mr. McMasters brought him forward to the altar and
God met him.

His mother's prayers, the word of God as shown by Howard McMasters and
that wonderful Divine Spirit made a clean work, and a soul was born to
God. We kept him as well guarded as we could. The smells of the street
troubled him, for that reason I went to his father's wholesale house on
Market Street. I had met Mr. W. with his wife in Washington, and he met
me cordially, till I said, “Mr. W., I have come to talk to you about
your oldest son.” He blazed at me, “Don't you dare to speak to me of my
oldest son. He has broken my heart, his mother's heart, and disgraced my
name. I will not permit even my wife to speak of him, much less a
friend.” “But he is converted, Mr. W. It will be different now.” “Oh! he
has a new dodge, has he?” “Mr. W., you must talk to me fairly about this
wrecked young life or refer me to someone who can act in your behalf.”
“Well, see his brother,” and a clerk showed me to the brother's
counting-room. He heard my story with sympathy. After stating the case,
I said, “I want you to put him on a truck farm down near Media, and get
him away from the smells of Philadelphia.” This was done, though it took
several weeks to bring it about.

The next Sunday night Will sat on the platform, and testified to the
power of God to save. When the meeting had closed, a handsome young
woman, wearing a costly tailor-made gown and with the stamp of the
patrician in every line of her dainty person, said to me, “Mrs. Monroe,
I am going to marry Will W. this week.” “Oh, my dear girl, do not risk
it till he has proved himself for two years! Do not risk it!” “You
believe he is converted, do you not?” “Why, yes; but we should see the
transforming power of the gospel before you risk your happiness.” “Will
needs me now to help him keep straight. You have not as much faith as
you ought to have yourself, or you would believe he will hold out.”

What more could I say? They were married. His mother was present at the
ceremony, and they went to the farm to live. Will was held by the power
of God, and, after much blundering, they made a fair success with a
truck farm.

CHAPTER III
INCIDENTS SHOWING THE POWER OF GOD TO SAVE

Among the many other impressive cases of the power of God to suddenly
change a human life from evil to good occurred at the Breakfast
Association in Philadelphia about the year 1898, and although fifteen
years have passed, every incident, every word is indelibly written on my
memory.

I was coming off the platform one evening when I met a large,
fierce-looking, scowling man, who looked as if he wanted to strike me. I
stopped at once. “Friend,” I said, “you are in trouble.” “What is that
to you and such as you?” “It is much to me. You look like an employer of
men, yet here you have been taking the bread and coffee of charity.”
“Well, I have been an employer of men, but now I cannot even get
employment. I have been behind bars; now what hope in life is there for
me?” “Many men who have been behind bars have afterward made good
citizens and even made fortunes. Let us go down to the Board room and
talk this out.”

As he went along growling that there was no hope for him, I motioned to
Mr. McMasters and another worker to come with us. When we were seated,
he said, “Now, all I want of you people is to help me get work so that I
do not wander like a stray dog through the streets of the city where I
was born. My wife and family have deserted me and I am a desperate man.”

“Yes,” I said, “brother, no woman could live with you as you are now,
one would as soon live with a wolf; your hand is against every man and
every man's hand is against you. But God can again make you an employer
of men. He can make you a good husband and father, but you must find God
first. Where is your mother?” I saw him shrink, and I knew then I had
the key. “My going to prison killed my mother. I had a mill in a suburb
of Philadelphia, and sometimes, after the day's work was done, I would
step into a saloon and take a glass of beer with my foreman. I was not
what you would call a drinking man. One evening we got into a dispute
about something concerning the mill, and I picked up a monkey wrench and
struck my foreman just one blow, but I killed him. All our property went
for lawyer fees, all to no purpose, for I was sent to prison for ten
years. I have just been pardoned,” and he drew the governor's pardon
from his pocket. “When I went to my home I found strangers in it, but at
last I found my wife and my children now nearly grown, but they would
not let me live with them.” I knew perfectly well from other experiences
that he had gone in violence and had been met with violence.

Mr. McMasters now took the case. He said, “If your mother were now
living, do you believe she would have received you?” “I am sure she
would. The warden often told us that our mothers would stay by us, that
children grew ashamed of a father in prison, wives persuaded themselves
that it only kept up their grief, but a mother's love is like that of
the God above, it remains. But mother died.”

“Well, you want to meet her again, do you not?” “Yes, but my mother was
a Christian.” “That is it; let us kneel and talk to your mother's God.”
Reluctantly, growling that God cared nothing for a poor devil like him,
he kneeled, and with the three of us kneeling about him, we each one
presented the case to God, calling on the “God whom this man's mother
loved and served, asking mercy for a broken life, a broken home and a
broken heart.” By the time the last one prayed his head was on the chair
and he was sobbing. Then he prayed for himself, and God came down and
the old alchemy of God turned the heart of stone to a heart of flesh,
and George Gneiss was born into the kingdom of God. It was not difficult
to get him a place as a skilled miller, and from that day to this he has
made good.

The transforming power of the gospel was plainly seen within a week in
his face, in his clothing, in his bearing at every meeting. After a few
Sundays I was called out of town for six weeks. When I came home, I went
to the Breakfast Association and there, from the gallery, Mr. Gneiss
looked down on me. At his side was a Quaker woman in the plain dress of
her Church, and with them was a manly boy of seventeen. After the
services, they all came to me (I motioned to others to come), and they
told us the story of their reunion. Tears stood in her eyes as she said,
“We have family prayers now, and we pray for you every day. God is
blessing us in every way. Pray for us.”

After that they came to see me, either at the Breakfast Association or
at my home, as often as three or four times a year as long as I remained
in Philadelphia.

THE GOSPEL MISSION

After telling about those two incidents connected with my small share of
rescue work in Philadelphia, it is time now to resume the story of our
Gospel Mission. It is only because we see souls converted almost every
night that makes it possible for us to bear the sight and the foul smell
of unclean bodies, of dead whisky and tobacco, and the revolting
drunkenness, then the remonstrances of one's own kindred and church
people are trying, unless God gave great recompense, first in one's own
enlarged spiritual life, in order to fit us for the work, and almost
daily gave us the joy of seeing souls converted, it would be an
impossible work.

CONVERSIONS AND REGENERATION

Conversion seems to me to be largely man's share in the greater fact of
regeneration, which is entirely God's work in a human soul.

At a Rescue Mission the theologian could get a new and practical
knowledge of the gospel he preaches; the professor of psychology sees
how spiritual powers, unseen to mortal eye, can grip the entire
machinery of the mind, and by a supernatural application of God's Spirit
and the word of God make a man over again.

Hundreds of times have I seen the alchemy of God make men who steal to
do God's service; feet that have been in the way of the transgressor to
walk in the paths of righteousness, and tongues accustomed to blaspheme
to sing God's praises.

Professor James defines conversion thus: “To be converted, to be
regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain
assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or
sudden, by which a self hitherto divided and consciously wrong, inferior
and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right, superior and happy,
in consequence of its firmer hold on religious realities.”

[Illustration: “REMEMBER ME”: HANDS UP FOR PRAYER]

_The first element in conversion is first an influence from the Holy
Spirit brought about by prayer._ Now, that prayer may have been sent up
years ago by a mother now dead, but is usually the result of a prayer
atmosphere in the meeting.

The Holy Spirit acts like a searchlight on the human soul, and the
sinner for an instant sees himself as God sees him. I have seen men rush
through the door, and, without taking a seat, come straight to the
altar, because God's Spirit had met them. That is not the usual way, and
it is usually some immediate message of His word, rendered in song or
spoken word to the sinner's heart, by which he catches a glimpse of his
lost condition.

Let no parent be discouraged concerning a wandering child. Delayed
answer to prayer is not a denial. I know a minister whom God greatly
uses who was a wild youth when his mother died, but God answered her
prayer. He will answer yours.

It is important who presents the sinner to God. A perfunctory church
member who plays cards, dances, tipples or smells of tobacco, cannot
acceptably bring a soul to God. God often accepts a soul without an
intermediary, but the wrong person keeps a soul from God. It makes a
difference. You remember Ezekiel 14:20, “Though Noah, Daniel and Job
were in it, they shall but deliver their own souls by their
righteousness,” showing that as we abide in Him, God answers prayers
accordingly. Then the word of God comes in. The helper tries to make the
seeker lay hold of the promises. I have seen many conversions on Romans
10:13, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved.” It comes like a wireless message from on high. It becomes
personal as the praying sinner cries to God, he believes he is heard, he
believes he is forgiven, he accepts the pardon and rises to his feet a
redeemed man. A supernatural power has come into his soul. Another verse
which brings men through is 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.”

The religion of Christ has two elements in it—a destructive element and
a constructive element. The destructive element is what we figuratively
call “the blood of Christ.” It not only pardons or washes away the past
sins, but it takes out of the soul lying, drinking, lust, laziness,
deceit, fraud of any kind, and with the constructive element it puts
into the soul honor, truth, industry, integrity or wholeness. It creates
in the soul the desire to walk in companionship with Christ.

The recognition of sins forgiven and the conscious presence of God is
what in emotional natures makes some shout, some weep, some tremble as
with an ague, but regeneration in all souls brings unspeakable joy. It
not only energizes for action, but it puts into the soul the power of
endurance before unknown.

I HAVE KEPT THE FAITH

One cold night in November, 1908, the writer had charge of the Gospel
Mission service. In the testimony meeting a fine looking young man arose
and said about this: “I am a graduate of a college in Maine, also of a
medical department of a college of this city. I have had a good practice
and a good home. I have lost all of these from hard drink. Last spring I
was converted in a street meeting held by this Mission at the
post-office corner. Soon after that I obtained a situation in a large
department store in this city, where I did good work, but I lost my
temper at the inefficiency of a driver. I learned then and there that
only proprietors have the right to lose their tempers, and I lost my
place. I have had a hard time since. God only knows the suffering of a
man without money, friends, or even acquaintances in a great city.” And
with a wail, like a cry of anguish, he said, “But I've kept the faith!
I've kept the faith!”

After the close of the meeting, a worker said, “I fear that man has had
no food to-day.” I went to him and said, “Son, when did you eat last?”
He answered, “Yesterday morning.” I slipped into his hand a dollar bill
and my card, and said, “Come and see me to-morrow morning.”

We had no difficulty in getting him back into the department store where
his quick and clear penmanship, his great executive ability, have been
most highly appreciated for nearly five years.

CHAPTER IV
AN ELEMENT OF HUMOR IN RESCUE WORK

Unless one can see the humor in rescue work, the tragedy of it all would
break the heart, ruin one's health, and keep one's mind all the time on
the sorrowful stories that we hear daily.

A part of successful rescue work is the ability to bring each sorrowful
case to God, lay it on His altar, and leave it behind us when we leave
the Mission.

AUNT MARY

One very cold night, a few years ago, we had present among our visitors
a wealthy lady and gentleman from Pittsburgh. We were most anxious that
the Mission should make a good impression on them, hoping a donation of
at least $25. It was a very cold night. Soon after the services opened a
person, whom I shall call Charles Winters, son of an old Virginia
family, came in. He was much under the influence of liquor, and began at
once to make a disturbance.

I remembered his dear old gray-haired mother and his accomplished
sister, and knew in a moment that if he were put out he would freeze to
death or be placed in prison. Two of the helpers started to put him out;
that was the easy way, and there were my guests and that prospective
donation.

The men already had hold of him, when I said, “Stop, men; please let me
speak to him.” Laying my hand kindly on his shoulder, I said, “Charles,
sit down and behave yourself.” With a drunken laugh, he said, “I'll sit
down for you, Aunt Mary, but not for these toughs.” All evening I had to
go back every few minutes to quiet him, much to the amusement of my
friends, who frequently to this day call me Aunt Mary. But I saved a
family from shame and my donation came all right.

In most businesses old age is a handicap, but every gray hair of my
white head is an asset. Nearly every evening some poor, vanquished
soldier of fortune, ragged, unshaven and unshorn, comes to me and says
with quivering lips, “You look just like my mother, to-night, will you
care a little for me?” And I lay my arm across the soiled coat and say,
“Son, the trail of every sin is on your poor soiled body; you have tried
some by yourself to be good, now let us ask Jesus to help. But I shall
send you up stairs under guard and to the bath-room, where you must take
a very warm bath while I go to the workroom and get you clean clothes
from the skin out; your clothing will go into the fumigator over night;
you shall have enough to eat and be physically comforted, then we will
try again with Jesus as yoke-fellow. You and I will talk to Him about it
and we will try again, shall we?”

There is no use talking salvation to a hungry man or a man physically
uncomfortable. We usually help a poor fellow several days before
anything more than the above is said, then we show him the tendencies of
his life; he sees them in the wrecks all around him. He hears the
testimony of redeemed drunkards, thieves and gamblers, and sees them
clothed and in their right minds; then the teachings of some Christian
mother, Sunday school teacher, or preacher comes back, and lo! he prays.
God's Holy Spirit acts as a searchlight, and he sees his abhorrent self
as God sees him, and he cries for mercy. God comes down when the sinner
calls for redeeming power, and a great psychological change takes place.
If a soul really agrees to give up every sin, to take Jesus Christ as
pattern and friend, Christ Himself enters into covenant relations with
that soul and the man is born again. He usually lays hold mentally of
some one verse of Scripture, which becomes to him a personal message
from on high. I have seen many take the verse, “Seek ye first the
kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you,” and use it as the stepping stone into the higher life.
They seek God and live His righteousness. Take the case of

MR. E. C. CONNAUGHT

as an example. One very cold morning in January, 1912, Mr. Kline
received a telephone message like this, “There is a drunken man with a
wife and four children set out on the street at so and so. Bring coffee
and food at once.” Just as quickly as they could get the food, Mr. and
Mrs. Kline hastened to the relief of that family. The wind was blowing
snow and sleet, though it seemed too cold for either. The family,
including the drunken father, were brought immediately to the Mission,
though their household stuff was left standing on the street, where it
remained four days. It was such a miserable collection that even the
colored people did not steal any of it. Then it was brought to the
Mission and stored in the cellar.

One child was in the hospital from a blow from the father. They were
physically comforted and put in the “Shelter,” a place reserved for
stranded women and children. By night the father was fairly sober and
they were all taken to the religious services in the chapel, where Mr.
Connaught heard man after man rise and testify that God had saved him
and taken away the appetite for drink. At first there was a sneer on his
face, but gradually, as one well dressed man after another bore the same
testimony, he cried out, “I have been an infidel, not believing in God
or immortality, but if the God you worship can cure me of this awful
appetite, I want Him.” He kneeled at one of the front benches, and an
awful spectacle of rags and dirt and bloated flesh he was.

I remember thinking, “Surely this case is beyond help,” but God is
better than we even dare hope. Several prayers were offered in his
behalf, then he prayed for himself, and lo! he prayed with the tongue of
the learned. He said, “O God, if there be a God, hear the prayer of the
very lowest of Thy children. I need Thee, I am totally undone, I put
myself in Thy hands for forgiveness and for discipline. O Lord, save
me!”

He kneeled a moment longer, then rose to his feet with a clear brain,
and, looking about like one dazed, said, “What has happened, you all
look different?” Mr. Kline laid his arm lovingly over the man's
shoulders as he said, “Brother Connaught, you have received your sight.
The Lord Jesus has come into your soul.”

The next morning the Associated Charities had him arrested for
non-support of his family. Judge DeLacy, a good man, was on the bench.
One of our workers said to the judge, “This man was converted last
night, and if you will give him a chance he will now support his
family.” “Oh, yes, most anyone would be converted rather than go to
Occoquan” (name of the workhouse). “But, judge, this is no fake case;
try him.”

The bloated face, the soiled clothing were against him, and the judge
sent him up for eleven weeks. The little woman and her children were
sent to her relatives in North Carolina by the Board of Charities and
Children's Guardians. Some of our workers kept at his side, reminding
him that he had put himself in God's hands for discipline, and assuring
him that if he could stand true, God had a useful life in store for him.
A marked New Testament was given him when he left for down the river.
There his head was shaved in the very cold weather, his clothing
changed, so that he took a severe cold which came near carrying him off
with pneumonia. It took about two weeks to bring political and social
influence to bear to have him paroled and sent back to the Mission.

January and February of 1912 were very cold months, it was hard to get
any kind of work for men to do, and the only thing we could secure for
Connaught was passing circulars at sixty cents a day. That amounts to
$3.60 per week; of this he was obliged to pay to the judge $3, to be
sent to his wife. In two or three days Mrs. Kline phoned me, “Connaught
is trying to live on the rolls and coffee given in the bread line at six
o'clock in the morning.” I replied, “Connaught must have oatmeal with
cream—real cream, for his diseased stomach; he must have eggs and meat
and strong coffee, or he will lose his religion.” “Well, who is going to
provide all that?” “The Lord has money enough for that.” “Well, suppose
you bring some of it right along,” which of course I did.

About the tenth day after he began circulating papers, the work gave
out. We really prayed night and day, for we feared he would be
rearrested and we had no money to support him. In a few days he secured
work at digging on the streets at $1.25 per day. He had never been
accustomed to manual labor, so when I sympathized with him on his poor
blistered hands, he said, “I am so glad to get the work that the hurt is
nothing.” Think of that for a man who had not done a lick of work,
physically or mentally, for months and months.

Long before this we had found that he was a graduate of an English
university, had lived in good style, keeping servants, he had possessed
a nice home when he was first married, but when he found the habit of
drink had fastened itself upon him, he came to this country hoping to
break away from old companions and surroundings, and thus get away from
the sin which bound him.

He tried all the cures; in fact, all his property not spent in drink
went to the cures, but nothing cured him. We found he had been a
first-class bookkeeper for one of the great railroads centering at
Washington, so we applied to them. I am glad to say they took an
immediate interest in the case.

A man was sent to see him, then Mr. Connaught was put in charge of an
office building at $40 per month, and at once he wanted his family back.
They came first to the Mission, for we desired to keep him attending
services every night till he would understand better the word of God and
grow strong in faith. The railroad now pays him $80 a month, for he is a
good executive, and he has bought a little home in the suburbs on which
he is paying monthly; a home where he can have a garden, an orchard and
chickens. About once a week the father, the mother, and children come to
the Mission. No better looking or happier looking people enter that
building. He comes, as he says, to bear testimony to the saving and
keeping power of the dear Lord Jesus.

PSYCHOLOGY

Now, science could not cure this case; all that science could do had
been done for him. He had become so low that if he saw his children
starving and he had ten cents, the money went to the saloon and not for
bread. It is, as Professor James says, that “Conversion is the only
means by which a radically bad man can be changed into a radically good
person.” The agencies in any conversion are first prayer, then the Holy
Spirit and the word of God. This man was so far gone that he did not
believe in the existence of God. But the sympathy of the workers made
them pray most earnestly for God's Spirit, which came with convicting
power. The verse of Scripture which came like a wireless message to his
soul was, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” He claimed and
still claims the last clause as a message to him personally.

The reason that hundreds of sermons fail to comfort a saint or convert a
sinner is because they fall on prayerless pews. You remember how what is
known as the Great New England Revival came about. Dr. Jonathan Edwards
was accustomed to go to his church every Saturday afternoon to think and
to pray for his people.

On one occasion a beggar, known in the town as Old Betty, sat unseen in
a back pew. The great preacher put his head down on the Bible and
sobbed. As he came out Old Betty said, “What is it, Dr. Edwards, that so
troubles you?” “Betty, I have not seen a soul converted in this church
for a year. Why is it?” “It is because these pews are prayerless.” “Will
you pray till you get the answer that God will come in power to this
church?” “I will.” Betty hid when the janitor came to close the church,
and the answer to her soul did not come till the dawning of the morning.

The following day Dr. Edwards started as usual to read his sermon, but
he soon put it away and began a straight evangelistic talk, professed
Christians stood in their places and asked for prayers, elders and
deacons prostrated themselves before God, the whole town became a prayer
circle, and the New England Revival had begun.

CHAPTER V
BIG FEET

One day a very large man, well over sixty years, and with three fingers
off each hand, in a very modest way said to me, “I am so ashamed to tell
a lady my needs,” and he turned up his foot and showed me where the sole
was worn out, so that at every step he made he left a track in blood.
“You poor fellow, you need not be ashamed to tell me of need like that.
I shall arrange for you to stay at the Mission till I get shoes for
you.”

He was of the class who sell shoestrings and pencils, but in very cold
weather people do not stop to buy from street merchants. That night,
after the midweek service of my church, I rose in my place and asked for
a pair of shoes number 9½ or 10. The men hooted, no one of them ever
wore that size, declaring, of course, that I wanted them to wear myself.

“Well,” I said, “whether you wear them or not, you get them for me,” and
I told the story of the bleeding feet. I did the same at my boarding
house. By the next day one of the elders of the church came with two
pairs of shoes which looked nearly big enough for boats, also one of the
men of the boarding house sent to Annapolis to his father, a very large
man, for a pair of shoes, which came to me by express. I put the three
pairs into a basket and rushed to the Mission, when lo! the poor man
could barely get his toes into the shoes. With trembling lip, he said,
“It is simply disgraceful to be old and poor and so awful big that even
one's friends cannot help a fellow.” “Indeed, it is no disgrace to be
old, poor and big, but it is a disgrace to be a bad man of any size or
age. Don't you worry, I shall find the shoes.”

That afternoon I met a Board composed mostly of men eminent in city
affairs, among them was a distinguished lawyer, a very large man. He sat
with his foot across one knee, when I leaned over and said, “Brother,
would you mind walking home in your hose, and giving me those shoes for
a poor chap as large as you are?” “Do you really mean it?” “Yes, I do;
only I will let you wear them home, then send them to me with hose,
under clothes, and any other clothing you can spare.”

By the next morning I had clothing for the poor fellow, and Mr. G.'s
number 11 shoes fit as if made to order.

If the poor man had successfully sold pencils and shoestrings all winter
he could not have been so well clothed as he was that day. But, best of
all, while he was obliged to wait he read the four Gospels through
several times, and he sought and found salvation in Jesus Christ. That
was November, 1911. Since that he has gotten a place as night watchman
in a large building, and he is a good and faithful man.

In Missions we have a large number of deserted wives with children, whom
we clothe. By that help they can by their own labor keep their little
families together, and then on every holiday, such as Christmas,
Thanksgiving, etc., we bring them all to the Mission for reunion and a
big dinner. The joyous seasons for the rich are the saddest times for
the poor and the bereaved. It is such a privilege to be the
administrators of the church people who send money and clothing for
these purposes. In return, the Missions are the real protection of the
city. A hungry man is dangerous, and a man with a hungry family is a
menace.

My maid told me, one extreme cold day, that a man was at the door to see
me. I found there one of the most dangerous housebreakers in the
country. “Murphy,” I said, “I do not want to see any of you men at my
home. What do you want?” “I am starving.” “Well, go to the Mission, we
never turn a man away there.” “I wouldn't be caught dead there.” “Why
not?” “Well, I hate Kline (the Superintendent) and the whole outfit, but
I am starving, I tell you.”

I knew by that he had been stealing at the Mission. Thieves fold up the
sheets and pillow-cases, even when they have been entertaining free, put
the bedding under their coats and get away with it. In time we get to
know them and will not put them in the dormitories, but only in the
barracks fitted with shelving but with no pillows or covers, but fire is
kept all night. The bath and toilet-room adjoins or is part of the
barracks, so that men are made comfortable. I took Murphy to an eating
house near by and filled him up, but at the same time warning him to get
out of town as soon as possible or change his course and become a good
man. Now, if that man had not been given food he would surely have
gotten it, if it cost a human life. Bad as he was, he would have been
fed had he gone to the Mission. I feared he would not go, but would
commit some depredation. Speaking of thieves, reminds me of the case of
a man whom I shall call

JAMES MANN.

One evening a tall, fine-looking man came into the Mission chapel. One
gets to know thieves somewhat as you know an Englishman, a German, an
Italian, by the marks environment have left on the person. I knew on
sight that he was a thief. We had a Salvation Army man at the Mission
that night from West Virginia, who gave the message. His subject was,
“Be sure thy sin will find thee out.”

He had been a thief, had served time, but now he told how happy and safe
he felt serving God and in being a good citizen. Several men knelt at
the altar that night, so when 9.30 P.M., the time for dismissal, came,
the men were permitted to go to the dormitories while one or two workers
prayed with the penitents.

Mr. Mann retired, but he could distinctly hear the praying. He declared
that a voice said, “_Mann, now or never_.” He tried to go to sleep, the
inward voice persisted, “Now or never.” He put on his clothes, went back
to the chapel, threw himself down at the altar and cried to God for
mercy for himself.

The workers gathered about him, he told God his story of sin and shame,
and God heard his cry for mercy, and he rose a forgiven sinner. His kit
of burglar tools were thrown into the Potomac River. He had come to
Washington to burglarize in the northwest section of the city during the
time when Mr. Taft was being inaugurated. His portrait could have been
seen in the rogues' gallery in every large city of the country, but in a
few weeks God so changed his face that the man could not have been
recognized by the old portrait.

We told Major Sylvester, Chief of Police, of the case, and Mann was put
on the special police force at the Union Station at inauguration time,
and never before nor since was there ever such a quick nabbing of the
noted thieves as at the Taft inaugural occasion.

Mr. Mann's mother came on from her western home. She is a sincere
Christian woman. It was doubtless the answering of her prayers which
brought conviction, then salvation to that dangerous man. Once she said,
“James, I never heard of you for two whole years; where were you then?”
He made an evasive answer, but we knew that he had spent them behind
bars.

After the inauguration the special police were discharged, and Mr. Mann
went to work as a carpenter. He made a good assistant carpenter. About
six months after that one of the Northern States was making a search for
large men for their mounted police. Major Sylvester recommended Mann, as
he was six feet four inches tall, and from that day to this he has been
on the mounted constabulary of a great State, engaged in enforcing the
law, rather than breaking the laws of his country.

Now, is not that real service to the State? This man was restored to his
family, to society, to God. He became a factor for righteousness,
instead of an element of danger to the commonwealth.

We are not always fortunate enough to see men of that class seek God. On
one occasion three young thieves came into the Mission, they were of the
traveling men of their base business. After I returned to my home I
called up the police and told them my suspicion, and asked them to watch
the Mission very closely from eleven o'clock until morning. They were
all captured between twelve and one o'clock midnight as they were
leaving the building and escorted to the station and told to leave town,
which, of course, they did immediately.

[Illustration: FREE SUPPER SERVICE]

CHAPTER VI
HOW WE GOT A NEW MISSION BUILDING

(A CHAPTER ON FAITH)

Although by January 1, 1911, we had eighty-four beds filled nearly every
night with homeless men, we felt ourselves very much hampered for room.
We turned many away. Many a poor fellow that winter walked the streets
all night to keep from freezing.

When we pray for a thing which we think the work of the Lord requires,
we begin at once to arrange for it, as if the money to do the work were
already at hand. Our paper, _The Gospel Tidings_, of January, 1911,
said, “Our Mission now does business in three different localities, and
will soon be obliged to rent two more places for the wood cutting
department and for opening a penny lunch-room.”

We were so sure that the Lord's work needed enlarging that we went to
the very best architects we knew, Gregg & Leisenring, and told them our
plans and needs, and they prepared with the greatest care, drawings for
a building costing at the very least $50,000, besides the cost of the
land. Then the writer visited the seats of the mighty in New York City
with the best introductions that the District Commissioners and leading
statesmen could give. While I was received with great kindness and
courtesy, I was distinctly told by one magnate that he helped only the
young and those starting in life; by another that his charity could
never take a local form, that he gave along the line of research for
causes and remedies of diseases. The women, whose secretaries I met,
themselves not being visible to plain people, I was assured had planned
all their surplus income for five to eight years ahead, so that I came
back convinced that God's way for the Gospel Mission was not by way of
New York City.

About that time a great fire occurred in an eastern city, and many men
and women lost their lives, and the order went out in Washington that
every building where a large number of people worked or slept must have
plenty of fire-escapes.

We found to put fire-escapes on the Gospel Mission would cost $125, an
immense sum to us, but we were preparing to put up the fire-escapes when
the owner refused his permission. We told the police, and asked time to
relocate, but were peremptorily ordered out of 1230 Pennsylvania Avenue,
N. W. We could find no suitable building obtainable within our means.

A MEETING OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

was called at my house for prayer. There were thirteen members present.
The object of the meeting was stated by President Wheeler, a few of
God's promises read from His word, and we went on our knees for prayer.

Each one asked for a suitable home to do the Master's work as seen and
done by the Gospel Mission. It was noticeable that after the eighth
person had prayed, each prayer took more and more the form of
thanksgiving, as if we already had received the building, or money to
build it.

There had been offered to us a very large double building which had once
been used as the District Building, and upon which it was claimed that
the government of the United States had once put $60,000 to make it
fireproof. It is situated at 214-216 John Marshall Place, N. W., not far
from the foot of Capitol Hill. After having the distinct answer to
prayer that God was working with us, a letter was written to Mrs. John
Hay, wife of the deceased great Secretary of State, asking her to
purchase that building for $25,000 for us and to permit us to pay her a
fair interest and pay the principal in annual payments. The letter was
written about the first of March. Almost by return mail Mrs. Hay replied
that she did not care to make so large an investment, but if we cared to
go forward and purchase the building ourselves, that on April 1 she
would give us $5000 on the first payment. Never will I forget the scene
when that letter was read.

Mr. H. D. Gordon had received the letter just as he was starting for the
Board meeting, his face was radiant. When Mr. Wheeler came in the letter
was put in his hands without comment. As soon as he read the words, “I
will give you $5000 on the first payment,” without waiting to finish the
letter, he said, “Let us pray.” We, on our knees, each one thanked God
for the gift dictated by His Spirit, and asked God's blessing on the
magnanimous woman who had obeyed the Spirit's order.

The Building Committee eventually secured the property for $22,000, of
which $5000 was to be a cash payment, and by agreeing to pay $1750
annually, and to pay semi-annually a 5½ per cent interest.

Think of the growth in spiritual power of a little organization which in
September, 1908, shuddered at a bill of $25, in the early spring of 1911
joyously making itself responsible for $17,000 bearing a semi-annual
interest amounting in the year to $850!

Since that time we have made three annual payments of $1750 each, and we
have met all interest to date.

Probably in no civilized country was there ever a dirtier house. The
building had been occupied by some foreigners until it had become so
vile that the police condemned it and obliged them to move out. They
took with them all gas fixtures, all sewerage, heating and water pipes;
in fact, wrecked the building, but a mission band is brave, and went
valiantly to work.

More than one hundred wagon loads of dirt were taken from the cellars.
We know, for we paid ten cents a load to the dump. When we had put in
$100 in glass, it scarcely made a mark, so large is the building. It has
sixty-six rooms, some of them as large as the chapel of an ordinary
church.

The walls have been scraped and calcimined and whitewashed; the entire
woodwork inside and all the outside has been painted; new gas pipes and
gas fixtures have been placed; new sewerage and bath-rooms have been
prepared. Four new fire-escapes and an electric fire-alarm system
installed; a splendid French steel range has been set in the kitchen;
hot and cold water supplied to various parts of the building, etc.

The first meeting was held in our new building, 216 John Marshall Place,
N. W., on the evening of April 15, 1911, Mr. Wheeler presiding.

We found the roof leaked so badly that in case of storm some rooms
became uninhabitable. Again I was obliged to personally guarantee the
payment of $500 for a new roof. Again, Mr. Ernest Gichner came to my
help. He put on a good roof, built up and pointed the thirteen chimneys,
put ventilators in many chimneys, saw to resetting, reglazed all
skylights, and permitted us to pay him $25 per month till the debt was
paid off.

When the possibility of completing the first cleaning seemed most
hopeless, when heat, water and gas pipes had to be replaced, several
members of the Board pledged $100 each. To some of us that meant great
self-denial. Mrs. Richard Butler gave $500 and Mrs. Spindle $200; in all
we spent $5000 in repairing and cleaning that building. Every step was
made in faith.

It was wonderful how our people sacrificed to get all this done; women
who do not do such work at home came and scrubbed and cleaned; many a
poor man gave a day's work. Three men who readily command $3 per day,
worked three months each at $1 a day with room and board. The people of
Washington sent us piles of old furniture, for which we were deeply
grateful. Then Superintendent Kline got a great quantity of furniture
and many feet of piping for conducting heat, and secondhand radiators at
the sale of the old Riggs Hotel. We secured a good mechanic, and with
our mechanics at the Mission, installed the heating plant. The expenses
during that time were at least $200 per week. At our Board meeting one
Tuesday, Treasurer Gordon reported $4.84 on hand. All business was
stopped immediately and we went to prayer telling our Father that we had
but $4.84 and the bills of the week would be due on Saturday. We had
each of us done all we could afford. The following Tuesday the Treasurer
reported all bills paid and $284 in the treasury. Thus God not only
supplied all our wants, but graciously relieved our anxiety.

SPEAKER CHAMP CLARK

Rather an amusing incident occurred when our cleaning was most
strenuous. We have a large number of good women who will do good work if
I lead, so on one occasion I took a tin bucket with rags, soap,
scrub-brush, etc., and went to help on work rather out of my line. I
started to return with the bucket in hand. When I came to the car I saw
the Hon. Champ Clark, who had then very recently been elected Speaker,
at the front of the car. I was careful to take the back seat, hoping he
would not see me. I had barely got seated when he came back and took a
seat beside me. I tried to apologize for my appearance and impedimenta.
He said, “Oh, bother! Never mind. What fault are you Republicans finding
with me now?” and we went at the Reciprocity Bill, then before the
House, with hammer and tongs. When I got off at Second Street, S. E.,
the Speaker carried the bucket and handed it to me in his gallant way,
still talking of the measure before Congress. I doubt if he recognized
whether it was an old tin bucket or a jewel case which he transferred to
me.

As long as this is a faith chapter, I shall here insert a statement of
how God sent the last $300 on our annual payment and semi-annual
interest due and paid May 7, 1913.

This is from the June, 1913, number of _Gospel Tidings_:

HOW THE LORD PAID THE DEBT

Mrs. Monroe's Letter in _Lutheran Observer_ of May 16:

“On May 1 (1913), we were owing at the Gospel Mission on the building
$15,500 with $406 semi-annual interest. We have agreed to pay $1750 each
year, so we were responsible for $2156 on May 1; by special agreement it
was not paid until the 7th. I want to tell my friends who have prayed
with me in this struggle how the Lord led us.

“At the Board meeting, Tuesday, April 29, we had $1140 in the treasury.
By Wednesday morning we had $1200. Thursday we had $1300, and on Friday,
at Dr. Stearns's class, I reported $1400 in the treasury and requested
God's children to ask for the $756 yet due. By Sunday, May 4, we had
$1659, when Hon. B. H. Warner subscribed $200, bringing our fund to
$1859. A small bill reduced it to $1856.

“The gentleman who held the note telephoned from Baltimore that he would
not come for his money until Wednesday, May 7. At the Tuesday evening
meeting five of us prayed definitely for $300. On Wednesday morning,
just after breakfast, a friend telephoned, 'Please come up at once.'
Now, that is my writing day, and I felt I could hardly go, but my times
are in His hands, and if He said 'Go,' then that was my orders. I went
at once, and my friend said, 'I feel you are needing $300 on your debt,
and the Lord woke me up to tell me to hand you $300, and I am prepared
to pay it.'

“To say how grateful we all are cannot be put into words. But at this
time, when the city was being scoured for $300,000 for the Emergency
Hospital, when the Ohio sufferers had claimed all we thought we could
spare, for the Board of a little mission, dependent mostly on the poor,
as the poor man's church, to pray down from heaven $2156 of a special
fund, besides the running expenses, which are always very heavy, means
more than money to us. It seems to be the divine seal of God's approval
on our work. I had subscribed $500 for myself and friends. He graciously
paid through me $656, and now, with the $300, He has made my share $956.

“Some of the readers of the _Observer_ sent me money, but more prayed
for our work. Now, join with us in praising God for a message straight
from the throne of our dear, loving heavenly Father.

“To everyone who helped, even to the amount of five cents; to those who
denied themselves usual comforts to help the Mission; to those who gave
to help provide shelter for the poor—to each of us He sends, I am sure,
this dear message, 'I glorify you in order that your faith may be
strengthened and that you may glorify me.' If any of us has ever had any
doubt of God's special providence to His children, let this concrete
example be a permanent love-message of assurance to every such doubter.”

NEXT STEP OF FAITH

By June, 1913, we found that nearly every Sunday night more than one
hundred persons had to be denied entrance on account of lack of room. We
saw by taking down a partition on the north side of the chapel between
chapel and hall, we could seat at least one hundred more. We were just
over the strain of the last payment, and we were loath to ask our
friends for more help, but as God continues to each of His children the
blessings which they daily enjoy, so each child of God must continue to
help in His work, and relying on Him “who worketh with us,” we ordered
the wall taken out at a cost of about $900, which afterward proved to be
$1300. Again I had to make myself responsible for the payment of that
amount. It was all paid on time.

In this faith chapter I desire to insert the following from the _Gospel
Tidings_ of June, 1913:

MR. WHEELER'S STORY

“At the Sunday evening service, December 18, 1912, Mr. Wheeler said:
'When I was in charge of religious work at the United States jail some
years ago, one Sunday, after service, I went round, as was my custom, to
shake hands with the men behind the bars. I came to a fine-looking man,
to whom I said, “Why are you here? I have often seen you on the street,
and I have thought of you as a good citizen.” “O Mr. Wheeler, I have
been a good citizen. My wife and I have a little store in Georgetown,
where we sell oysters in the winter and ice cream in the summer. My wife
gave me $65 to settle our bill with the wholesale oyster man, and I took
a number of drinks, and finally went into the marble saloon and took a
drink with some strangers, and as surely as I tell you I do not remember
another thing until I found myself in a cell at the station house.”'

“On further inquiry Mr. Wheeler found that the prisoner was charged with
passing counterfeit money. It appeared that after he came out of the
saloon a Jew was crying clothing on D Street. This man went into the
Jew's clothing store, bought a suit of clothes, for which he offered a
$50 bill in payment. The Jew could not make change, so took it to a
neighbor, who assured him the bill was bad, and the man's arrest
immediately followed.

“Mr. Wheeler went often to the cell to pray with and for the poor
prisoner, who devoted his time to the study of the Gospels. He was
soundly converted. Mr. Wheeler said, 'Do not trust alone to your lawyer.
Appeal to Jesus Christ now to clear you, for, as far as I can see, man
cannot.'

“His lawyer told Mr. Wheeler that the court would surely send the
prisoner to the penitentiary. On the morning of the trial several
Christian men met together and prayed over the case. The court convened
at 10 A.M., and the case was immediately called. A stranger asked to be
sworn as a witness. He said about this: 'I was in Washington on the day
this affair occurred. I do not often take a drink, but I happened to be
in the saloon when this man came in. He took a drink with two young
fellows who happened to be there, and the liquor made him drunk at once,
when one of the young fellows said, “It is my turn to treat, and I will,
if any of you can change a $50 bill.” This man brought out lots of
money, and got the $50 bill in exchange. I left Washington the next day,
that is how I was fortunate enough to remember the date. I got back
yesterday, and happened to see a statement of this case in the evening's
paper, and I felt simply compelled to come and give my testimony.'”

The prisoner was reprimanded (which was unnecessary, as he was a new
creature in Christ Jesus), but the case against him was dismissed, as it
was apparent there was no intent to defraud the Jew. His family nearly
smothered him with kisses and embraces, and he walked out a free man.

Skeptics may say this was mere chance. But how did it happen that the
man came back on that day, saw that account in the paper, felt compelled
to testify? No, God directed the case after it was committed to Him.

CHAPTER VII
VARIETIES OF WORK IN A GOSPEL MISSION

We are apt to think that all persons who accept the hospitality of the
Mission are low-born people; we have not found it so. There have knelt
at the altar of the Gospel Mission, priests and preachers, lawyers,
doctors, merchants, engineers, college men and poor chaps who have had
no education but that of the street.

I remember one night when we were located at 1230 Pennsylvania Avenue,
there knelt at the altar three men, one an ex-preacher, one a graduate
of the University of Virginia, and one the nephew of an ex-President of
the United States. We believed they were all converted. The preacher was
in bad physical condition, and we felt it necessary to put him into a
Christian institution for such as he for medical treatment. The taste
for liquor had gone, but the ulcerated stomach and bowels remained, also
his nerves were in a dangerous condition. How we ever obtained money
enough to pay that man's bills for six weeks is yet a marvel, but we did
it. He came out a redeemed, humble man. He went to the pastor of a large
church in Brooklyn, whom he had known at college, and before that large
church he acknowledged his sin with shame and deep contrition. The
church had grace enough to accept him. The congregation opened a rescue
mission, supported entirely by that church, where for five years he has
preached the gospel and has saved a hundredfold more souls than the big
church which supports the mission.

The Virginian never again crossed our path, but Mr. Buchanan died after
three years of a good life, an honored member of an Episcopal church in
Washington.

Men who have been dissipated, even when redeemed and reformed do not, as
a usual thing, live to old age. The wages of sin is death to the body,
though the soul may enter upon eternal life.

Among the sorrowful who nightly are to be found at the missions of this
city either pensioned by their family or the government, but not
permitted to return to their homes, is one man who was once one of the
_best_ mail agents between Washington and New York City. Another, the
son of an ex-cabinet officer. Another has been Chief Mathematician in a
government bureau, besides about twenty wrecks of various government
departments.

I remember the case of a well-known man in Philadelphia. He was
converted one extremely cold night at the Breakfast Association. No
provision is made there for beds, so that poor fellow started “to carry
the banner”—that is to walk the streets all night. About three o'clock
in the morning he was taken with a congestive chill. A kind policeman,
seeing the man was ill and not drunk, sent him at once to that blessed
little Presbyterian hospital in West Philadelphia.

It happened that one of the Board of Directors of the Breakfast
Association, Mr. Tibbals, had given the poor fellow his card. The
authorities, finding the card, sent for Mr. Tibbals. The sick man had
revived enough when Mr. Tibbals arrived, to give his true name and the
address of his parents, which was a number on Fifth Avenue, New York
City. That street was then a residence street for very wealthy people.
Just as soon as it could be done, a telegram for $100 was received in
reply and we were directed to do all we could for him. But the man died
before night, and Mr. Tibbals was asked to take the body to New York.
The coffin was carried into one of the handsomest brown-stone residences
on that handsome avenue.

The mother and father met Mr. Tibbals, and in the parlor the coffin was
opened for identification. It was the body of the only son of that proud
family. The father gave one look, one great sob, then seized his hat and
fled. The mother said, “O Mr. Tibbals, you think I am grief-stricken
over his death! But I am not even sorry. This son has been a drunkard
from childhood. We could not keep him at home, for he would steal
everything he could carry away and sell it for whisky. Since we lost
sight of him, I have never opened a paper without fearing I should read
his name in connection with some awful crime. No, I am relieved. I shall
know where he is. I have often gotten into my carriage and have had the
driver go up and down this street (which was then covered with
cobblestones) as fast as the law permitted him to drive, and I have
screamed and screamed my heart out. I have gone to the seashore to
scream to let off my nervous strain. Had I given just one such scream in
my own house, I would this day be in a mad house. Oh, no, for this
death, after what you hope was a conversion, I am deeply grateful to
God!”

And yet people wonder at Carrie Nation. It is a wonder that grief like
that does not make iconoclasts of all mothers whose sons go down the
Jericho road.

The following testimony, given in the winter of 1911, by one who had
stood on many rounds of the social ladder, a man who accepted
redemption, and is now kept by the power of God:

A REMARKABLE TESTIMONY

“When Brother Wheeler requested me to address this meeting, I felt
somewhat nervous, for the simple reason that I had never in my life
addressed a religious meeting before, and I so stated to Mr. Wheeler.
However, I could not refuse him, and here I am.

“True, in years gone by, while down South, I have spoken to political
gatherings. Since I got religion, I stopped that. If I should ever make
a political address again, it will be in the interest of the Prohibition
party. I regret that I have no experience in addressing a religious
meeting, and I, therefore, ask you to be patient with me, especially as,
due to previous engagements, I was unable to prepare myself, except in
so far that I have decided to make a few remarks on personal salvation,
and by the term personal I have my own in mind.

“I want to tell you something about my own experience, how I had lost my
God and found Him again. A man born and reared on the Bowery or any of
its side streets in New York City, a man who from his childhood on has
been influenced by evil-minded and sinful people, has never heard of
Christ, and in the course of time becomes a hardened criminal, such a
man may be condemned by mankind, but never by God.

“A man born and raised in a comfortable, refined home, who has been
taught the doctrines of Christ, has confessed his belief that Christ is
His Saviour, has a full knowledge of right and wrong and of the duties
he owes his fellow-man—if such a man becomes a willing victim to sensual
pleasures, he may not be condemned by mankind, but God will condemn him,
unless he repents and starts to lead a new, clean life.

“Only too often men are so completely wrapped up in their personal
matters, as, for instance, in their business affairs, that they
absolutely lose sight of the obligations they owe God, and also their
fellow-men, and, as a natural result, neglect their souls.

“I honestly believe that such a man is more to be pitied than the ones
who, either through their own fault or being victims of circumstances,
have lost their hold in life and finally found themselves 'down and
out.' A man may temporarily be without food and shelter, but this is
nothing compared to trying to live without God. However, a man who is a
wanderer on the face of the earth and who has lost his God, is indeed a
wretched being. I am speaking from experience.

“For years I had violated the divine laws. I had been what is generally
termed a society man, 'way down South. I enjoyed a large income, but I
spent everything for worldly pleasures. Finally, I became disgusted with
my surroundings; but, better still, I became disgusted with myself. I
drifted to New York City, determined to live a new life. This occurred
about fourteen years ago. Up to that time I had not been within or even
near a church for seven years. The New York atmosphere apparently did
not agree with me. Instead of leading a clean, moral life—by that I
understood at that time a life simply conforming to the requirements of
the social laws (the divine laws did not exist for me)—I became worse
than I had ever been.

“Although I made good money, as the saying is, I was, nevertheless,
broke all the time. I voluntarily gave up several splendid positions
because objections had been made to my reporting late in the morning for
duty, and, having become rather nervous, I practically found it
impossible to get along with anyone. I had become a slave to my habits,
and finally associated with the 'has beens,' as they are sometimes
called.

“There is not a man in this room who knows more about the life on the
east side of New York than I do. I know full well what it means to be
hungry and homeless. I have worked as a longshoreman, newspaperman,
cook, bookkeeper and correspondent. I have been running hot frankfurter
stands, etc., sometimes I had two jobs in one day. I was given a
wonderful taste of the ups and downs in New York City, especially the
downs. I certainly am grateful to Providence for subjecting me to that
awful experience in New York City, for in that way I learned to know
human nature. I learned to know that the so-called submerged masses were
composed of human beings, not brainless individuals; that, as a matter
of fact, there are better people, especially morally, among the poor
than among the so-called society people.

“I might be asked why it was that I did not find God again, when I was
down and out in New York City. Christ was knocking, knocking all the
time to enter my heart, but I had become a cynic and would not let Him
in. I used to think in those times that if there was a just God I would
not be in such a sorrowful plight. The trouble with me was, I did not
have enough sense to admit that my condition was simply due to my own
faults and to nothing else.

“During my stay in New York I have met many saintly people, men and
women who devoted their time, energy and money to the uplift of the
homeless and the friendless. Those good people tried their best to have
me converted. They did not succeed because I was not willing and because
I actually believed most of my friends who were in charge of the several
missions that I was in the habit of attending were suffering from
hallucinations, although perfectly honest in their self-imposed task.

[Illustration: PENNY LUNCH ROOM]

“The greatest evil in New York City is, as everywhere, the saloon. The
majority of you men present here this evening must admit if it were not
for the saloon you would not be here as applicants for bodily
assistance. There are evil spirits in us and around us to lead us
astray; the devil's worst temptation is whisky or any other intoxicating
drink. Man was made in the image of God; when a man gets drunk he is
worse than a beast. A man will get drunk again and again, a beast will
not, having seemingly more sense than a man. The saloon is the greatest
foe to the spread of the gospel. In most cases the saloon-keeper knows
quite well that he is a highway robber, that his business is ruining
untold thousands of men, women and children, but as his so-called
business is a legalized one, he may continue indirectly committing
murder.

“Really I have more respect for the highwayman and robber than for a
saloon-keeper. During my voluntary and involuntary observations in New
York and elsewhere, I have come to the conclusion that Christ would
conquer the world in much less time if only the awful saloon and dive
could be eliminated.

“In my travels in this country and in the foreign countries, I have met
many people who by word and deed were spreading the gospel. Some of them
naturally inquired of me whether I had been converted. My answer was
'No,' because, as a matter of fact, I did not know the meaning of the
word converted. I was told to seek Christ and the meaning would be made
plain to me. Evidently I was not sufficiently willing to meet Christ
half way, and thus I wasted years of my life before I finally submitted
to the pleadings of the Saviour.

“While I was in the Philippine Islands, twelve years ago, I was deeply
impressed with the different attitudes of the officers and enlisted men
when on the firing line. It was plain, even to the casual observer, that
the men who were thoroughly devout Christians—and there are many
thousands of Christians in our army—were not afraid to face the bullets,
but the men who were agnostics and unbelievers, whatever that may mean,
were so nervous and excited that they hardly knew what they were doing,
or they were downright cowards.

“In my own case I was not afraid of death, as I had given very little
thought to such a possibility; besides I had become more or less
indifferent to life and possible death. One hot summer day, while
fighting the Filipinos, I was shot through the head. An army surgeon
bandaged me up as best he could and then assured me I was very likely
not to live through the day.

“If I ever got scared, it was then, and if ever I prayed, it was then,
in spite of the excruciating pains I suffered. The words of a comrade,
who was a fine soldier, though not a thorough Christian, uttered by him
shortly before I was wounded, were constantly ringing in my ears,
namely, 'A man may possibly live without Christ, but he cannot die
without Christ.'

“For a month or so the doctors and nurses did not think I would live,
but God spared my life, and no doubt for a purpose. For six months I was
unable to utter a word, as the bullet had passed through my tongue. It
was well for me I could not talk to any human being, but I could talk to
God. During those months I lived my entire life over again. I promised
God to become a better man. True, I became more earnest in my views of
life, I realized the value of the golden rule, but I was not converted.
I could not yet understand the meaning of the word.

“The Red Cross nurses, who at the beginning of the trouble in the
Philippines were in charge of the hospital, were not only experts in
their profession, but were splendid types of self-sacrificing
Christians, and their presence alone made the patients think of their
mothers or sisters or other dear ones at home, thousands of miles away,
and thus unconsciously these nurses, noble representatives of womanhood,
frequently wrought a change for the better in the hearts of the wounded
soldiers.

“While I was a patient at Manilla I saw many a man pass out of this
life. The man with Christ in his heart died with a smile on his lips,
knowing he had done his duty and that Christ would meet him. The
unbeliever suffered agonies.

“I was wounded almost twelve years ago, not a day has passed without my
communicating with God, and God was always willing to talk with me, when
I addressed Him. As a result of my experience in the Philippines I spent
almost three years in the hospital. I thank God He made me suffer, it
was the only possible way for me to find Him again. My conversion did
not take place all at once, it took place gradually. God used different
means and ways in recalling me. I cannot mention them here without
baring my life to you, which may be of no interest to you. Let me assure
you no man can succeed without Christ. A man may amass a fortune, but if
he neglects his soul his life is of little value.

“Among the applicants at different missions, I have met men who claimed
the good people in charge were nothing but hypocrites. It is certainly
strange that those fellows apply to hypocrites for help. Why don't they
go to the agnostic or to the unbeliever?

“Follow my advice, first seek Christ; He is always ready and willing to
accept you; the rest is easy. A drunkard cannot become sober by taking
the Keeley cure or anything like that. The desire for drink is often
inherited, medicine will not cure the sufferer, only God's grace can
cure him.

“Why is it that the man who lives with Christ is always happy, even
under adverse circumstances, and the man without Him is, as a rule,
nothing but an egotist? You can easily find the answer yourself. Come to
Christ, and, if you are willing to come, why not now?”

CHAPTER VIII
THE NEED OF RESCUE WORK

As early as the fall of 1909 we put out this call:

CENTRAL BUREAU OF LABOR

“The District of Columbia needs a Labor Bureau to which our Mission
and the Associated Charities can send men and women out of
employment. The Bureau, being a government affair, should know where
labor is needed and should furnish transportation to such places,
whether it be to the cotton fields of the South, the harvest fields
of the West, or the manufactories of New England.

“Such a Bureau should secure from the railroads concessions, such as
they give to immigrants, in sending our unemployed to the fields of
labor.

“Unless Society, with a big 'S,' reaches a hand to the unemployed
these people will surely become a menace to our great cities, and on
some sad day they will dynamite our public buildings.

“We, who work among them, know their sorrow, their anguish, their
despair, which will end in desperation, unless relief is furnished.

“Use your influence to secure a Central National Bureau of Labor for
the unemployed. The strong and wealthy can care for themselves, but
a good government should concern itself with its weaker members.”

_The Survey_ (published in New York) is now (1913) steadily advocating
something of this kind, and now Congress (October, 1913,) is considering
the matter.

FOR THE UNEMPLOYED

An organization or industrial army of the United States was provided for
in a bill presented to the Senate by Senator Poindexter, upon the
request of R. A. Dague, of Creston, Iowa. Eligible to membership in the
army would be any unemployed man more than sixteen years old. The
Secretary of Labor would be the recruiting officer, but an “industrial
general,” at a salary of $250 a month, would command the forces. The
army, according to the bill, would not bear side arms or fight bloody
battles, but would be employed in labor at harbors, forts, government
buildings, irrigation ditches, canals and other public works of the
nation, state and municipality. Residents in the United States who
become members would receive $2 a day, “together with board and
lodging,” while those who have been in America less than five years
would receive only $1.50. Foreigners who hereafter come to America would
receive only 25 cents a day, which would be wrong. We expect from the
United States government that ideal justice, even to a foreign workman,
which we shall each receive when we stand in the presence of Eternal
Justice.

All this shows that the idea of a Bureau of Labor which will help the
laborer is steadily growing.

AN INCIDENT OF THE WINTER OF 1910

One day Mrs. Kline, the wife of the Superintendent of the Gospel
Mission, phoned me, “We have a man here so covered with vermin that I
cannot let him into the house, yet he seems to be an educated man. [This
was at the Industrial Department on Fourteenth Street, before we had our
new building.] What shall I do now?” “Call Donavan, Hall and Happy, and
take him to the woodshed and have a tub of warm water; let the men give
him a thorough bath, barber him and wrap him in blankets, till we can
get clothes for him.” That was done. We found Taylor an educated man, a
graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the editor of a paper in a
suburb of Philadelphia. He claimed that he had been “shanghaied,” that
is, drugged and carried on board an oyster boat as a common laborer. He
had gone to Baltimore to go on a drunk, hoping his friends would not
find him out, but his Nemesis was there waiting for him.

He had been kept six weeks on the oyster boat, had been forced to bunk
with negroes and common roustabouts. After he became sober, I fancy the
owners of the boat saw that they had captured the wrong man, and would
gladly have gotten rid of him. They did not dare approach land lest
their entire crew escape; at last he was put aboard a passing boat and
sent to Washington. He was over six feet high, of fine physique, about
thirty-two years of age. We did not find it easy to get clothing
suitable for such a person. The day came when he was able to attend the
services at the Mission. He kneeled at the altar, and we hoped he was
converted. We greatly wanted him to bring suit against the oyster men,
but that would have made his case public, and he did not desire that. He
readily secured a place on one of our city papers as the purveyor of
automobile news, but when pay day came he got drunk and fell down the
stairs and broke his arm. His system was in bad condition and he was
obliged to go to the free ward of Providence Hospital. We now wrote to
his family, and his mother came for him in a big touring car from
Philadelphia and took him home, but the exposure and dissipation had
done their perfect work, and he only lived a few months. He seemed, from
all accounts, a truly penitent man, but only at the judgment day shall
we know whether he entered into the rest prepared for the children of
God only.

Another experience in the winter of 1911 gave us a still lower opinion
of the oyster men of the lower Chesapeake Bay. Mr. Hall telephoned me,
one cold slippery day, “Do come down at once, the oyster men are in. Mr.
Kline is away, and the men are in bad condition.” I went at once. The
halls were full of them; many had only overalls, shirt and shoes without
stockings; they looked frozen. I ordered coffee and rolls at my expense
till I could call help. I feared if I opened the clothing room they
would raid it, so great were their needs.

It was too slippery for women to venture out, so I began phoning to
members of the Lutheran Church whom I believed would come. One man in a
bank said, “I am not a clerk. I can't go out this kind of weather for
that class of men.” I replied, “I saw you at communion last Sunday, and
I venture you promised your God to serve wherever you were needed; here
is your first call.” “I shall come at once and bring three other members
of the church with me.”

That winter the Luther Memorial Church, of Erie, Pa., had sent us a
large box of men's clothing, every article mended, clean and in good
condition, and just the week before a charitable organization, at Chevy
Chase, Md., had sent us two large barrels of men's clothing, and a full
half bushel of socks nicely darned and every article clean.

So we put trousers on one pile, coats on another, vests on another,
underclothes on another, a churchman at each pile. I had charge of the
socks, then Mr. Ifft, of the Luther Memorial Church, in the next room
superintended the trying on, fitting and exchanging garments. As we
handed each garment we said about this, “The ladies of the different
churches send you these garments with their love and sympathy.” Many a
poor fellow, all unused to blessing, said, “God bless the churches for
remembering such as us.” In an hour's time we clothed over seventy-five
men. A few did not need complete outfits. We never supposed we had that
many garments on hand, but that day cleared out all we had in reserve.

Among these men were two Welsh boys, both Christians, not long in this
country. They had not known the strength of American liquors (which were
doubtless drugged); they were very contrite and were at once put to
work, one as a furnaceman, the other in the wood yard. We hear the
United States revenue cutters have been after the oyster men and
shanghaiing is no longer a common crime.

When a friend looked in on that crowd of superior business men helping
distribute clothing and saying words of consolation to the broken men,
he said, “I believe in my soul you would order in the President of the
United States to help at the Gospel Mission.” “Oh, no!” I replied,
“President Taft, good man as he is, would not be permitted to drive so
much as a tack at the Gospel Mission. He does not recognize Jesus as His
Saviour; only orthodox Christians who can tell the sinner of the
redeeming power of Jesus the Christ can successfully work in a rescue
mission like this.”

THE HOLIDAYS

are a sore trial to the homeless or to the recently bereaved. Often
women of the highest social rank come to the Gospel Mission on
Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, when we give a good dinner to
everyone who applies. (These women forget their own woes as they serve
others.) The subjoined newspaper letter will give you a good picture of
one such occasion:

THANKSGIVING DAY AT THE MISSION OF 1910

“It is a very curious thing to say, that while I saw no relative of
mine, being far separated from all of my kindred, while I had no time to
accept the hospitality of friends, but ate my dinner at my boarding
house, so as to be at the Mission for service, yet it was one of the
happiest days of my life. It is wonderful the kindness God puts into the
hearts of His people at this season. Not a member of the Mission has
wealth, yet God gave us means through His children to feed between three
and four hundred people. A little Ohio Joint Synod Lutheran church at
Fulton, Md., sent us a dozen chickens, two bushels of potatoes, some
fine apples, turnips, beets, cabbage, etc. We bought fifteen turkeys, a
lot of hams, then the New Willard Hotel prepared our fowls and other
meats, and the Raleigh Hotel prepared and cooked all our vegetables,
adding enormous pans of baked beans, and all this they did free of
charge.

“Bakers sent us bread and pies, florists sent us great quantities of
flowers, so that we were able to feed all comers and send out a number
of baskets to poor families. This was the bodily side; the spiritual
side was even better.

“The services began at twelve o'clock noon, and lasted until ten at
night, with a change of leaders, musicians and varying audiences each
hour.

“Two boys, about sixteen and eighteen years old, had walked all the way
from Richmond, Va. As they fed their famished bodies, one said, 'O Jim,
did you ever before hear of such a place where one can really get all he
wants to eat, can get a hot bath, can get one night's lodging all for
nothing? I am so tired I just couldn't walk any more!'

“One man, about thirty years of age, simply prostrated himself at the
altar, and cried aloud to God for pardon. After he rose he said about
this, 'I came from the workhouse this morning an angry, outraged man,
after thirty days' sentence. I felt my punishment was a great injustice.
My hand was against every man, for I felt every man's hand was against
me. I was ready for any crime. Someone met me and said, “Go to the
Gospel Mission.” I answered, 'I prefer to go to the saloon and get drunk
and forget for a few hours my sorrows and loneliness.' But the friend
brought me here. You have given me a good dinner, but that is the least,
you have reached the friendly hand. Brother Wheeler says I can make this
my headquarters till I get work. I am a skilled mechanic, and I can soon
get my place back again, and now I want to say God has forgiven me my
sins, and they are so black and so many. I was a Christian in my early
life, so I know what I am talking about when I promise my God and all
you, my friends, that, God helping me, I, this day, take Christ for my
Saviour and I will love and serve Him all the days of my life.' That of
itself paid me for all I could do.

“From three to five people came to the altar for prayer each hour, and
the last hour saw nine young men pleading for forgiveness, and promising
a new life. In all, I should say, that about fifty people asked for
prayers and twenty-five people sought pardon.

“We had a great singer, Mrs. Fitch, whose singing was greatly used of
God to call men to repentance. Thanksgiving Day was a great day on
earth, at the Gospel Mission, and a great day among the angels of heaven
who saw sinners redeemed.”

CHRISTMAS AT THE GOSPEL MISSION

of 1909 was described by the writer in the following sketch of the
January, 1910, _Gospel Tidings_:

“Christmas at a mission takes on a great element of thanksgiving; first
for the great gift of God—and no anthems sound so sweet, so deep,
reaching into the deep places of the soul as, 'Now, when Jesus was born
in Bethlehem.'

“The first thing on Christmas Day was to remember our brothers in bonds.
Down at the barracks in the guard-house, we have two converted men. One
a soldier whom we believe is receiving four times the punishment for
neglect of target practice which he ought to receive; we can only
counsel patience, comfort by our visits and send him a good dinner.

“Then a dear Jewish brother is there. He had been in the army two years
ago, but he was baited, tormented and outraged in his poetic soul until
he deserted. After that he was converted, and felt with us that he must
go back and take whatever the United States had for him. One of our
workers went with him to the Secretary of War, who said, 'Why, man,
don't come to me; take a carriage for fear you be arrested on the
street.' Mr. Ellison, our helper, took a carriage and went directly to
the Commandant at the barracks. The Commandant said, 'We are sorry for
Mr. L., but he will get two years in the penitentiary at hard labor.'

“Mr. Ellison said, 'Commander, this man is the servant of the living
God; you will give to this Jew that mercy you yourself will at the last
expect from the Judge of all the earth, who came to this world as a
Jew.' Well, it would be a long story to tell of the court-martial, but,
in answer to prayer, the Jew got only six months in the guard house, and
that time will expire this month.

“Then two poor workmen are in the hospital, and four sinners who
promised reformation in the workhouse, must have a remembrance. Kindness
in shame often leads men to Christ.

“But the great event of the day was the service from twelve to one
o'clock, followed by a dinner at which from two hundred to three hundred
lonely men were fed. In the evening a service, at which the old, old
story of love is told, heart-broken men are redeemed, and we all go home
wondering at the never-ending miracle of the gospel, which takes tongues
which blaspheme and makes them sing God's praises, feet that walk in the
ways of sin and makes them run in the ways of righteousness, hands that
steal and makes them do God's service. Oh, it is a wonderful gospel, and
a wonderful Saviour!

“'O ye priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise and exalt Him
above all forever. O ye servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise
and exalt Him above all forever. O ye spirits and souls of the
righteous, bless ye the Lord, praise and exalt Him above all forever. O
ye that are holy and humble of heart, bless ye the Lord, and praise and
exalt Him above all forever.'”

NEW YEAR'S EVE

And New Year's at a Rescue Mission is an interesting time. Men have
wandered the streets for a week, when it seemed to them every other
human being on earth was happy but themselves; they see happiness in
every passing face, they have caught glimpses of Christmas trees through
open doors, they have sensed the appetizing smells of good dinners, they
have witnessed at the railroad stations and even on the streets the
reunion of families, they have heard the deep-toned organs from
churches, they have heard the ragtime music of happy people about the
home piano, and they only unloved, unloving, uncomforted, lonely men
walk the lonely streets of our great cities.

Is it any wonder that memory calls up the time when they too were in
happy homes, when mothers' arms encircled them, when a father's
benediction was on their young heads, and, like the prodigal son, they
say, “I will arise and go to my Father”?

Every one of them knows that sin is the cause of his downfall, and they
also know that they must get right with God before they can forsake evil
habits. Scarcely one of them but what has tried again and again to leave
off their grosser sins but have failed, but when at the watch-night
service they are told of a Saviour mighty to save, hope comes again to
the broken-hearted.

I remember one occasion at the Breakfast Association, Philadelphia, at
the twilight service, New Year's Eve, I saw five hundred men stand for
prayer at one time. Our Mission is much smaller, but on New Year's Eve
and during New Year's Day, when we have a continuous service from 12
o'clock midday to 9.30 P.M., with an entire change of leaders and
musicians each hour, I have seen your nominal Christian, the toper, the
criminal, all so overcome by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit
that social differences melted away and they knelt side by side at the
mercy seat; we have seen fifty people enter into covenant relations with
God in that pivotal period of the year, and we have seen most of them
keep the faith.

Think of a church holding a meeting nine and a half hours long; in most
churches the pastor and the elders would have the last three hours or
more all alone. But at the Mission the interest deepens so that it is
hard to dismiss even at a late hour.

THE FORGER FROM NEW HAVEN

It was at one of those long services I saw a New England man brought
under deep conviction, and at last yield to the Spirit, make confession
and receive Christ.

It was about 4 P.M. when he arose to tell his story of sin. He said, “I
have committed a crime against the State, and I want to know if I can be
forgiven before that is made good. I want to see three members of the
Board alone.” Three of the men went into consultation with him. It
proved that he had forged a check at New Haven for $300, had collected
the money and had escaped.

He was told, “God will forgive you now and undertake for you in case you
promise full restitution.” He kneeled at the altar, began to pray out
loud, promised restitution and promised to bear patiently any punishment
the State demanded.

A worker was sent with him to New Haven. He went first to his own
father, who said, “John, I never want to see your face here; you had no
business to come back, for you will be sent to prison and disgrace us
all.” “But, father, I am converted, I mean to take my punishment, then
live a true man ever after.” “Oh! that is different; in that case, I
will help you all I can.”

They went at once to the man whose name had been forged. They found him
very bitter at first, but when John told his story of how ashamed and
sorry he was, and added, “I have come back to take my punishment, then I
want to be a good man and a good citizen all the rest of my life.” At
this point the father said, “Mr. Percy, I will gladly pay back the $300
and interest if you think you can forgive John.” That was done and the
prosecution withdrawn.

The episode had a little after-clap. John came back to Washington, and
came at once to the writer. He said, “Mrs. Monroe, I want you to ask
Miss Stanislaus if she will marry me.” “Why, ask her yourself, man; I am
not in practice in handling love matters.” “No, you see my red head and
freckled face and freckled hands make me so homely I am afraid to ask.
Do see her for me.” This I did. She accepted him, and he obtained a
situation in the mountains of North Carolina as a school teacher. He
preaches on Sunday and they both teach all week and seem to be doing
good work.

The _Gospel Tidings_, of December, 1910, had this notice:

WHAT WILL YOU DO, FELLOW-CHRISTIANS?

“Eleven men, cold, hungry and friendless, the night of December 5,
said, 'Mr. Kline, for God's sake, give us work!' He replied, 'We do
not have the work to give until we get wood-cutting machines.' Mrs.
Monroe said, 'I shall trust God's people to help me on that, even
though the horse and wagon are not yet paid for.' So she personally
took the risk of the 50 needed to put in the machinery. Her friends
will remember that a great fire three years ago not only destroyed
her property, but also her means of making money.

[Illustration: 10 AND 15 CENT DORMITORIES]

“'Blessed is he that considereth the poor, the Lord will deliver him
in the time of trouble.'

“The Gospel Mission Board feel that when the necessities of men are
so great as in this call that it is God's call to help by giving
them means to help themselves. Maybe in these suffering men your
Saviour passes by.”

The Christian people of Washington made a generous response to that
call, and by the next issue of the _Tidings_ we announced that we could
give fifty cents a day for six hours' work, leaving time to hunt a
better place, and yet pay lodgings and food.

The October _Tidings_ of 1910 said:

A MENACE

“What is the most important question now in Washington? From our
standpoint it is the care of the unfortunate and the sinful. Why? In
order to protect your home. When a man walks the streets hungry,
cold and friendless, and looks through the window of your happy home
and he sees you surrounded with the comforts he lacks, do you know
you are in danger? Unless the unfortunate are comforted, they will
surely dynamite our great cities.

“The Gospel Mission stands between you and this danger. We make
these sons of sorrow realize that they need be only temporarily
sidetracked from the great highway of success, that the grace of
God, their renewed will power and our friendly hand may yet restore
them to home, friends and society, and make them useful men.”

CHAPTER IX
THE PENNY LUNCH AND FREE DISPENSARY

The following is a letter written by Mr. George W. Wheeler, which was
published in our _Gospel Tidings_, of February, 1911:

PENNY LUNCH

“In an experience of twenty-six years in active, earnest, aggressive
Rescue Mission work in this city, the writer cannot recall that any
line of secular work taken up for the amelioration of the poor has
ever called forth such universal expressions of interest, sympathy
and co-operation as the 'Penny Lunch and Newsboys' Waiting Room,'
opened by the Gospel Mission, at 304 Fourteenth Street, on Saturday,
February 4. The city papers published pictures of the interior and
exterior, and a portrait of our Superintendent, Mr. Kline, and were
most generous in their endorsement of the enterprise, while the _New
York Times_ and other papers spread the news far and wide that the
cost of living had been solved in Washington by the Gospel Mission
'_Penny Lunch_.'

“The opening of this lunch-room was made possible by a noble
Christian woman of wealth, who was born, reared and now resides in
this city. Her interest was aroused by reading a statement of the
work and needs of the Gospel Mission, prepared by our
Superintendent, and she came to see about the matter, learned its
approximate cost, and sent a check to pay the expenses.

“For two weeks or more Mr. Kline and his assistants were busy
papering, painting, etc., and finally the steam table and coffee
urns, with many other essentials of a twentieth century up-to-date
lunch-room were installed and the doors were opened to a waiting
crowd. Mrs. Kline oversees the cooking, and everything is as clean
and neat as in one's home.

“The menu consists of the following articles: Coffee, 1 penny; bread
or rolls, 1 penny; beans, 1 penny; doughnuts, 1 penny; sour, 1
penny; beef stew, 3 pennies; one-half pie, 3 pennies. A lunch,
consisting of soup, meat, vegetables, bread and coffee, 5 cents.
This brings a well-cooked, clean, nourishing meal within the reach
of all who have any income whatever.

“It was amusing to see the class of men and boys who came to have
their appetites satisfied at the lowest cost. Newsboys, messenger
boys, laboring men, teamsters, and all kinds of indescribables came,
and they appeared greatly surprised to find such an attractive room
with all the 'latest improvements' found in a lunch-room. And how
they did eat! A big soup plate filled to the brim with bean soup, a
big china cup filled with steaming hot coffee, a big brown roll or
three slices of Corby's 'Mother's Bread.' These were good, and
'mighty filling at the price.'

“Well, the 'Penny Lunch' is launched, and whether the prices charged
will pay the cost of the material, cooking and serving, or not, we
feel certain that any little deficiency that may occur will be
cheerfully met by the well-to-do of our community.

“A coffee-roasting firm has pledged five pounds of good coffee each
week for use at the 'Penny Lunch' room, and we are sure dealers in
other lines will be glad to assist. Corby Brothers have been
furnishing from fifty to seventy-five loaves of bread for our 'bread
line' for many months, and Browning & Baines, coffee dealers, have
supplied six pounds of coffee a week for a long time past.

“We greatly appreciate the generous co-operation of all these dear
friends, who help us to help others to help themselves.”

The benefits of the Penny Lunch can never be told till the books of
eternity are opened, but some idea may be gathered when we state that
the report of the bread line from May 12, 1911, to May 12, 1912, was
41,750, but the report from May 12, 1912, to May 12, 1913, was 18,950.
The Bread Line is the name of a service at 6 A.M., the year round, when
bread and black coffee is served to all who come for it. If people will
come before daylight in the winter, or at that early hour in the summer
for coffee, without cream or sugar, and a quarter of a loaf of bread, we
believe they need it, and we gladly give it, not as a charity, but as a
visible token of our sympathy. Now, the fact that 22,800 fewer people
took bread and coffee free in the year 1912 to 1913, compared with the
preceding year, can only be accounted for that when a man has a few
pennies in his pocket he could buy a satisfactory breakfast, and gladly
did so rather than to line up for an unrequited kindness.

How shamed many men were to take food in the bread line, but the loving
word sweetened many a bitter cup. Once a hand so unusually white and
well-kept reached for the cup of coffee. Mrs. Kline looked up and saw
the face of a man who had been a minister of the gospel. She said,
“Brother, take only the coffee, we want you to take breakfast at our
family table this morning.” He sat down to drink the coffee with bitter
tears coursing down his shamed face. Of course, every kindness was shown
him, “for need has its right, and necessity its claim,” then the blessed
Spirit came in and lo, he prayed, and God received back to a useful life
a man who had found sorrow and sin bitter and the tears of remorse salt.

WHAT DR. HALLIMOND, OF THE NEW YORK BOWERY MISSION, SAYS ABOUT THE BREAD
LINE

“There are in the Bowery men who never sleep in a lodging house because
they have not the price, and they get their bed either by stealing or
begging, and eat out of the garbage boxes. You who have never been to
the Bowery know nothing of the agony or remorse that these men feel.
Now, what are we to do with them? There is not anybody to look after
them but us. Oh, the horrors of the homeless man! It is the many little
comforts that go to make our comfortable life. They cannot keep clean.
They cannot brush their clothes or comb their hair, they cannot take
their shoes off their poor tired feet. These men gather there in the
great meetings, and among them are many that are in the last stages of
physical weakness. Many of them ought to be in the hospital instead of
walking the street day and night. Many of them are dying of hunger.
Sometimes we cannot get men to understand that we have people in our
meetings that are dying of hunger. I am not using any figure of speech.
It is not an unheard-of thing for men to drop dead in our meetings. That
is why we have the 'bread line.' We dare not fail to help these people.
People sometimes come to us with the very best of intentions, talking to
us of the sin of indiscriminate charity; but, bless your life! is not
God indiscriminate, for does not He cause the rain to fall on the just
and unjust? Did Jesus Christ ever go through the hungry crowds and find
out who was worthy and who was unworthy? Did He not spend His life to
help just such men? These dear people some of them are spending
seventy-five cents to find out where the other twenty-five cents is to
go. I have made up my mind that if I ever find a man dying on my
doorstep of hunger, and I can do anything to save him, I am going to do
it, whether he deserves it or whether he does not.

“That is the origin of our bread line about which you have heard so
much. We cannot help but have a bread line. In fact, I refuse to allow
our work to be called a charity. It is not a charity, it is brotherly
kindness. It is not a charity, but a kind hospitality, just a little
evidence, just a little token, that there is somebody who cares for
their poor weary hearts which these destitute brothers of ours possess.
As long as the bread line exists, and God helping, it shall exist as
long as there is need for it, people must know that there is something
wrong with our social system, a problem that we cannot solve but that is
up to the politician. As long as we are in this great, rich country with
all the extravagances of wealth, then the bread line shall tell that
there is something wrong, and that our Declaration of Independence,
declaring, as it does, for 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,'
is but a delusion and a snare.”

This seems a long interlude to the Penny Lunch chapter, but you can see
the lunch counter where five cents can buy beans, bread and coffee,
saves many a man from feeling that he takes charity. The bread line was
instituted to fortify a man's stomach against needing to go to the
saloon in the morning for the free lunch, also to give strength to a
poor fellow so he could search for work.

The bread line food given each morning will not of itself sustain life,
as we found out to our sorrow. One Tuesday night, as the writer entered
the Mission for the purpose of conducting the service, I found the men
at the door excited. On inquiry, I found a man lying on the front seat
dying. The Emergency Hospital ambulance had already been called. I found
a man who twenty years ago had been a leading patent attorney of this
city. I saw the soul was about to depart. I said, “Mr. West, say, 'Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit.'” “No, I have lived wicked, I shall die
wicked.” “O son, say, 'Lord Jesus, forgive me.'” “Too late, too late; I
have heard you all, night after night, and I have rejected Christ. I
must die as I have lived.”

I motioned the choir to sing softly, “Jesus receiveth sinful men.” I
bent over him, urging repentance; the ambulance men were at my side,
they picked him up and laid him carefully on the stretcher. I said,
“Dear Mr. West, we are praying for you, pray for yourself.” I kept my
hand tenderly on his head as the stretcher was slowly carried out, but
he continued to say, “Too late, too late for me.”

He died within an hour, and the post-mortem showed he had died of
inanition caused by slow starvation. We found he had tried to live on
the bread and coffee of the bread line alone; he was too poor to buy
food, too proud to tell his needs, and we were too stupid and too busy
to realize his awful need. We thereby learned a good lesson, and the
Superintendent and helpers now all look more carefully after the man who
sits down claiming either exhaustion or sickness.

No man, woman or child is ever refused food because without money, but
if a man can buy whisky, we think he ought to be able to buy food,
though even then we look after him.

We cannot leave the granting of food to employees, so when the
Superintendent and his wife are absent we have some pathetic cases. Mr.
Gordon found a little fellow crying at the door. “What is the matter,
little man?” said the big man. “Mother gave me ten cents to buy food for
our family, and I have lost the money.” You may be sure Mr. Gordon
obtained much more than ten cents' worth of food for the child. Very
many families live in one furnished room and get all their food at the
penny lunch counter. Seamstresses, all the dollar a day men for many
squares, girls from the Agricultural Seed Bureau, come in and buy at
cost the luncheon at the middle of the day. Many well-to-do people come
in and take luncheon to watch the various grades of humanity who solve
the cost of high living by taking meals at the Mission. All the street
peddlers, the umbrella man, the shoestring and pencil man, the rag
gatherers, eat at the counter, the better class sit at the tables.

Mr. Gordon saw a little altercation between a waiter and a customer, the
waiter demanding four cents while the man had but three cents. “But you
should not have ordered food unless you could pay for it.” The poor man
looked dreadfully embarrassed, at last he looked up and said, “Will you
lend me a cent, sir?” which was gladly done.

Many who come only for the cheap meal are induced by the kindness shown
and by the good music and bright lights in the chapel, to go in to the
services. There some song, some word from the speaker, some devout
prayer, touches the chord of memory of what a mother, a faithful teacher
or almost forgotten preacher has taught years ago, and, backed by the
Holy Spirit, a prodigal son or a prodigal daughter returns to the
Father's house.

Mr. Kline reports the meals furnished in the Penny Lunch Room from May
12, 1912, to May, 1913, to be 87,856, at an average cost of four and
one-third cents per meal.

THE DISPENSARY

was opened February 1, 1912, after the need was very apparent, and
further neglect of this branch of work seemed impossible.

Never will I forget the day when I first called up Dr. C. H. Bowker, one
of the leading physicians of the city, living on Massachusetts Avenue,
near Thomas Circle, the very heart of the city, and told him of a man
who had pneumonia, and of a woman in the shelter with a severe cold, and
asked him to go to the Mission free of charge. I waited with bated
breath for the reply. It was, “I am an exceedingly busy man, but I shall
try to go within an hour.” Very much emboldened, I said, “Could you stop
in once a day to see if anyone there has a contagious disease, or if
anyone should be sent immediately to the hospital?”

The answer seemed very slow, and I fairly trembled, for our need was so
great. At last he said, “Well, I have noticed if I put a duty on my
daily program, I manage in some way to get it in.” From that day to this
that blessed doctor has been at the beck and call of the Mission day and
night; only God knows what a help and a comfort he has been to broken
men and sorrowful women in that part of the city.

The February _Gospel Tidings_, of 1912, had the following:

GOSPEL MISSION DISPENSARY

“For several months we have had a house physician, and the use and need
for him has steadily increased. The establishment of regular hours at
which patients could see the doctor, and a proper place for
consultation, naturally suggested the establishment of a dispensary.
This appeared feasible to the Executive Committee, and Mrs. Monroe,
Superintendent Kline and Dr. Bowker were appointed a committee to study
the advisability of such an addition to our work. The report from this
committee was favorable to the project, and active steps were at once
taken to the establishment of a free general dispensary for the
treatment of all classes of cases, or their reference, where necessary,
to special institutions.

“The location of the Mission for dispensary work could not be better
from any point of view. It is accessible to the hundreds needing its
help. There is no conflict in its field by any other institution doing
this class of work. Four rooms on the first floor of the Mission, with
the chapel for a waiting-room, will serve admirably for dispensary needs
at present. And these rooms are rapidly being put in shape by carpenters
and painters. Shelves are being made for the pharmacy, a door cut
through the partition, and running water is to be installed.

“Our printing plant will again demonstrate its usefulness by furnishing
the necessary record blanks, labels, treatment cards, etc.

“The Executive Committee has placed Dr. Charles Harvey Bowker, 1204
Massachusetts Avenue, in full charge of the Gospel Mission Dispensary,
and he will have associated with him at first Dr. O. C. Cox, 1320
Eleventh Street, N. W. A number of leading physicians and surgeons have
evinced an interest and willingness to give their services, and Dr.
Bowker will add them to the dispensary staff and assign them work as the
clinic grows and they are needed.

“Dr. Bowker's experience in managing a hospital in his home city, and
his hospital and dispensary work in Washington, assure us a businesslike
management of this new branch of our work.

“Our need at present is for drugs and surgical dressing, and it is hoped
that the druggists of the city may contribute.

“The dispensary opened Thursday, February 1, 1912, at 10 A.M., which
will be the regular daily hour, and all those who are interested are
invited to inspect the new rooms.”

You notice that we opened February 1, 1912, and our annual report in May
_Tidings_, 1913, shows the following:

THE MISSION FREE DISPENSARY

_Staff_

Physician in charge, Dr. Charles H. Bowker, 1204 Massachusetts
Avenue, N. W.

_Associates_

Dr. Oliver C. Cox, 1320 Eleventh Street, N. W.
Dr. W. O. Owen, Southern Building.
Dr. William F. Hemler, 706 Eighth Street, N. W.
Dr. C. A. Simpson, 1217 Connecticut Avenue, N. W.
Dr. C. F. Dufour, 1347 L Street, N. W.
Dr. Adam Kemble, Cecil Apartments, Fifteenth and L Streets, N. W.
Dr. Jesse Ramsburgh, The Portner.

_Hours for Treatment_

Medical and surgical cases treated daily, 11 to 12 A.M.
Diseases of Women—Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Diseases of Men—Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Diseases of Children—Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Diseases of Ear, Eye, Nose and Throat—Monday and Thursday.

_Report for the Year Ending April 30, 1913_

Cases treated 2500
Referred to Hospital 80
Treated at homes 80

The dispensary is in need of a sterilizer and a special fund for medical
supplies for those too poor to pay.

* * * * *

The sterilizer later was the gift of Dr. Jesse Ramsburgh, and we have a
complete set of lenses for testing the eyes of school children.

It would break your heart to see the women with babies, the aged on
crutches, the hosts of children, the aged victims of every vice, now
broken and often repentant, seek the aid of these good men. Often we run
short of remedies. “What do they do then?” you ask. Well, they simply go
down in their own pockets and buy the necessities, and no one is turned
empty away.

Think of a procession of sick and needy persons, 2500 human beings in
line, and you will see in your mind what that blessed dispensary has
done for the sorrowful of this city in one year.

I wish I dare to tell you the particulars of one of these great
physicians who had not been living close to God, seeing our work of
faith, seeing how the Mission people lay their many needs before a
patient God, who meets every demand in answer to their prayer, and
possibly feeling that in a mission he could not minister to a mind
diseased without himself being in touch with the living God, was led to
revise his views, make public confession of his faith and enlist in
God's organized method of evangelizing the world by joining the church.
We all need God, but the hand that reaches down to help sinful men must
have the other hand clasped close in God's strong hand if he would do
effective work.

CHAPTER X
THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL

St. Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the
_power_ of God unto salvation.”

Yes, the gospel is the _power_. The soul is as dead as a street car with
the power gone, till it is touched by that special power. I could kneel
at the side of a sinner and quote the very best things of Shakespeare or
Milton, and the soul would step to no higher ground; but when the right
verse of God's word is shown with the New Testament in hand, and the
Holy Spirit makes that soul see that the passage before him is God's
recorded wireless message for his soul alone, the power comes on and
that verse again proves true, “But as many as received Him, to them gave
He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His
name,” and a soul is born into the kingdom of God. Dan Crawford, the
great missionary to Africa, says not Livingstone, not Taylor, not Dan
Crawford, are the real pioneer missionaries, but the Spirit of God
Himself, and when the word is brought to a prepared soul it is a spark
of powder. He tells of one besotted Negro who read John's Gospel. The
Negro said, “I was startled that Christ could speak Chulba; I heard Him
speak out of the printed page, and what He said to me was, 'Follow me.'”
Mr. Crawford says, “When the guncotton of John's Gospel came in contact
with the tinder of his rebellion, he was literally exploded into the
kingdom,” and by continuing to study St. John's Gospel the transforming
power of the gospel made him a good earnest Christian man, fit for the
companionship of good people.

At a rescue mission we have such scenes almost every night of the year.
In our case it is usually the word first implanted in the human heart
either at a mother's knee or by some Sunday school teacher, or by a
faithful preacher in early life, then the very room of the Mission is
filled with the Holy Spirit in answer to the prayers of God's people.
Now, when a heart-broken, world-buffeted sinner comes into the room, the
words or music of some song, or the presentation of God's word, is used
by God's Spirit to bring to memory all the sinner has known of these
things; he hears redeemed men tell how God cured them of lust, of
alcoholism, of gambling, of profane language, of all sin; he sees these
men well clothed, radiantly happy, and sees and feels his own
degradation; is it any wonder he drops on his knees and cries out, “Men
and brethren, what shall I do to be saved”? When he wants God more than
he wants deliverance from his besetting sin, when he wants God more than
he wants his deserted wife and children, when he wants God for what God
can do for his poor soul, the God of his soul comes down, and at that
second the soul passes from death unto life eternal, for that soul the
decisions of the judgment day have been settled, for Jesus said,
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my words and believeth
on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into
condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.”

That verse comprehended and lived has power enough to carry a soul
through all besetments into the very presence of God.

THE CASE OF MR. ABBOTT

During the winter of 1910, there came into the Gospel Mission a man,
ragged, soiled, blear-eyed, doped and utterly down and out; he came only
for the coffee and rolls given Sunday night. Before coming up the steps
he had said to a friend, “I don't want to hear any of their blank
sermons, but I am starving.” He heard no sermon, instead he received a
warm hand-shake, he heard bright singing, but, best of all, he heard
redeemed men tell how God had saved them from the alcohol habit, till he
cried out, “If God has power to save me from the sin of drink, I want
God!” He kneeled and poured out his soul in prayer. As soon as he began
to pray aloud, we saw he was an educated man. The Spirit came upon him
in great power, he really had the searchlight of God on his soul, and he
saw himself for a short time as God saw him. Then God forgave him, he
rose justified, strong, happy, a new man in Christ Jesus. The Mission
gave him a bed for the night, and the next morning this man, who had not
worked or desired work for two years, begged that we should find a place
for him to earn his way. He obtained a situation to solicit business for
a laundry, about as hard work as one can imagine, but he made good, and
in six months he was made foreman of the laundry in which he was
employed. He modernized its methods and doubled its business by the end
of the year, and the company made him a present of five hundred shares
of stock and elected him president of the company. Then he received
$3000 a year salary, besides his percentage of all gains made by the
house. His friends claim his income is now about $5000 a year. In the
meantime, after he had been redeemed, probably four months, his wife, a
most beautiful and accomplished Philadelphia woman, brought their lovely
son, aged about eight, and they began housekeeping again. The home has
given needed physical comfort, the companionship has given the mental
and the spiritual help needed to make this former tramp into a
first-class citizen. At night, during the last winter, he has been
studying law in one of the university law schools, and on Sunday he acts
as usher and vestryman in one of the largest Protestant Episcopal
churches. As a child he had been a choir boy in a church in
Philadelphia. Doubtless the knowledge gained there as a child made him
able to understand his duty to God and man after his conversion better
far than an ignorant, uninstructed person could have done after months
of instruction.

[Illustration: CHILDREN OF ALL NATIONS]

[Illustration: SETTLEMENT HOUSE]

THE PSYCHOLOGY

of just this case is worth considering. This man was spiritually dead,
so far as we could see. He did not desire to live. The people of the
Mission had been more or less in prayer from three o'clock to eight when
this man came in. He saw religion in action in the person and speech of
redeemed men. But even if these testimonies were factors it was the Holy
Spirit that did the work. It was the divine spark to human tinder, or,
as Henry Drummond better puts it, “The spiritual world reached down and
carried this worldly soul into the world above it.” “He that hath the
Son hath life, he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Life
depends upon contact with life, it cannot develop out of anything that
is not life.

Even as the physiologist cannot explain how the human seed generates in
a human body eventually becoming a new-born man child, neither can
theology fully explain how the Holy Spirit can touch a human soul out of
which will be born another soul in the same body with marks of its
divine parentage in every line, or, as St. Paul says, a new creature in
Christ Jesus.

I heard a distinguished man who had long been in official connection
with prisons and reformatories, say, “A reformed man is always in
danger; he may stand twenty years and then fall back into sin, but a
regenerated man is as safe from his sinful besetments as if they had not
been the weakness of his life.”

I fancy I can hear some preacher say, “If it is the word and the Holy
Spirit do the work, why does not the church have as many conversions as
a mission?” The very first element of spiritual power is lacking in most
churches. If the preacher, the official members, then every member of
the church first sought God's special blessing in private, then came
together offering first praise, then united prayer to God from the very
depths of their hearts, there would be conversions every Sunday in every
church.

Spurgeon and Moody expected conversions every Sunday, and they had them.

In presenting a soul to Christ no perfunctory Christian can do it and
have that soul received. To present a person to the King of England, let
us say, the presenter needs to be acquainted with the king; so a person
unacquainted with God has no power at the throne; he even impedes the
soul coming into the light. I have seen many a dancing, card-playing
Christian at the side of the penitent, praying earnestly, then rise
baffled, troubled, helpless; not able to reach the throne, they had no
access to God.

Often people from the States write me to present such and such a paper
in person to the President of the United States. I am obliged to reply,
“I have no access to the President of the United States,” but I daily
thank God that I have access to the throne, for I am acquainted with
God.

RELIGION WITH THE DEFECTIVE DELINQUENT

I venture to take the two following short articles from the November
numbers of 1913 of the _Survey_, the most valuable weekly magazine which
comes to my desk on all social questions:

“WHAT ABOUT JEFF?”

“Jeff is a white boy sixteen years old. I am estimating this, as
Jeff says he doesn't know how old he is and doesn't know his
surname. He has every appearance of being a little less than half
witted.

“I found Jeff this morning working, with two other white boys and
ten or twelve Negro boys, as an inmate of the County Workhouse. He
was carrying stone on a public hitch-lot. One of the white boys and
two of the Negro boys were in chains.

“Jeff has been in the workhouse for sixty days. He was placed there
for beating a ride on a railroad train. Next Monday Jeff will be
released. He will have not a cent to his name, not very good
clothes, not a relative in the country, no place to sleep and
nothing to eat.

“I have put this predicament before our city inter-church
organization, and we have seen no solution. About the best thing we
can see for this half-witted boy is that he will do something that
will again bring him within the clutches of the law in order that he
may be immediately sent back to the workhouse. At the age of sixteen
he is a human derelict, yet he has capacity to work, to love, to
respect, to enjoy, and to feel sorrow.

“There is another mentally weak boy in this same gang. If we knew
what to do with Jeff we might be able to do more for the other one.
What do you suggest?”—_W. H. Swift, Greensboro, N. C._

“SUE AND JEFF”

“'What about Jeff?' was shown to a New York settlement worker.
'Print it,' he said, 'in the hope that someone may stir up the
inter-church organizations of Greensboro to find another solution.
The question is: What about that organization? rather than poor
Jeff. He is a victim of wrong social conditions, plus his weak head;
but if there is no one in his neighborhood who can see any other
solution than the workhouse for a lad who has the “capacity to work,
to love, to respect, to enjoy and to feel sorrow,” then I suggest
that the community is worse off, a good deal, than poor Jeff. To
begin with, why don't the inter-church organization take him under
its own wing?'

“Now, it would be very easy for the inter-church organization of
Greensboro to take care of Jeff if there were only one of him.
Unfortunately, there are many hundreds of him. How many of the boys
of sixteen sent to the island from the New York City courts are of
Jeff's class? Nobody knows for certain, because nobody tries to find
out. Those of us who have lived for years among defectives and have
visited reform schools know that the number is large. Yet the
inter-church organizations of New York City do not take them under
their wings.

“The proportion of the feeble-minded Jeffs in various reformatories
has been to range from twenty to fifty per cent of all the inmates.
Every intelligent worker with prisoners knows there are many
weak-minded among them; yet the usual method of treating the
defective-delinquent (and every defective is a potential delinquent)
throughout the United States is to do with them just what our
Greensboro friend hopes to do with Jeff—send him to the workhouse as
soon as he commits his next petty crime. And we keep on doing it
over and over and over again.

“Meanwhile the proper method with the Jeffs and the Sues is so
simple and plain, so patently economical in this generation, and so
tremendously profitable for the next, that its very simplicity makes
it neglected. The colony at Templeton, Mass.; the one just organized
at Menantico, N. J.; the farm colonies at Fort Wayne, Ind.; Lincoln,
Ill.; Faribault, Minn.; Columbus, Ohio; and Letchworth Village, N.
Y., all point the way with greater or less success.

“Yet Letchworth Village was enacted by the legislature of New York
nearly five years ago. Its first commission reported 29,000 suitable
inmates pressing for care. To-day it has only 100 inmates; and the
Inter-church Federation says nothing.

“It is not worth while to get all stirred up and excited about Jeffs
in North Carolina. What have we to say about the defectives in
jails, workhouses, penitentiaries, reformatories, and prisons under
our noses in New York? Is our beam so big that we cannot see
it?”—_Alexander Johnson, Director Department of Extension, Vineland,
N. J._

Now, that was the churches' opportunity. Federation work should see that
a religious school should be started in each community for its Jeffs and
Sues. A city rescue mission could easily find work for Jeff.

I saw a Jeff come into the Sunday school of my own church. He was a
great lumbering chap of eighteen years of age, he was not quite clean,
there was the odor of the unwashed about him. He immediately went to the
class of about thirty young men of his own age. I was gratified to see
that youth seek the society of the church people rather than the saloon,
but he was not welcome with the young men. The teacher visited his home,
there was no help to be expected from the home, so the teacher, or the
class, whether by actual request or by treatment, caused Jeff to stay
away. Now, in the great day of accounts, of whom will that soul be
required? If the defective intellect, what there is of it, can be turned
to believe God, the defective is prevented from becoming a criminal. We
have them at the Gospel Mission. The very first thing is to have the
physician talk to Jeff of the sacredness of his own body to absolutely
prevent all secret habits which injure the body and brain, and the
motive of self-restraint both for physical habits and for drink must be
that these things offend a loving Saviour who walks with each one of us.

Each year I meet Dr. H. M. Freas, of Philadelphia, at Northfield. His
work as a physician frequently takes him to the asylum for the insane.
He feels most keenly that these institutions should be in the hands of
Christian people only. Many a brilliant intellect could be restored to
perfect sanity if the loving care of some saintly Protestant sisterhood
or brotherhood were in charge to bring the human love, which even the
sanest of us need, to bear on the tottering brain. These human
deficients are found in the public schools; as soon as discovered they
should be transferred to a religious school where they can be
scientifically studied, what intellect they have developed, and the
religious side of each one fostered. If then they are found permanently
deficient, especially in the moral sense, or in physical self-control,
then they should be segregated on farms for the sake of the race. People
of deficient brains become fanatics; now, if these unbalanced people
become filled with an enthusiasm of righteousness they absolutely do
much good. They constitute three-fourths of the street preachers, and
they reach many a soul who never enters a church. Religion prevents
insanity. There is no doubt that fanaticism run riot leads to the
asylum. We had one man who was insufficiently fed, badly clothed, who
spent the entire night in prayer, two or three nights of the week. Of
course, he was brought up in the insane asylum, but when he had food
enough at the asylum where he was not permitted to pray aloud, he soon
became normal, and was set free. It taught him a needed lesson.

But religion sustains us through the breaking ties of life, through the
loss of fortune, through the defection of friends, through blasted
hopes, through the anguish of children going wrong, and their punishment
by the State which follows.

Religion holds many a woman whose son is a wanderer, either criminal or
otherwise, from insanity. I know a woman who has not looked into the
face of her wandering son for six years. She stands up and sings with
radiant face, “I am going through whatever others do, I am going through
with Jesus,” and in spite of what looks an unbearable sorrow, leads a
useful and apparently happy life. A mission is a blessed thing for
enthusiasts. It sends them with flowers and literature to hospitals and
jails, it sends food to private families in need, it gives the
enthusiasts tracts to distribute, it puts musical instruments into their
hands and says, “Praise the Lord with pleasant sounds,” it sets women to
repairing clothing for the poor, to caring for little children, while
mothers earn money for food. As we do these things we talk religion, we
tell of Jesus, the friend of sinners, we make a steady effort in very
many directions to have each soul brought into harmony with God. In
almost every instance where sorrow in a family has been the result of
sin; and Jesus is allowed to become to each of them a personal Saviour;
the home is electrified by a new enthusiasm; the parents become
efficient, self-supporting, happy; the children become self-respecting;
are taken from the class needing help; and become helpers. Religion
eases the burden of life and heals the welts of adversity.

We have in Washington a club known as “The Monday Evening Club,” a
clearing house for all forms of philanthropy. At the different banquets
and at their monthly meetings all forms of reforms, from purely a
humanitarian standpoint, are discussed, but we, who go at the open sores
of the world with the only sure cure earth has yet received, the
religion of Jesus Christ, we receive no recognition, we are given no
hearing at banquets, and are never spoken of as part of the city's force
for betterment, yet we comfort the prisoner, we bring hope to the
hopeless, and we are the real protection of the city. No hungry man is
turned from our door unsatisfied. A hungry man is a danger, a man with a
hungry family is a menace. He will get food even if it costs a life to
obtain it. Like Him whom we serve we are rejected of men. We work amid
the social dynamite of a great city. Unless the religious part of this
nation assumes its rightful place as arbiter in all labor troubles,
saying to the rich man, “Thou shalt not defraud,” and to the poor man,
“Thou shalt do no violence”; unless Christian people see to it that
remunerative labor can be had by every person willing to work; unless
Christian people close the saloons (the author of seventy-five per cent
of the sufferings of the poor), on some sad day our great cities will be
systematically dynamited. As Christians we must go down among them and
make the broken man feel that he is only temporarily sidetracked from
the great highway of success. That the grace of God and his own will can
and will bring him back to the great highway of prosperity.

The Church is waking up to its full duty in social service. Bishop
Simpson, even in his day, eloquently described the mission of the Church
in the world: “The Church must grope her way into the alleys and courts
and purlieus of the city, and up the broken staircase, and into the bare
room and beside the loathsome sufferer; she must go down into the pit
with the miner, into the forecastle with the sailor, into the tent with
the soldier, into the shop with the mechanic, into the factory with the
operative, into the field with the farmer, into the counting-room with
the merchant. Like the air, the Church must press equally on all the
surfaces of society; like the sea, flow into every nook of the shoreline
of humanity, and, like the sun, shine on things foul and low, as well as
fair and high, for she was organized, commissioned and equipped for the
moral renovation of the world.”

In closing this chapter we cannot do better than to quote from the
fourth volume of the Jewish Encyclopedia, which pays this remarkable
tribute to Christianity:

“Christianity, following the matchless ideals of its Christ, redeemed
the despised and outcast, and ennobled suffering. It checked
infanticide, and founded asylums for the young. It removed the curse of
slavery by making the humblest bondsmen proud of being a child of God.
It fought against the cruelties of the arena, it invested the home with
purity and proclaimed the value of each human soul as a treasure in the
eyes of God, and it so leavens the great masses of the empire as to
render the cross of Christ the sign of victory for its legions in place
of the Roman eagle.

“The Galilean entered the world as a conqueror. The Church became the
educator of pagan nations; and one race after another was brought under
her tutorship. The Latin races were followed by the Celt, the Teuton and
the Slav. The same burning enthusiasm which sent forth the first
Apostles, also set the missionaries aglow, and brought all Europe and
Africa, and finally the American continent, under the scepter of an
omnipotent Church. Christianity is not an end, but the means to an end,
the establishment of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.”

CHAPTER XI
HEREDITARY SIN

It was an exceedingly cold night when Jake Grossman burst into the
mission, having on the apparel of a hotel cook. He did not take a seat,
but marched to the front and prostrated himself at the altar, crying,
“God be merciful to me, a sinner.” In such cases, no difference what we
are doing, all formal program is suspended and we go at once to prayer.
Jake was in deep earnest, men and women acquainted with God kneeled all
about him, presenting his case to the Saviour of men. We did not then
know his special need, but a soul in the depth of conviction wanted God,
not for one sin, but he needed cleansing from all the sins of his past
life. It must have been an hour before that soul received light. The
choir had sung softly, “I'm coming home to-night,” and like melodies;
others had come to the altar, been forgiven and gone to their seats,
when Jake Grossman rose to his feet and rejoiced that he had found peace
and pardon through the blood of Christ.

We found afterwards that Grossman was the son of the great Swiss
engineer, who had planned the great tunnel through the Alps, whose
genius had built bridges over roaring, impassable canyons, who had
planned the electric roads in all parts of Switzerland, until he was
wined and dined by scientists not only in his own country but in many
countries, so that he had acquired the alcoholic habit, after which his
brain became sluggish and at last he fell from his high estate, became a
common drunkard and died poor. The memory of the wicked shall perish.

While he was yet prosperous, using expensive wines, his only legitimate
son was born. The mother noticed that, as a child of six or seven, Jake
wanted a sip every time wine was used on the table; by twelve he could
drink a large glass of wine and not show drunkenness. By his twentieth
year Jake was a drunkard, the father dead, the mother poor and
heart-broken. Friends and relatives all advised sending Jake to America,
where wine is not used on the table, and also to get Jake away from old
companions.

He came with letters to good people, but alcoholism is not baffled by
change of location. His money gave out, the people to whom he had been
introduced refused to receive him. Fortunately his mother had taught him
to cook, so he obtained a place as an assistant cook in a Washington
hotel; later he developed into a first-class chef. When he came to the
Mission he had been discharged for drunkenness, and now, being a
redeemed man, he went back to the hotel, gave up his white clothing,
gathered up his belongings, and sought other work.

That was five years ago. Jake has often been asked by the hotels of this
city to cook for them at a salary of $100 or more a month, but Jake
daily prays, “Lead us not into temptation,” and he does not knowingly
walk into it. He shovels coal at a wage of $10 per week. He says, “You
see, it keeps me in the open air; I do not have to taste wine or smell
it; I get black on the outside, but I keep white within, which was more
than I did as a cook.”

All the heroes are not in high places. “He that ruleth his spirit is
better than he that taketh a city.” We believe God cleansed Jake
Grossman from inherited sin.

HEREDITY

I see that scientists are now claiming that a tendency to use alcohol is
not hereditary. We who work among alcoholics know that it is. God says
that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children unto the
third and fourth generation, and they are. God gives a high premium for
virtue to all who would take the responsibility of bringing another life
into the world.

I remember a man converted at the Breakfast Association, Philadelphia. I
had spoken on the power of God to take away even inherited tendencies of
sin from our souls. A young chap in the audience sent an usher to ask me
to see him in the after meeting. I went down the aisle till I stood by
his side. He said, “Can God save me from drink? My father was a
saloon-keeper and died drunk. My mother died a drunkard; she fed me beer
as an infant. I am now twenty-two years old; I do not remember a day in
my life that I have not used beer.” Looking over that blear-eyed crowd,
he said, “I do not want an old age like these wretches. Do you know that
I recognize among these bloats at least twenty men who are the sons of
saloon-keepers? You Christians have not yet discovered that no man puts
liquor to his neighbor's lips without destroying his own family. Now,
can God save me from the sin and shame of the old age of an alcoholic
paralytic?”

“Well, let us go to the altar and ask Him.” We knelt long at the altar.
At last he claimed that he had been accepted of God. As he started to
leave the hall he came back and said, “Do pray for me; I am afraid of
the smells of the street; I am afraid of my old companions. Pray for
me.”

“Well,” I said, “you come home with me, you are young enough to be my
son. If you were, I would want some good woman to mother you.” The next
day I took him to Lancaster, Pa., where at that time I had a number of
acquaintances among business men. I took him to quite a number before I
came to a man who would take him at all, and to a number who would take
him but not agree to help save a soul. At last I came to a Christian man
in the leather business, who agreed to take him into his family,
instruct him in the very rudiments of religion, take him to church and
Sunday school with him; in fact, to nourish this new-born soul in
Christ. We prayed together, then I left him. For a very short time I
received a postal-card each week, which I failed to answer; then, amid
the cares of a very busy life, I forgot him. About three years after
that I was walking along a street in Lancaster when a fine-looking chap
came rushing from behind me, and, placing his arm over my shoulder,
said, “Oh, God bless you! God bless you!”

I turned and found a fine-looking man with tear-dimmed eyes blessing me.
“Son,” I said, “what is your name?”

“Oh! do you not know me? I have prayed for you every day for three
years, and you have forgotten me.”

“Well,” I said, “I fancy you are so much better looking to-day than you
were then so that your own mother might not know you now.”

I walked back to the leather store with him and found my friend behind
the counter. “Mr. S.” I said, “is John Schmidt a good man?”

He did not wait to go around the counter, but, coming right over it, he
placed a hand on each of John's shoulders as he said, “I am glad to bear
witness that John is a true, good man. At first he was sorely tried to
associate only with our kind of people, but he has worked all day, gone
to school at night, gone to church and Sunday school every Sunday, and
he is about to marry one of the best young women of our church.” God had
done a perfect work of grace, and the hereditary drunkard became a good
man and a useful citizen. It must be so, for the word says the blood of
Christ Jesus cleanses from _all_ sin.

MR. KLINE'S TESTIMONY

On the evening of September 16, 1913, Mr. Kline, our Superintendent of
the Gospel Mission, gave, in substance, the following:

“It is ten years ago to-night since God, for Christ's sake, forgave my
sins. It was a day like this has been, a perfect day in September. I had
become a confirmed drunkard, so that every waking moment I kept myself
under the influence of whisky. I was a good workman, but I was conscious
that my strength had gone. Three days before I had been attacked with a
trembling which seemed like palsy. As I looked in the glass I saw the
face of a dying man. The barkeeper saw it. He said, 'Kline, take a
drink; you will shake to pieces.' It took four or five drinks to make my
hand steady enough to work. Then the barkeeper said, 'Now you need work
to bring you to strength. You may paper and fix up this bar-room.' I
went to a paper house, selected my paper, and had the man make a bill
four times what it should have been. The bill was paid and I went back
to the paper store and got my rake-off. You see, I had become dishonest
as well as a drunkard. I had been brought up in a Lutheran household in
Harrisburg by a Christian aunt, who was a member of old Zion Lutheran
Church.

“My mother had died in my infancy. I never saw her to remember her
appearance; I never saw a likeness of her, a lock of hair or a garment
which she had worn; but when dying she left a message with my aunt, a
message which never left me, even when I was farthest from God. It was
these words, 'Bring up my boy to meet me in heaven.' It was those words
which really brought me back to my mother's God.

“When I quit work in that saloon that 16th day of September, 1903, I was
all in. I saw my face in the mirror over the bar, and when I am dead I
shall not be more colorless. The barkeeper filled my bottle, and instead
of going, as usual, to my home in the southwest, I made my way up
Four-and-a-half Street. I was simply impelled by an unseen force. Behind
every tree I took a nip from the bottle, till I came to Pennsylvania
Avenue. Then I knew I dared not drink where a policeman would see me;
so, hardly knowing where I was or what I was doing, I staggered to the
old bank corner at Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. They tell me
I disturbed the meeting, but when they adjourned to the Mission Hall I
followed weeping and crying, 'I shall not go out of this hall till I am
dead or saved.'

“I have been told by Brothers Gordon and Wheeler that no drunkard we
have ever seen disgrace himself in this mission ever behaved worse than
I did. God gave them that night the grace of patience.

[Illustration: BOY SCOUTS]

[Illustration: CAMP FIRE GIRLS]

“I cried to God, 'This poor man cried, and God heard him.' I rose to my
feet, sobered and in my right mind. I gave the bottle to Brother Bratz,
and when I got out on the street I threw away my cigarettes and tobacco,
and from that day to this I have not touched or tasted either liquor or
tobacco. The next morning my hand was as steady as it is this minute.
While I was wondering what to do, a rap came to the door. It was the
saloon man's messenger, telling me to come and finish my job. I was
weak, but I was praying. In the meantime Satan was giving me the battle
of my life. The devil is a hard loser. He said, 'Well, if God could keep
Daniel in the lions' den, and the Hebrews in the fiery furnace, He could
surely keep you in the saloon.'

“But God has done better than that for me. He has kept me out of the
saloon. In my distress of mind as to whether I should finish that job or
go for my tools, I picked up my wife's Bible and I opened at these
words, 'Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy
name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters I will be with
thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou
walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the
flame kindle upon thee.' It was a message straight from heaven to my
soul. I so accepted it.

“I never finished the job. I never went after my tools, and from that
day to this I have not entered a saloon. Satan has camped on my trail
many times. I have had trials and temptations, but God has delivered me
from the sins of the flesh, whisky, tobacco and their accompanying sins.
No man who has been a drunkard can ever again safely use tobacco. An
experience of ten years in mission work, where I have seen thousands of
souls born into the kingdom, convinces me that the convert who retains
tobacco will surely slip back. Christ's redeeming blood cleanses from
all sin.

“I was a good workman and I soon had permanent work. I never failed to
make the arrangement before I entered into a contract that I was not to
be expected to enter a saloon or any other disreputable place.”

That was Mr. Kline's testimony, and I would like to say for him that God
greatly uses him and his testimony to bring fallen men back to God. He
is an acceptable preacher of righteousness in almost any pulpit in this
city, and he has done acceptable evangelistic work in many large eastern
cities. His presence in the Gospel Mission, we believe, is helpful to
all the men who come under its roof. He is an honored member of the
Luther Memorial Church.

I reaffirm, as long as one man dead in sin can be transformed into a
living, active, aggressive Christian, the words of the Scripture are as
true to-day as when the angel said, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for
He shall save His people from their sins.” Nothing now known to science
can accomplish what happened to Mr. H. W. Kline that night; that is, as
Prof. James so pertinently says, “Conversion is the only means by which
a radically bad person can be changed into a radically good person.”

Harold Begbie, as a psychologist, says: “Whatever we may think of the
phenomenon itself, the fact stands clear and unassailable that by this
thing called conversion, men consciously wrong, inferior and unhappy,
become consciously right, superior and happy. It produces not a change
but a revolution. It creates a new personality.” We would say a new
creature in Christ Jesus.

The religion of Christ differs from all other religions. They take the
rich, the happy, the successful, as their expositors, but Christ takes
the broken, the sorrowful, the beaten in the race, and makes them the
rich, the successful and the happy expositors of His religion.

EMOTION IN RELIGION

Prof. H. W. Wynn, D.D., one of the great writers of the _Lutheran
Observer_, has these wise words concerning the elements of emotion in
religion:

“We have discovered that religion as a purely emotional experience may
have no religion in it at all, though kindled by the emotional stimuli
that religion commands. There is an emotional element in religion, of
course, deep, powerful, pervasive; and when you give way to it,
enveloping your whole being as in an atmosphere of flame. Those tender
feelings which enter so largely into the deeper currents of our domestic
and social life—love, pity, joy, hope, the striking of the glad hand,
comradeship locking arms under the same great banner to do deeds of
heroism in the same great cause—religion calls them all up, and fires
them all with a conquering zeal.

“But, manifestly, the zeal may burn out before the deeds of heroism have
been begun. We have learned to know that the same emotional fires may be
kindled when religion is not the theme. A great crowd, an orator of
fluent and persuasive speech, music filling the air with the imaginary
shouts of an “Io triumphe” come to stay—it matters very little what may
be the occasion that has called these people together, the emotional
part of their campaign has been achieved. But, whether in religion or in
politics, it would be stupidly unwise to conclude that the excitement
itself was the end to be attained—emotion being set down as the deed
itself; or, in some way, an assured equivalent of the deed.

“In all such cases fanaticism is the result, and fanaticism has never
been an aid, but always, in the long run, an embarrassment to any great
cause. Fanaticism stops with the excitement—absurdly confounds
excitement with the cause to be maintained.

“In religion, especially, this unhappy 'transvaluation of value' is
likely to be made. For long ages it has been systematically taught that
the emotional element in religion either summed it all up or was an
unmistakable token that, then and there, it had been all summed up for
us in the exchequer of the skies. The great transaction had passed, the
thing was done when your religious ecstasy swelled to the highest, and
you found yourself, as you confidently believed, borne on its billows to
the bosom of God.”

Now, we all recognize this emotional element only as a helpful factor in
religion, but not a permanent element. I have seen a few men accept
Christ without any emotion whatever. I remember a blue-eyed, fair
complexioned man saying, “I have no especial emotion. I am truly sorry
for my sins. I confess them now and here, and I claim 1 John 1:9, 'If we
confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' I ask God to cleanse me. I need it
and accept it, because He has said so.” Tracy lived all right as long as
we knew of him. If converts made in evangelistic meetings were taken
into careful Bible school, they would develop into useful Christians,
and there would be no backsliding.

Now, religion, in the sense in which we use it, is a “building” process,
not “inflation,” as the aeronaut would inflate his balloon. We all know
the class of religionists who hop, jump and shout in religious meetings;
they are so busy they do not see the basket as it passes; they give no
money, they do nothing that the world would call religious except these
physical manifestations. They are intolerant to all who do not believe
as they do, they are simply to be tolerated and petted along as
deficients who mean well but cannot be counted as part of the great
organized force of believers which God is using to bring about the
kingdom of God until by training and experience they can be used among
their own class. But, among these, every now and then there comes a man
of good mentality but without education, whom God can use. His church
has no room for him, yet he has the same orders that Jesus gave to the
eleven, “Go ye and preach the gospel to every nation,” and we find him
preaching on the side streets, later a hall or church is hired, and we
have a new sect.

You remember Jane Addams tells of the young college graduate who had
taken a course in a Bible training school and in a school of
philanthropy, who, on her return home, asked the rector for religious
work, and he replied, “You might arrange the flowers on the pulpit each
Sunday.” Think of that to a soul aflame with God!

Macaulay touches off this kind of blindness in his essay on “Ranke's
History of the Popes,” in this way: “Far different is the policy of
Rome. The ignorant enthusiasts whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy,
and, whatever the learned and polite may think, a most dangerous enemy,
the Catholic Church makes a champion; she bids him nurse his beard,
covers him with a gown and hood of coarse dark stuff, ties a rope around
his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her
nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the revenues of her beneficed
clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual
character and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches not exactly
in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of the
uneducated hearers, and all his influence is employed to strengthen the
church of which he is a minister. To that Church he becomes as strongly
attached as any of the cardinals, whose scarlet carriages and liveries
crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church
of Rome unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the
strength of dissent. Even for female agencies there is a place in her
system for devout women; she assigns them spiritual functions, dignities
and magistracies.”

How different from these enthusiasts who have not entered a church for
years; their stock in trade is largely vituperation of the churches
until they are trained into a better understanding of relative social
service. The Church is doing the real Christian work of the world in
keeping people from going wrong. Missions and their branches only hope
to catch the driftwood of humanity before it floats out into the great
ocean of eternity.

But every church in the land should have an investment in money or
personal representatives in the nearest city rescue mission. The young
people of the churches should be the choirs of the missions. They will
get inspiration as to how to do work for God in securing the conversion
of every soul committed to their care in the church and community work.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

1. On p. 51, interest on $17,000 at 5.5% would be $935 instead of $850.
2. Added “was” between he and brought on p. 103.
3. Silently corrected typographical errors.
4. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Twice-born Men in America - or The Psychology of Conversion as Seen by a Christian - Psychologist in Rescue Mission Work" ***

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