THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/drydockofthousanOOroberich THE DRY DOCK OF A THOUSAND WRECKS THE WATER ST. BOOKS The Dry Dock of a Thousand Wrecks By PHILIP I. ROBERTS With Introduction by Dr. J. H. Jowett i2mo, cloth, net ^i.oo A Sequel to "Down in Water Street." Down in Water Street By S. H. HADLEY Introduction by Rev. F. B. Meyer Illustrated, cloth, net $i.oo " The Power of faith to awaken men's consciences, reinforce their wills, and turn them from their lives of degradation to lives of self-control, and virtue is here illustrated by many specific cases." — Outlook. S. H. Hadley of Water Street A Miracle of Grace By J. WILBUR CHAPMAN, D.D. Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, 1.25 " The power of faith to awaken and change men, strengthen their wills and purify their lives, is fully exemplified in these simple and moving narratives," — Outlook. THE NEW McAULEY WATER STREET MISSION, Erected 1912 The McAuley Water Street Mission The Dry Dock of A Thousand Wrecks By PHILIP I. ROBERTS •I With an Introduction ^y JOHN HENRY JOWETT, D. D, New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh 'X.\ Copyright, 1912, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street To The Constant Helpmat? of the ** Superintendent" INTRODUCTION A LITTLE while ago I was speaking to a well-known New York doctor, a man who has had long and varied experience with the diseases that afflict both body and mind. I asked him how many cases he had known of the slaves of drink having been brought by medical treatment into recovered physical health and freedom. How many had he been able to '* doctor " into liberty and self- control? He immediately replied, " Not one." He further assured me that he believed his experience would be corrobo- rated by the general testimony of the faculty of medicine. Doctors might afford a seem- ing and temporary escape, but the real bondage was not broken. At the end of the apparent but brief deliverance it was found that the chains remained. Medicine 9 ivi309160 lo Introduction might address itself to effects, but the cause was as proud and dominant as ever. The doctor had no cure for the drunkard. Drunkenness was primarily a moral malady and demanded the treatment of the will. Soon after this conversation I read the proofs of this book. And here I found the " sufficiency " that filled up the doctor's want. Here is the record of how men and women sunk in animalism, broken in will and despairing in heart, were lifted out of impotence and debasement into moral strength and beauty. These " thou- sand wrecks " have not only been taken into "dry dock" and repaired; they are out again on the high seas, invincible to the tempest, and engaged in scouring those seas for human ships that have been dis- mantled in moral disaster, and towing them into the harbour of divine love and grace. They have been saved to save. Their cleansed hearts are sacrificial in their passion; their energized wills are conse- crated to the service of the Kingdom of our God. Here is the miracle of to-day Introduction 1 1 and every day; lives that were smashed in deviltry are recreated into " the beauty of holiness "; souls that mourned in wretch- edness have been restored into the joy of God's salvation. At Water Street there is abundant witness of " grace abounding,'* and " our Lord is marching on." Now I think it is altogether admirable, in a day when so many are in the gloom of doubt, and when so many are wasting their theology and w^hen so many are seek- ing a rock of assurance, that strong books of practical testimony should be offered to the minds and souls of men. And so I welcome the present powerful book by Mr. Roberts. It is written In strong, vivid, picturesque English. There is nothing wasted in need- less rhetoric. He has placed before us the men we want to see, and we see them! Christ has been at woric and we behold the blessed products of His love and grace. Here is what Christ can do! Here is what Christ is doing! Amid all our uncertain- ties, and amid all our controversies, her^ 1 2 Introduction is something to he seen! God's grace is making men gracious, God's love is making men lovely. Let the Church take heart from the witness, for here we have ** the work of faith, and the labour of love, and the patience of hope." I heartily commend the little book — and I heartily commend " the home of grace " in which these living witnesses found their Lord. May the Water Street Mission receive the abundant benefactions of all who care for the progress of the Kingdom, and may the noble Superintendent and all his fellow-workers be kept strong and joyful in " the power of the Holy Ghost." J. H. JOWETT I^ifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York. Contents I. The Greatest of These 15 II. God's Good Man . . . . 32 III. De Profundis . . . . 43 IV. The Breaking of the Bread 54 V. Into a Far Country 68 VI. Saved to Serve . . . . 86 VII. Sons of Ishmael . . • . 96 VIII. The Portion of Manasseh . . 109 IX. " Out of Nazareth " . . 119 X. The Blossoming Desert 136 XL By a Great Deliverance . 150 XII. The Lifted Bondage . . 164 XIII. The Second Spring . 171 XIV. Saved to the Uttermost . 185 XV. Pilgrims of the Night . 194 ILLUSTRATIONS The New McAuley Water Street Mission Frontispiece OPPOSITE PAGE Interior of New Mission Hall i6 John H. Wyburn 32 Charles Bayard Stewart 46 B. F. Alexander 60 John Tyler 84 Carlton Park 92 Alexander Russell no Christopher J. Balf 126 Richard H. Roberts 142 Edwin C. Mercer 154 Exterior View of the Old Building 190 THE GREATEST OF THESE " And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; but the greatest of these is love." — / Cor. xiii, 13. FOR nearly forty years the Old Jerry McAuley Mission, 316 Water Street, New York City, has been the scene of an unremitting spiritual activity, which from the hour of its inception has been attended by the smile and benediction of Almighty God. Under its world-famous founder, Jerry McAuley, the consecrated Samuel Hopkins Hadley, and under its present administration, a crusade of rescue and reclamation has been prosecuted with unflagging heroism ; and the end is not yet. There is no intention here of attempting a resume of " Water Street" history. That were a superfluous task. Its fame and story have gone forth in the earth. Men are almost everywhere to be met with, telling of how in the McAuley 15 l6 The Greatest of These Mission they found deHverance from the power of the Drink-Fiend and pardon for sias of deepest dye. Moreover, the ground is fully and fascinatingly covered by the late S. H. Hadley in his book, ** Down in Water Street." The erection and opening of the new mis- sion building is an epoch-marking event, and furnishes a fitting occasion for some re- statement of the principles underlying and governing this important work, a recapitula- tion of certain traditions to which its promo- ters cling and of the results they are striving ardently to secure, together with some rec- ognition of one or two of the men who have made the work possible. The former briefly put, are as follows : The proclama- tion of salvation through Jesus Christ, an unfaltering belief in the value of personal testimony and a ministry of compassion, and the ingathering of storm-tossed souls into the kingdom of God. Here is a place where the needy are more welcome than the af- fluent, the drunkard than the abstainer, the thief than the honest man, the sinner than the The Greatest of These 1 7 saint. Loving hearts and willing hands are freely at the disposal of the weary and the lost. The doors of the Mission are closed to none. Men, young and old, husky and frail, educated and ignorant, head continually for Water Street, seeking help in difficulty, guidance in perplexity, comfort in sorrow. And no man is ever repulsed. Whether Christian or Jew, Protestant or Catholic, cit- izen or alien — it matters not at all. For the workers have long ago realized that as they do unto the least they do unto our Lord. Theirs is the joy of service, impelling to the coveted opportunity of seeking the lost, en- heartening those in whose souls hope is well- nigh extinguished, lifting the bruised and fallen, loving the unlovely and the loveless, delivering in Christ's name them that are bound. The work is appallingly difficult. The poor fellows who find their way to Water Street are, in the main, men who have for- feited their rights to confidence, coopera- tion and fellowship. Steeped in drink and depravity, their will-power sacrificed to a l8 The Greatest of These vicious lust for liquor, with all that was ever good in them subordinated to the lowest in- stincts of human nature, these men are not readily amenable to influences of an uplifting character. From a purely economic view- point they would seem to be just so many heaps of human rubbish, fit only to be cast into the sea and banished from remembrance. Water Street, however, regards them differ- ently. They constitute just so much misap- propriated material — material throbbing with glorious possibilities, and capable of the as- similation of Christ's own spirit and life. It is not God's will that any of these weak ones should perish. And in the strength of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the end sought is to effect their salvation. And the key-note of this service is Love. There is really no other way. The longer I am permitted to live, the more completely am I persuaded that the most effective weapon against sin and depravity is Love. Especially in such heart-breaking experiences as come daily to those who labour in Water Street is love and compassion indispensable. The Greatest of These 19 These people are compelled to bear the drunkard's grief, to carry his sorrow, and in all things be a living link between the sinner and his Saviour. They realize the value in the saving grace of compassion, and appre- ciate the supreme need of its daily renewal. When men lose compassion, they lose power. Immeasurably more than most people seem to be aware, sympathy is the fount of dis- cernment. "Water Street" is abundant proof of that. To adopt a critical, inquisi- torial attitude towards the men who drift into the Mission is to walk blindfolded ; and in order to accomplish anything worth while, it is necessary to keep very near to the springs of tenderness. Experience has shown that it is impossible to conduct and carry on a work like that of the McAuley Mission without dispensing some measure of temporal relief to the never- ending stream of needy humanity surging continually at its doors. Objection has been raised in certain quarters against this prac- tice, but it is scarcely worth while to under- take its defense. It is amply vindicated — 20 The Greatest of These justified by results. But to any friend of rescue work who may incline to any such criticism, one question may, at least, be permitted to be put : Can any man estimate the value of one human soul ? He cannot. When he can, and only when he can, is he qualified to determine whether a few cheap meals or an occasional bed in a ten-cent lodging-house is too great a price to pay for bringing a drunkard inside a zone of uplift- ing influences, and which results, as likely as not, in his being found at the foot of the Cross. Many a man coming to Water Street with no worthier motive than a prospective bed-ticket has received something of an infinitely higher value — the pardon of his sins through Jesus Christ. The system of rea- sonable temporal relief works — works ad- mirably and effectively. And, surely, in all sweet reasonableness, that is a reason suf- ficiently valid to warrant its continuance. Yet with it all there is no suggestion that the feeding a man's body will save his souL This is but a means to an end. It cannot be too clearly stated that the McAuley Mission The Greatest of These 21 recognizes and teaches that it is only through a behef in Jesus Christ and His atoning sac- rifice that souls can be restored to favour with God. There is no other way to salva- tion but by the way of the Cross. That is Christ's way, and it is Water Street's. On this fact, its past has been lived, its present rests, its future will be reared. The creed which dispenses with Christ as an intermedi- ary will never wear the laurels of achieve- ment at Water Street. Moreover, it is not likely to receive the saving grace of adoption at the hands of its workers. To tell a phys- ical, moral and spiritual bankrupt that, if ** he will make his soul worth saving, it will be saved,'' is to mock him with insensate folly. He cannot, of himself, make his soul worth anything. Like the cripple in the Gospels, ** he can in no wise straighten himself." His life is just a terrible, pathetic illustration of human nature at its worst. As to what an attitude of moral grandeur he may attain, he has no certain knowledge. How utterly de- praved he can become, to what depths of evil he is capable of descending, how broken a 22 The Greatest of These prop on which to lean is the best that is in him — all this he knows, to his sorrow and ut- ter shame. Of himself he can do nothing. And when he comes in rags and ruin to Water Street, the only way of salvation is offered to him. He is told that a power infi- nitely superior to, and clean outside of him- self, is necessary to his redemption and par- don, and that such a power can be his for the asking — the power of the slain and risen Son of God. On this simple article of faith the work of Water Street practically rests. The appeal is to the heart ; and it is the heart, and not the head, that leads the way into the kingdom after all. Wise men do greatly err The intellectually rich find it hard to tread the pathway of peace — the wayfaring man though relatively a fool finds safer footing. Let men relegate Bethlehem to the theolog- ical junk-shop, and Calvary to the intellectual rummage-sale as they will, yet men in mortal soul hunger — men such as come to Water Street — will gather about them as of old. The old Gospel has not lost its power in the McAuley Mission. Never in its wonderful The Greatest of These 23 history has it witnessed a greater season of spiritual blessing than that which crowns its labours to-day. The work is a perpetual re- vival — a magnificent apostrophe to the effi- cacy of a Gospel that, if old, is ever new, and as fresh as the dews of the morning. The value of the work accomplished in the McAuley Mission cannot be estimated in dollars and cents. Mere statistics, pre- pare them ever so interestingly, could never convey an adequate notion of the benefi- cent, helpful, purifying influence, emana- ting continually from this wonderful cen- tre of spiritual power. Failures there are aplenty — as, indeed, in the very nature of things, there are bound to be. Poor, con- scienceless outcasts, bent on nothing other than securing what is covered by the term "loaves and fishes," are always to be found about the Mission. But what of that? No fair-minded student of sociological conditions in the underworld of great cities would ex- pect to find an unsullied code of honour operative among men, whose sense of a square deal was, possibly, the very first 24 The Greatest of These thing to be forfeited, when their slide down- hill commenced. A square meal, and its as- similation, is a matter of very much more importance. And if these poor fellows slip into the Hall on Supper Nights, to eat and drink unworthily, what odds? As already stated, many who come merely to eat remain to pray. And even those who *' go forward " for prayers without any sense of contrition are not without a sense of shame. It seems fitting to quote here some lines from a back number of the American Magazine^ which describes some such case. The consent of the owners of the copyright has been given to reproduce them here : " We huddled in the Mission, for it was cold out- side, An' listened to the preacher tell of the Crucified ; Without, a sleety drizzle cut deep each ragged form, And so we stood the talkin' for shelter from the storm. They sang of God an' angels, an' heav'n's eternal joy, An' things I stopped believin', when I was yet a boy; They spoke of good an' evil an' offered savin' grace — An' some showed love for mankind a-shinin' in the face. But some their graft was workin', the same as me an' you. But most was urgin' on us what they believed was true, The Greatest of These 25 We sang an' dozed an' listened, but only feared — us men — The hour when, service over, we'd have to mooch again An' walk the icy pavements, an' breast the snow-storm gray Till the saloons were opened, an' there was hints of day; So, when they called out, * Sinner, won't you come?' I came. But in my face was pallor, and in my heart was shame — An' so fergive me, Jesus, for mockin' of Thy Name; For I was cold and hungry — they gave me grub an' bed After I'd kneeled there with them, ail' many prayers were said. An' so fergive me, Jesus, I didn't mean no harm An' outside it was zero, an' inside it was warm — Yes ! 1 was cold and hungry, an' oh. Thou Crucified, Thou Friend of all the lowly, fergive the lie I lied." So much for the aims and methods of this wonderful work. And now a word or two concerning the men who have lent it their ardent support. Any book purporting to deal with the work and ministry of Water Street which did not include some sort of tribute to the memory of John S. Huyler would be con- spicuously lacking in the elements of com- mon gratitude, Mr. Huyler was a true friend 26 The Greatest of These and benefactor of the McAuley Mission, and his death marked the passing of a man who was at once a princely philanthropist, a con- sistent Christian, and a faithful friend. Like Abou Ben Adhem, his name must ever stand enrolled among those who loved — conspicu- ously loved— both God and man. But unlike Leigh Hunt's Oriental, with John Huyler first things came first. It was not that love for his Lord grew out of love for his fellows, but rather that love for his fellows grew out of love for his Lord. Within the traditions of Water Street, and within the friendships and affections centred there, the personal work and the personal lovableness of this gentle, generous, sterling man cannot perish, nor the memory of it be diminished or effaced. Apart altogether from the material aid he rendered, the value of what he did as a personal worker among the poor, downtrodden, drink-mauled out- casts of New York's underworld absolutely precludes its being dismissed into the forget- fulness he would himself have modestly pre- ferred. For it had in it an enduring quality The Greatest of These 27 which renders it impossible that it should not be remembered, both for the work's sake and the workman's, and be securely en- shrined in the hearts of those he loved and helped to save. Down in Water Street, where he was loved, and where he is missed, he has pos- sibly been succeeded, but not duplicated, for his personality could not be bequeathed with his duties. His influence rests as a bene- diction on his successors ; yet they can but work out what is in them, as he did what was in him. His ever-ripening character was a growth — a logical, progressive, happy growth — right to the end. The end came, but the man was ready — and the readiness is all. John Huyler rests from his labours, and his works follow him. He was a good man and a just ; and now he has attained to this also — to be at rest. John Huyler's place as president has been filled by Ferdinand T. Hopkins, and what this man's interest really counts for in the activities of Water Street is, I suppose, best known to the present superintendent, John Wyburn. 28 The Greatest of These Were it necessary or in good taste to do so, he could a tale unfold of the president's gener- osity. For some time past Mr. Hopkins has been in but indifferent health ; and the bur- den of his affliction has, at times, been heavy. Yet through it all his interest in everything pertaining to the welfare of the McAuley Mission has been out of all proportion to what the precarious state of his health war- ranted. He has borne a very large propor- tion of the cost of the new premises, and during the rebuilding he was in an almost feverish state of anxiety lest the uncertainty of life should prevent his seeing it brought to completion. Mr. Hopkins has the con- tinuing prayers of many who fervently desire that his valuable life shall yet be spared for many years to the city of great and clamant need. New York can ill afford to lose men like the president of the Water Street Mis- sion. Second only to the interest evinced by Mr. Hopkins in the erection of the new Mission premises has been that displayed by R. Ful- ton Cutting, the treasurer. Mr. Cutting The Greatest of These 29 has been intimately associated with the work in Water Street for more than a quarter of a century. He was chairman of the first serv- ice held under S. H. Hadley's superintend- ency on May 30, 1886, and for years past has always presided at the afternoon meeting of the Mission anniversary. Mr. Cutting re- quires no eulogy. He is one of the great civic assets of Manhattan — a brave, fearless citizen who stands for everything good and righteous in the life of the community. Not the least of his interests are those he has vested in the uplift of poor, lost drunkards. Happy the Mission (or any other institution) officered by such men as Ferd. T. Hopkins and R. Fulton Cutting. The new Mission building recently com- pleted was a crying necessity. The old premises built many years ago of mostly sec- ond-hand material was declared unsafe. Un- sanitary it certainly was and, in addition, the expanding activities of the work demanded increased facilities. The trustees therefore decided to spend something like forty-five thousand dollars in erecting a more commo- 30 The Greatest of These dious structure to meet the increased de- mands and requhements of the work. The new building is erected on the old site and on a vacant lot adjoining. Prominent among the increased facilities which the new premises have afforded is one which has enabled Mr. Wyburn to remedy a state of affairs that was a distinct set-back to the permanent usefulness of the work. When a convert starts his new life he is usually destitute. Provision has, of course, to be made for him, and in the days of the old building there was nothing for it but the lodging- house. The poor fellow was mighty glad to get that, but when everything has been said, a Bowery lodging-house is not the most congenial environment for the fostering of the Christian graces. In the new build- ing, however, provision is made for a num- ber of men to be housed, who thus have the benefit of a temporary home where every- thing is conducive to their becoming estab- lished in the faith. This is but one of many benefits which the new and commodious premises have conferred on the work in gen- The Greatest of These 31 eral. In every sense, the Mission machinery- is more effective and productive of results — results that gladden the hearts of the de- voted band of men and women who labour in Water Street for the glory of God. II GOD'S GOOD MAN « And the King said, He is a good man, and cometh with good tidings." — / Sa7n. xviii. zy. IN the days of Jerry McAuley, God man- ifested Himself down in Water Street in a way that set New York astir and sent men and women in hundreds to see and learn what the whole strange business meant. Under Samuel Ho Hadley even the former glory was eclipsed. Of this wonderful man it has been said that he was the finest exam- ple of human love that the city of New York ever saw. Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman, in the tender tribute he delivered at the funeral of Mr. Hadley, said : " If greatness is to be meas- ured by a passion for souls, by a spirit of love, and by a Christlikeness in all that he said, or did or thought, then, I say, I believe Samuel Hadley was easily one of the great- est men in the city of New York, if not in the whole of the United States." Here in 32 JOHN H. WYBUKN. God's Good Man 33 Water Street this undaunted soldier of the Cross fought valiantly, until God's summons called him home. Possibly no one was in a better position to appreciate the greatness and at the same time the simplicity of Hadley's Christian life than Superintendent Wyburn. It was he who pointed him to Jesus twenty-four years ago and for many years he had the joy of sharing Hadley's labours in Water Street until called to the superintendency of the Bowery Mission from which he resigned in 1899 to go out West. After repeated and urgent requests from Mr. Hadley he returned to New York City in the fall of 1900 to become his assistant in the Water Street Mission. During the latter years of his life Mr. Hadley was in great demand all over the United States as a speaker and away from the city possibly nine months out of the year. It was to leave him free to fill these engagements that Mr. Wy- burn took charge of the work in the Mission. A great bond of love and sympathy ex- isted between the men ; they shared burdens, trials and joys. When God called Mr. Had- 34 God's Good Man ley home it seemed impossible to continue the work without him, but events have gone to prove that the work of the Water Street Mission is of God and not of man. God has set His seal upon the work in the past few years in a wonderful way and has thus made up in a certain sense the loss sustained by Mr. Hadley's death. The traditions of Water Street have not suffered violence at Mr. Wy- burn's hands. He has endeavoured to carry on the work in the same spirit that Mr. Had- ley manifested. He has been given the same love for the ruined and fallen, the same un- wearying patience with the drunkard. I say God has given, because something more than human patience is required in work like this. It takes divine patience. A few months ago a clergyman called Mr. Wyburn on the tele- phone and asked how many times a man could fall before we would give him up. His reply was, "We never give a man up in Water Street." And this is true. No matter how often they may have tried, or how often they may have fallen, they are always given another chance. Water Street people not God's Good Man 35 only rely upon God's promise, " If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that be- lieveth," but God has graciously given them the encouragement of seeing many, who have fallen so often that they were generally con- sidered hopeless, saved and fully restored, — complete victors over their old habits. Never, at any time during the history of Water Street, has so large a percentage of converts " made good "as at present. John Wyburn is himself a reformed drunkard. Like nearly all Water Street men, he came to the Mission in a lost, ruined condition. There he found salvation through belief in Jesus Christ. Mr. Wyburn here is allowed to tell his own story and in his own w^ay : " I am an Englishman by birth and came over to this country when I was nineteen years of age. I went into business and for years carried it on successfully in New York City and Brooklyn. I was making money fast and no doubt would have been a wealthy man to-day had I continued in the right way. I became a member of a Baptist Church up- town and the pastor and his wife became 36 God's Good Man very much interested in me. I was pressed into service, became secretary of the Sunday- school and also assistant librarian. Yet, al- though my name was on the church books and I was active in its work, I was not a Christian and did not know Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour. Had I remained under that influence I no doubt would have become a Christian but I drifted away and in a few years began to drink. I never intended to become a drunkard, but I thoughtlessly con- tinued in that life until I w^as frequently ab- sent for months on drunken sprees. My name w^ould be published both here and across the water and I was advertised for as a missing man. " It was while I was away on one of these trips that my business was taken away from me by process of law and I was made an ha- bitual drunkard by the courts. When I re- turned and learned this I began to drink harder than ever. It was on the 25th of September, 1888, that I was sent with a letter of introduction to Mr. S. H. Hadley, by one of the converts of the Mission, who did not God's Good Man 37 say anything to me about the fact of Mr. Hadley being the superintendent of the McAuley Mission, but simply said, * This is a friend of mine and he will help you.' On the way down to the Mission, I came to the con- clusion that I would strike him for ten dollars. Fortunately for me he was not at home. I retained the letter and went out looking for more whiskey. I was unsuccessful in getting much money that afternoon. I believe God was in it. It had been easy for me to get five or ten dollars a day. I had done an ex- tensive business in New York and Brooklyn, and I had lots of friends at one time. I hunted all the afternoon for a man who had been one of my foremen for many years, and finally found him. But he had just paid out all the ready money he had for a new oven (he was just starting in the baking business for himself), and could only give me a quarter. With that I bought my last drink, crossed the bridge, and came to the Mission. ** It has always been a puzzle to me as to how I found it. I knew nothing about the neighbourhood, but I have always firmly be- 38 God's Good Man lieved that it was God who was leading me, and so I woke up, as it were, to find myself seated in the McAuley Mission, still holding the letter to Mr. Hadley. Even then I had not the slightest idea it was a mission. It was my first experience of the kind. I be- came interested in the man sitting next to me. He was a red-headed Irishman, who wanted to get a place to sleep, and I told him I would give him the price, and he did get a bed that night. I have never seen him since, but have never ceased to pray for him. " Some one told Mr. Hadley that I wanted to see him, and he came to where I was sit- ting and I gave him the letter. After he read it, he said, * Well, what can I do for you ? * I told him that I wanted to get sobered up so that I could go back to my business, and he said, *Is that all you want?' I thought, * If you only knew how impossible it was for me to keep sober, you would not speak so lightly about it.' But a moment later he said, his face beaming with light and love, * What you need, my dear brother, is Jesus Christ as your friend and Saviour ; He God's Good Man 39 will sober you up and you will never want another drink.' I accepted his invitation to stay to the meeting. " What a wonderful meeting it was ! The hymns that were sung took me back to my childhood days ; every man seemed to be saying to me through their testimonies, * There is hope for you ; Jesus will save you.' And, when the man who sent me to the Mis- sion stood up and said he was saved, I im- mediately stood up and said, * I want some of that,' and that very moment the great transaction was done. *A11 the fitness He requireth is that you should feel the need of Him.' Jesus knew what I needed far better than I did, and He forgave my sin and re- bellion and made me a new man in Christ Jesus. " I went to the penitent form at the close of the meeting, and the devil followed me, every step of the way. When I got down on my knees to pray, he very vividly brought to my mind my old life of unbelief, and he said, * What's the use of your praying ? You don't believe in prayer anyhow.' I got up 40 God's Good Man and down, up and down several times, but finally the victory was won and sweet deliv- erance came to me — victory through the might and power of the blessed blood of Jesus, and from that moment I have never wanted a drink of whiskey. Just before this every drop of blood in my veins was crying out for whiskey. It had been impossible for me to satisfy the craving. But Jesus had taken me at my word the very second I said, * I will.' The old life passed away and Jesus came into my heart and life and made it impossible for me to drink. A new man in Christ Jesus does not want whiskey ; and though I suffered the tortures of the damned — and while it seemed as if all the demons in hell were tugging at my life — yet Jesus was with me all night long. It was the most strenuous fight I ever had. The devil was after my soul. He had me once, 'tis true, but he can't have me any more. *' From that day I have been a free man in Christ Jesus. Oh ! the luxury of the freedom I now enjoy, which, in the old days, I would have given any part of my body to obtain, God's Good Man 41 The appetite for liquor which once held me fettered is gone forever — and Jesus did it all. There is another thing I should like to make reference to. All through the first year of my Christian life I was uneasy on the score of using tobacco, and was prompted to give it up. Indeed, I tried several times to do so, but without permanent success. But I finally determined that, on the occasion of my first anniversary, I would renounce the habit forever, I dearly loved *the weed,' and was an inveterate user of it in every way. I did not regard it as a sin — it would be a sin to me if I went back to it now — and do not now, but I desired to give it up for Jesus' sake. Well, on my anniversary night, I bought what was to be my last cigar, intending to smoke it on my way down to the Mission. I lit it but was unable to smoke it, and after a few whifTs I flung it away. During the meeting which followed, I publicly announced my intention to give up the use of tobacco, and I have never taken, or even wanted, a smoke or chew since that night. 42 God's Good Man "From the very first night of my new career, I have tried to throw out the Life- line to poor dying drunkards in the dear old Mission. For more than six years now I have been its superintendent. God has wonderfully blessed my feeble efforts, and all over this land men are to be found, who date their conversion to the time when they have heard me give my simple testimony. That God should have taken a wretched, half- crazed drunkard such as I was, and raised me to be His servant and messenger, is to me a thing of ever-increasing wonder. I count it the highest privilege under heaven to be able to give my life for" the salvation of the lost drunkards of this land, and point them to the only One that can help them — Jesus Christ the precious Son of God.'^ Such is the testimony of John H. Wyburn — re- claimed drunkard — Mission superintendent — God's good man. Ill DE PROFUNDIS ** Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord." — Fs. cxxx, I, DOWN on the Bowery stands a cer- tain saloon, which, in all probability, is the vilest hole on God's earth. For superlative depravity it out-Herods Herod. The proprietor of any other low " gin-mill '* in Manhattan would consider his place of business grossly insulted were it mentioned in the same breath with this in- famous dive. Tramps and hoboes, ranging the country from Eastport to San Diego, Port Townsend to Florida Keys, unani- mously pronounce it to be " the limit." It is a foul by-wash, into which the flotsam and jetsam of the Bowery is constantly swished and swirled — a wharf for lost souls, on their last, lorn journey to destruction. Outside, there is nothing to attract or admire; but then, the poor wretches who sweep through 43 44 l^e Profundis its grimy swing-doors are not, in the least, interested in elaborate fagades or artistic ex- teriors. Inside, it is mean, squalid, clammy, mephitic. The floor is dank, the ceiling blackened. Everything the hand touches clings faintly, and defiles. It is a vestibule of the pit — the anteroom of hell. It is nothing extraordinary or unusual for some poor wretch to die in this awful dive. Indeed, it is part of the order of the day — or rather of the night. Men in various stages of tuberculosis, alcoholism, and incurable dis- ease loaf and lounge about the filthy bar. The back room is usually crowded with the physically unfit, many of whom walk literally in the valley of the shadow of death. On stormy nights, the atmosphere of this back room reminds one of the Black Hole of Cal- cutta. Lying about the floor, stretched out on the benches, leaning, half-reclined, across the tables, dozens of men of all ages sleep right through the night, having qualified for the questionable privilege by the purchase of a five cent " schooner " of beer, or glass of that horrible, stomach-rotting mixture, which De Profundis 45 sells for whiskey on the lower East Side. When daylight comes, a bartender rouses them from their broken slumbers — the slug- gish ones with cuff and kick. Frequently enough, some poor wretch, lying face down- ward, responds to neither. He is canted roughly over, and found to be stone dead ! Anybody know anything of him ? No. Anybody care? No. Out he goes then — to Potter's Field ! An occasional visit to this cesspool of de- pravity by Christian workers, made in the interests of some poor castaway for whom they had searched and hoped to find, has left them more than once heart-sick for hours. The thought of passing a whole night there is charged with a great, shrink- ing horror. Yet we cite the amazing in- stance of a man, who, day and night for seven long years, made this hell of a back room his only home I Not a barroom loafer from his youth up, nor an East Side degen- erate of the third generation, but a man of splendid family, — a family which has given, at least, one great public servant to the 46 De Profundis American commonwealth. Seems incredible, doesn't it ? It is true, nevertheless. Yet so marvellously changed is he, that to look at him to-day is to find it pretty difficult to imagine his having crossed the threshold of a drink-shop at any time, let alone having housed himself for years in the rottenest dive to be found in the whole of New York City. No greater example of the down- swooping, uplifting power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ lives to-day than this man. God found him low. He has lifted him high. De profimdis — out of the depths ! Charles Bayard Stewart was born and raised in what he himself calls a Puritan town. His parents were God-fearing people, and the influences surrounding his early years were of the best. He came of good stock, on his mother's side of one of the oldest families in the country — the Bayards. As a young man he took an active share in the religious life of his home town, being, among other things, one of the organizers of the local branch of the Y. M. C. A. In due time he married, went into business for him- CHAELES BAYARD STEWART. De Profundis 47 self and prospered. He became proprietor of two substantial jewelry stores, and a citizen of repute and respectability. Everything pointed to a happy, prosperous career. " On the score of birth and up-bringing, or the en- vironment of my early manhood," he said recently, ** I have not the faintest excuse for the harrowing sins of after years." Yet Charles Stewart came to lose every- thing that life held dear — character, business, friends, wife, home. His is the old, old story. The social glass, the steadily increasing love for liquor, the reckless abandon to its crav- ings, then ruin — utter and complete. More than fifteen years ago he drifted, like thou- sands of other derelicts — down to the Bowery. Here he lived the sordid life of an East Side *'bum" — picking up an odd job now and again, in order to satisfy the awful craving for whiskey, which never let up or left him for a single day. Sleeping usually in some hallway or in a truck along the river front, a " double-decker " cot in a ten-cent lodging- house became a luxury to him. As for food, it consisted usually of what he could manage 48 De Profundis to grab from the free-lunch counters. Half- clothed, half-fed, entirely liquor-soaked, this one-time respected business man wandered for years aimlessly about the Bowery. Finally, he joined himself to the battered outcasts of that appalling back room. Here he existed for more than seven years I " Yes, and I fully expected to die there," he has said, "just as I have seen many another do. More than once have I leaned across the table and gone to sleep, to find, when I woke, that the soul of the poor fellow huddled up next to me had gone to meet its God ! " Some time in the early part of September, 1907, Stewart fell, while full of whiskey, and fractured his leg. Hobbling about Chatham Square on crutches, he, one day, met an old acquaintance who said to him, " Charlie, it looks to me as if a visit to 316 Water Street would do you a bit o' good." " Why ? — what's going on down there ? Anything being handed out?" asked Stew- art. "Most likely. It's a Mission — the old Jerry McAuley Mission." De Profundi's 4^ " Huh — not for mine," growled the crip- pled drunkard. " I've no use for missions, churches, or any such truck." After a good deal of persuasion, however, Charlie Stewart limped down to Water Street, in company with his friend. It was the night of the superintendent's anniversary, and the old Mission Hall was crowded to the doors. Of the marvellous miracle of grace performed that night in the life of Charles Bayard Stewart, he himself shall tell. " I managed to squeeze inside," he says, ''and stood in the rear of the room. The meeting was of a kind I had never seen or attended before. More than that, I heard some wonderful stories told by men who had lived just the life I was living — men that once were drunkards. Some of them had been drinking companions of my own. I had missed them from the old haunts, and concluded they were dead. Yet here they were — respectable, sober, and testifying to the work of grace begun in their hearts. Their testimonies were amazing, as were those of many whom I did not know. 50 De Profundis Through them, God's Spirit spoke to my weary, sin-sick soul. " At the conclusion of the testimony serv- ice, Mr. Wyburn came and spoke to me. At his invitation I went forward, and knelt down with ten other men at the penitent's bench. I cried for mercy in the words of the publican of old — * God be merciful to me a sinner ! ' The moment I prayed that prayer I felt a great change steal over me. I did not understand, that night, what it was. All I knew was that I was experiencing a peace I had never known before. I know now what it was. It was the peace of God, that passeth all understanding. That night my sins were pardoned — blotted out. Jesus Christ came into my life. I was born again — a new man — a new creature in Christ Jesus — born from above — born of the Spirit. Old things passed away, and all things became new. From that hour down to this present moment, I have never had the remotest desire to take a drink of whiskey, or revert to any habit of the old life. ' If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.' That's the De Profundis 51 secret of it all — a secret into which I have entered gloriously. There is no earthly shadow of a doubt about it — the facts of my redemption are absolutely incontrovertible. The whole Bowery — from Cooper Square to Chatham Square — knows me for what I was, for what I am. When I hobbled into the McAuley Mission, I felt and looked like an old man of eighty. To-day, I feel like a young man of thirty. I have gone into business again, and am prospering in every material way. This, however, I regard as least of the blessings that have come to me during these four years and more. The crowning joy is my daily communion with Jesus Christ my Lord. He saved me, He keeps me, and He strength- ens me by His Spirit's might in the inner man. For the future I do not fear. * The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him ; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long.' " Visitors in Water Street have sometimes inquired for him thus : ** Do you mind pointing out the man of whom we have heard, who lived for seven years in a Bowery 5 2 De Profundis dive ? " And upon being asked, " See if you can pick him out yourselves. Take a good look around the room, and tell me which of the converts you imagine likely to have been the man," not once have these people guessed correctly. Nor is this at all surprising. Well-dressed, well-groomed, dapper and smiling, Mr. Stewart looks the very last man in the world to have passed through that terrible time. The mere out- ward change in the man is in itself a miracle — but the life he lives and leads is one far greater. He is no longer without home or loved ones ; he has a happy home, blessed with a Christian wife and baby ; he has proven the truth of God's promise which he loves to quote : ** Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you." He often visits his old haunts — praying and pleading, in that filthy saloon, with men to come to Christ. The poor outcasts all know him, and even the proprietor respects him for his consistent life, and allows him to attempt his work of rescue. God has wonderfully saved this De Profundis 53 man ; and were he the only trophy of the work in Water Street during the past five or six years, it would have been well worth all the money and labour expended to have ef- fected, under God, the redemption of Charles Bayard Stewart. IV THE BREAKING OF THE BREAD "And they told what things were done in the way, and how He was known of them in the breaking of bread." — Luke xxiv. jj". PERHAPS the most effective method of relieving physical necessity, in opera- tion at Water Street, is the Thursday- night supper. This feature of the work was first made possible by the generosity of the late John S. Huyler ; it is provided for, in these days, by his successor in the office of president — Mr. Ferd. T. Hopkins. For many years past, the same means for the same purpose have been employed. The means are bowls of coffee and beef sand- wiches — the purpose, to gather a crowd of starving outcasts, and having satisfied their hunger, point them to Him who can break to perishing souls the Bread of Life. That this same supper has yielded results of the most gratifying order, there is abundant testi- 54 The Breaking of the Bread 55 mony. Scores of converts are to-day testi- fying to this fact — that, attracted by the al- lurement of physical substance, they sought the friendly portals of the McAuley Mission, and there received not only a satisfying meal, but the pardon of their sins. Down in Water Street, as in the village of Emmaus on that first Easter Sunday, Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, has again and again revealed Himself " in the breaking of the bread.'* Of course, it goes almost without saying that not all who profess conversion on Sup- per Night ** stand." It is so everywhere. Many of them fall by the wayside. But what of that ? Even the most utterly soul- less mining corporation in existence is con- tent to handle tons of quartz in order to realize a few ounces of gold. And are the workers in the fields of God to become dis- couraged, and be taxed with failure, because every heap of crushed human clay they handle fails to yield the rich, red gold of the kingdom? Not so. Thank God, the glint of precious metal does often reward the toil- ers, which, cleansed of its dross by the refin- 56 The Breaking of the Bread ing fires of the Holy Spirit, ultimately shines in the diadem of the Most High. Let us peep into the Mission on Supper Night, say, some stormy night in late No- vember. On no other evening in the week does the same awful throng gather. Bad enough at other times, Thursday evening sees this collection of human driftwood at its worst. The meeting room is crowded — ^jammed to the doors with derelict lives — the human driftage of the world. Out- side, a pitiless hail-storm is driving along Water Street, like a host of hostile spears. Late-comers find themselves unable to gain admittance. Bending their heads to the merciless storm, they slouch despairingly away. Inside, the great, huddled horde of outcasts are fairly comfortable — at least they are sheltered from the fierce November blast. And what a horde I Surely no such awful crowd of debased, sodden humanity could be met with elsewhere on God's wide earth. Many are already asleep. Worn out with roaming the city streets, days and nights on end, they are utterly unable to keep awake The Breaking of the Bread 57 until supper is served. Upon almost every countenance is the mark of the Beast, tell- ing a tale of days and years — sin-mauled, mangled, flung away. Here and there a face less evil, fresher than the rest, catches the eye like a cameo, from its setting of sur- rounding grime. Here are men whose downward steps drink and the devil have persistently dogged. In a futile struggle for self-mas- tery, they have lost out — lost out utterly. Their faces wear the unmistakable traces both of physical want and spiritual despair. And here they are I Men, from whose lives, humanly speaking, the last ray of hope has fairly spluttered out. Their whole existence is nothing but a weary pilgrimage from one tramp's shrine to another, living the while on the swill of the Bowery free-lunch coun- ters, or on what may be rooted from among the garbage of the ash cans. Scores of these are here in this old Mission to-night, with haggard, unshaven faces and lean, lank limbs. Here, too, are some of " the skins," the " no-gooders " — incorrigible vagabonds, 58 The Breaking of the Bread wriggling through life, evading every re- sponsibility — parasites on the body politic. From an outside standpoint they are with- out a single redeeming feature. Yet even these are dear to Water Street — they have souls to lose — souls to save. Supper begins. Of conversation there is litde, or none. Here and there a man hav- ing some slender knowledge of another may listlessly discuss with him the sordid details of their dreary, meaningless days. But on the whole, the prevailing feeling is obviously one of bitter loneliness, of unlifting isolation. Each man is too completely entrenched in his own misery to exercise even the most languid interest in that of his yoke-fellows in misfortune. Thus the majority sit devouring their food in sullen silence. Now and again some superlatively hungry wretch glances round suspiciously between the bites, as if fearful that somebody or other might attempt to purloin his supper. Were such a con- tingency to arise, it is easy to imagine him snapping fiercely for its retention like a rabid, famished hound. The Breaking of the Bread 59 Among this welter of misery sits a dark, sturdy-looking man, dirtier than most, more wretched than many. His name is Benjamin Franklin Alexander. His well-shaped head is covered thickly by a shock of black, bris- tling hair. His clothes — better fitted to adorn a scarecrow in a Kansas corn field than to their present purpose of forming an apology for covering a human form — he has fished from an old ash barrel. He is here to-night, because he has just been kicked out of a dis- reputable, stale-beer dive, the net result of its proprietor having determined that this man had become a disgrace to the delectable company wont to foregather about his filthy bar. Yet this is a man of splendid qualities, possessed of superb business acumen — a man who has secured, and for a time ably filled, many fine positions only to finally fling them one after the other over some hotel bar. In this wretched, lost condition he has been here before. He will be here again — but never more like this. Just at the moment his chief concern is his supper — seeing to it that he does not get " left '' in the matter of 6o The Breaking of the Bread coffee and sandwiches. Yet, although he recks it not, this night is to be the one from which all others are to count — for him the pivot-hour of Time and Eternity. Supper is ended. The testimony meeting gets under way. With the rest, this drunken outcast listens to stories of rescued lives — looks on the salvage of the Cross. It breaks him down. Soon he is at the mercy-seat crying to God for pardon. He receives it on the instant — pardon and peace through Jesus Christ. As certainly as at the gates of Nain the Lord of Life and Death laid His quickening hand on the corpse of the widow's son, so did He lay His hand on this dead soul in Water Street, and in words that sweetly thrilled it into throbbing life whis- pered : " Young man, I say unto thee, Arise!'' All this happened nearly six years ago. Mark, I pray you, in this year of grace the marvellous change. This one-time outcast, this sandwich-hunting drunkard is to-day a highly-tested and as highly-valued repre- sentative of a great commercial house. And B. F. ALEXANDEK. The Breaking of the Bread 6l he is something more. He is a living wit- ness to the life-giving power of God. " And he that was dead sat up and began to speak." In pursuance of his temporal duties, he crosses the American continent twice in every year. And everywhere he goes, he seeks out — often at some personal trouble and inconvenience — some church, mission-hall or gathering of Christian work- ers where he can tell out the story of his wreck and rescue. Through the throbbing centres of the Middle West; in the wintry regions of the Canadian Dominion ; under the sheltering palms of Florida ; 'neath the clustering spires of Brooklyn ; in the sun- kissed cities of California, Alexander is pro- claiming a salvation that found him low but lifted him high ; that raised him from a dung- hill to sit with Christ Jesus in heavenly places ; that found him dead, and brought him life — " life that shall endless be." Here is his testimony, as he has himself related it to tens of thousands in all parts of the North American continent : "I was born of Christian parents, just 62 The Breaking of the Bread forty-four years ago. My home, life and early training were, in all respects, such as might have been expected to make me a man who would prove a stay and comfort to those who loved me, and a respected mem- ber of society. Looking backward to those happy years, it seems almost incredible that I should have allowed myself to be dragged from th& path of rectitude and sobriety, down to the very gates of hell. Yet it was so. It was as a boy at school that I first learned the taste of liquor, and when a few years later I came to New York to go into business, I soon acquired a liking for the stuff that was to blight and ruin my life. Of course, like other deluded fools, I imagined myself pos- sessed of sufficient will-power to be able to take a drink or leave it alone — ^just as I chose. "I soon discovered my error — discovered that the great Enemy of souls was pos- sessed of an infinitely greater power than that to which I laid my boasted claim. At the age of twenty-four I married, and a year later God gave to my wife and me a lovel)) The Breaking of the Bread 63 baby girl. The man never lived that loved his wife and child more fondly than I did mine. But the demon Drink had gripped my life, and held me unrelentingly in its power. Try as I would, I could not loosen the fetters, and as an inevitable consequence, my duties as husband and father became shamefully neglected. Things went from bad to worse, so that from this time onward, for fifteen years, I made life a positive hell- on-earth for my dear wife and daughter. Much of my neglect of her my wife kept hidden from the eyes of the world, yet always nursing her secret sorrow. " It was about eighteen years ago, I suppose, when I first struck Water Street. About this time I had wandered off in a drunken con- dition to Philadelphia, there to be met and befriended by a gentleman who sent me back home to New York with a letter of introduc- tion to S. H. Hadley, then superintendent of Water Street Mission. I went to see Mr. Hadley, and there in the old Mission Hall I first heard the glad news that God could save a drunkard — save him from himself and 64 The Breaking of the Bread his sins. I called on His name, and found deliverance. But I speedily fell back into the old wretched rut in which my life had for years been cast. And the cause of this failure is not far to seek. In my arrogant self-sufficiency, I imagined that all I required from Jesus Christ was a helping hand out of the pit I had digged for my own feet. Once on solid earth again, reunited to my family, and with a good business prospect ahead, I imagined myself able to find my way alone. Oh, foolish heart 1 In a very short time I was down again — hurled by appetite and un- bridled desire to deeper depths of misery than heretofore. " Within three months I was usually back at Water Street, destitute, and in rags. And this up-and-down existence continued for nearly fifteen years. During this period I secured, and for a time held, many fine posi- tions. One and all I lost through my un- controllable love of liquor. Many a time have I started out of New York carrying a fine line of samples, en route for some West- ern city, only to return a month or so later, The Breaking of the Bread 65 hoboing my way back on a freight train. Finally, drink came to have a greater attrac- tion for me than anything on earth. I just lived to drink. The devil had me beaten to an utter standstill, and I realized that which most of those who had known me best had not hesitated to tell me was perfectly true — namely, that I *was no good.' One man, however, never gave me up — never turned me down. That man was John Wyburn. During the three years previous to Novem- ber, 1906, I became a greater nuisance at Water Street than ever before. One thing, however, I could not do — I could not exhaust John Wyburn's patience, or John Wyburn's love. Many a time I deserved to have been kicked into the street. Instead of my de- serts, however, I continually met an unweary- ing love — a love that would not let me go. " Finally, on the 7th of November, 1906, after the proprietor of one of the most infa- mous, stale-beer dives in the whole of New York City had kicked me out of his place as a disgrace to his wretched back room, God once more directed my steps to Water Street. 66 The Breaking of the Bread I was received with the same unaffected kindness as before. At the same tear-stained altar, I called on Christ for help, realizing, at last, that I needed God to keep as well as to save. Pardon came — pardon for a rebel like me. When I rose from my knees that night, wearing an old suit of clothes I had fished out of an ash barrel, it didn't seem probable that there could be much chance for me in this world — whatever the next might hold. I thought of all my blighted hopes and wasted years ; of the fine posi- tions I had lost; of the dear ones I had deserted for rum. Just then I caught sight of a text painted on the wall of the Mission. It was this : * Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' Then and there I took God at His word, asking no questions. And I want to say with every scrap of emphasis I can muster, that that promise has been fulfilled in my life a thou- sandfold. All those things that the devil robbed me of have been restored. To-day I have as comfortable and surely as happy a The Breaking of the Bread 67 home as any in New York City ; I am at peace, and living in loving fellowship with my dear ones ; I am filling the best, the most lucrative, position I have ever held. I have troops of loving friends, a bright, joyous consciousness of the indwelling presence of Christ Jesus my Lord, and the blessed assur- ance that one day I shall see Him face to face.'' Supper Night at Water Street — is it justi- fied? Rather. Will it continue to be provided? I think it will. If Benjamin Franklin Alexander were the only trophy this particular ministry could boast of since its inauguration, he constitutes a magnifi- cent return for all the money and labour expended. To have effected this one man's reclamation, it were well worth while. But he is not alone. Old McAuley Mission is full of men to whom Christ Jesus has mani- fested Himself '' in the breaking of the bread." INTO A FAR COUNTRY «' And took his journey into a far country . . . and when he had spent all . . . he began to be in want." — Luke XV. ij, 14. FOR many years there stood, right in the heart of Mulberry Bend, a solitary ailantus tree which, in the days when this now densely crowded section of New York was a pleasant, rustic neighbourhood, formed part of a shady grove planted in the rear of an old-fashioned homestead owned by one Henry Passman. In the early forties, however, the district began to lose its ru- ral aspect. The old mansion disappeared. Tenement-houses sprang up on every side ; and the trees were hewn down with the ex- ception of this single ailantus which for some reason was allowed to stand. Mulberry Bend now became the haunt of desperate criminals, earning for itself an in- famous notoriety as the most dangerous 68 Into a Far Country 69 quarter of the city. And as time went on the ailantus got for itself a reputation as evil and ill-omened as the neighbourhood in which it stood. Dark deeds — murder and robbery — were committed under its spreading shadow. When the draft riots of 1863 broke out in New York, and the lower part of the city for several days given over to a drunken, frenzied mob, a score or more of negroes were strung up in this tree. In later years, hopeless men, afflicted by remorse or suffering the pangs of starvation, got into the way of hanging themselves from its branches, until, finally, it became known throughout the whole East Side as the Suicide Tree. All this happened years ago, and for al- most two decades the Suicide Tree has ceased to exert its baleful influence over the hopeless habitues of Mulberry Bend. Yet in the pleas- ant, little park now laid out around the spot where the ailantus once stood, ruined, rum- soaked outcasts gather as of yore. No longer does the sinister gallows-tree invite to self-destruction. Still, from Mulberry Bend to the East River is no great distance, and yo Into a Far Country somebody or other is always making the journey. Like that of every other great city, the underworld of New York has its grades of despairing hopelessness. And any East Sider will tell you that the "bums" of Mulberry Bend stand ever nearest to the Great Divide. With one of these outcasts — possibly the most remarkable character that ever entered the doors of Water Street Mission — this chap- ter has particularly to do. One evening in the early part of May he sat on a bench in his favourite rendezvous, sullen and silent. Usually he was talkative enough, and passed for something of a wit among his fellows in misfortune around Mul- berry Bend. But on this particular night he sat for hours, his chin thrust down into his chest, uttering never a word. Small wonder that he did so, for that day — the first in a long and peculiarly evil life — he had been given to see with appalling distinctness that his life was a hideous, helpless failure — that he — John Tyler — was absolutely nothing more than a parasite — part of the waste and bur- den of society. Into a Far Country 7 1 The revelation was superlatively humilia- ting. It came with great suddenness — it hit him tremendously hard. In its general effect it vividly recalled a rude awakening he ex- perienced ten years before in Porto Rico, when having lain down in a drunken stupor on the dock-wall he toppled over on to the deck of a tramp steamer, twenty feet below. Earlier in the day — a day held over from the frigid days of February — ^Tyler had sat for an hour or so in City Hall Park. An icy wind sweep- ing up Frankfurt Street from the river snarled across the open spaces, putting the miserable occupants of the park benches through the third degree of the homeless. Presently a wretched, unwashed beggar slouched by, and a man sitting next to Tyler said — "See that feller? Fve known him for twenty years. For all the use he is, either to himself or anybody else, in this world, he'd be a thousand times better dead. Why he doesn't go and make a hole in the East River gets me." Tyler started as if stung. " Is that so ? " he said. " That is so," replied the other. " There's not a single reason on 72 Into a Far Country earth why that bum should remain on top of it for another hour." Tyler got up and walked away. *' ' For all the use he is to himself or any- body else' — that hits me," he mused. " ' He'd be a thousand times better dead ' — and that hands me a wallop too. 'Why he doesn't make a hole in the water gets me ' — and why I don't gets me. That fellow has sized me up to an inch — and didn't know it." He slouched off to Mulberry Bend, and sat there wrapped in gloomy thought. A thou- sand things crowded his brain, the most vivid and recurrent of which were the words of the man in City Hall Park : " A thousand times better dead!^^ Applied to himself, the idea was brand new, bringing with it the cruel bitterness of defeat. Never before had he acknowledged himself beaten ; never be- fore had he admitted having reached the end of his tether, though many times hard driven and in desperate case. Well, he would accept the apparently incontroverti- ble conclusion. That night should see the end. , Into a Far Country 73 \ Grimly he set about reconciling himself to \ his fate. Life was a tangled skein anyway, \ and its unravelling was beyond him. He had \lived through his tale of sixty years, ruling it in his own fashion — seeking advice from none. And the finish should be of a piece |(vith the rest. He, himself, would choose the tianner and mode of exit. To die in a hospital, a poorhouse, or on a park bench )me wintry night, he was determined not do. Yet some such fate must assuredly be h^s, if matters were allowed to work out to their logical conclusion. Well, he would himself take a hand in the game. It should be the East River as soon as darkness should again brood over the city. It was the only way. Presently a man who had been sitting near him got up and walked away, leaving an evening paper behind him. Tyler took it up and began mechanically to read it. Then his eye fell on an account of an an- niversary celebration at the Jerry McAuley Mission. The paragraph carried his mind back thirty years or more. He remembered 74 Iiito a Far Country how as a young man of wealth and position he had acted as escort to a party of ladies down to this very Mission to see and hear Jerry McAuley, at that time the talk of the town. Some of the wonderful stories of re- demption he heard that night now came back to him with vivid clearness. Then an idea, as new to him as the thought of self-destruc- tion had been, crept into his brain. Could this Mission, or whatever it stood for, help him, John Tyler ? It was not likely. Never in his life had he made the faintest effort at reformation. Never in his life had he uttered a prayer. He had no hope of heaven — he had no fear of hell. Such things were not for him. He was beyond the pale. There was nothing that he could think of in heaven or earth that could make anything more of him than he had made of himself — a total wreck. There was nothing for it but the East River after all. He flung away the paper, and took a turn or two around the park. The idea would not down. Why not try it ? A day or so couldn't make much difference anyway. He Into a Far Country 75 came back to his bench again. *' God/' he muttered, as he sat down and pushed his face between his clenched fists, *'I wonder whether there's anything to it?" His mother he knew had faith in such things. He had often heard her say, fifty years before, that Jesus Christ could save the vilest sinner from his sins— could cleanse and make him whole. Could this be done ? If it could, it meant the saving of John Tyler, for there were none viler than he. A desperate resolve seized him. A strange excitement shook him from head to foot. " Jesus Christ," he cried, as he flung his arms heavenward, "I can't pray — I don't know how. But if you will give me a power to cut this cursed drink out of my life, I'll serve you faithfully the rest of my days. I mean it — I mean it — so help me God I " Acting at once on his newly-made resolu- tion he hurried down to Water Street where an evening meeting was in progress, and there cried to God for mercy — for power to get the victory over habits that had held him as with rings of steel for more than forty 76 Into a Far Country years. And what he sought he obtained. " Looking backward to that memorable hour," he said to me a short while ago, ** I realize that from the very moment I sought pardon at the feet of Jesus the hideous rec- ord of an awful life was blotted out forever. Not for one single moment since that time has the witness within of my acceptance with Christ been withheld. The East River re- solve ? Ah ! that was a serious business at the time it was made, but I can afford to smile at it now I " Yes, Tyler can afford to smile at it now — he can afford, and does, to smile on life in general. Things have prospered wonderfully with him during the past four years. I have said that he is, possibly, the most remarkable convert Water Street has yet had. I repeat that all those who know him admit this, and to those who do not I want to convey some sort of an impression of how remark- able a man he really is. His experiences and adventures in out-of-the-way corners of the earth as well as on its well-traversed highways everywhere have been alike varied Into a Far Country 77 and wonderful. A certain cosmopolitan touch is in his blood — he is a citizen of the world. His outlook on life is striking and original. He can patter intelligibly in half a dozen languages ; he has wit- nessed many strange, impenetrable doings of which he never speaks. He is a born raconteur^ and his budget of entertaining stories concerning his wanderings to and fro in the earth is apparently inexhaustible. He has circled the globe five times and is as familiar with the East End of London, the Quartier of Paris, the fan-tan joints of Hong Kong, the Boca of Buenos Ayres or the slums of Calcutta as he is with the New York Bowery. Six years of his life were spent in the Australian bush — away in the back-blocks where he worked as a swagga. " I had the whole world for a stamping ground," he has said, '* for more than twenty years." Tall, lithe, with not an ounce of superfluous flesh about him, standing straight as an arrow in spite of his sixty odd years, splendidly shaped head, deeply marked fea- tures, resolute mouth, and a voice of tre- 78 Into a Far Country mendous power, John Tyler would command attention anywhere. He is a son of the Old Dominion. De- scendant through his mother of John Clark, whose prayers mingled with those of Wash- ington during the strenuous days of Valley Forge, and through his father of a former United States president, John Tyler comes of the most honoured families in Virginia. ** Not a single member of my family ever brought the vestige of a stain on the old name excepting myself," he said sorrowfully to me one day, "and I — well, in almost every civilized country on this planet I've managed to be what a fellow in Gravesend, England, told me I was — a long, lean, lorn, lanky loafer. The description fitted me like a glove. Or, as another chap put it one day — * Tyler,' said he, * you're what I call an international bum.' " I took my first drink of whiskey," he told me on another occasion, " in the year 1866. My people had sent me to a private boarding- school away in Albemarle County to prevent, as they thought, my contracting evil or in- Into a Far Country 79 temperate habits. One day I, in company with some other half-grown lads, visited the Monticello home of Thomas Jefferson, and there tasted liquor for the first time. Forty- two years later I sat in Mulberry Bend Park a ruined outcast. For all that went between, the Lord have mercy on my soul. Of course I never intended to become a drunkard but right from early manhood I became a dissi- pated rake. And an exceptional constitution enabled me to keep up a red-hot, cracking pace for more than twenty years. At my father's death I inherited a fortune and straightway started on a debauch that lasted for two solid years. Right here in this city, living at one hotel in company with the hardest drinking set to be found within its borders, I unloaded money enough to have kept me in reasonable comfort the remainder of my days. Among my drinking pals was an English lord — the most abandoned of us all. "Finally, I went broke," he continued, "and then I cleared out of the country. Time and again I tried to right myself, but 8b Into a Far Country to no avail. My thirst for liquor drove nie like the wandering Jew — round and round the world. I was always able to work, and have tackled every conceivable job under the sun — on land and sea. When I drew my pay, I immediately drank it up, and if dis- charged, moved on to another place. In India, Australia, Europe, South America and the Eastern seas the same shameful story repeated itself. In every country and clime, the devil robbed me of everything worth having or holding, and sent me scudding along like a ship before a typhoon, knowing and caring not whither. " One time I determined to get away from this awful curse, if it were possible, by go- ing right up into the Australian bush where drink was neither sold nor used. I got right up into the * back-blocks,' more than four hundred miles from Sydney, and joined my- self to a sheep farmer. For nearly a year all went well, and I imagined myself safe. One day, however, the old craving came over me like a raging fever and I was done for. I drew the wages due me, and covered that Into a Far Country 8l long, weary tramp of four hundred miles back into Sydney simply and solely to get drunk. In three days my money was all gone and I was sleeping under the stars in Hyde Park. " Let me tell you of another escapade. I was in London — hard up in the East End. I had been paid off from an East Indian steamer, and, of course, had speedily swal- lowed the money. Thomas F. Bayard was at that time just entering on his term as first American Ambassador to Britain. Him I straightway determined to get at, by hook or crook. So off I went to the Embassy in Victoria Street, Westminster, and presented to the footman a card, on which I had writ- ten — * Would His Excellency the American Ambassador be pleased to grant a brief inter- view to John Clark Tyler, of Richmond, Vir- ginia, an American citizen travelling abroad?* After some little delay I was conducted into the presence of Mr. Bayard. You can judge of his surprise when the American citizen turned out to be one of the worst vagabonds in Europe whose only business was to ask 82 Into a Far Country for the temporary loan of twenty-five dollars ! Did I get it ? Of course I did. Thomas F. Bayard was a Southerner and a gentleman and after I had pitched my tale, gave me all I asked. I think, however, that it was my unblushing impudence that carried the day with him. That was one of many times that I held up my country's representatives in foreign lands. Indeed, I was unfavourably and disreputably known as an incorrigible panhandler to every American consul in Europe. And, sometimes, when finding myself in some out-of-the-way corner of the British Empire, I would make myself known to English consuls as John McCarthy of Dublin, or Liverpool, and coax assistance out of them as a D. B. S — destitute British subject. Oh I the sordid, despicable mean- ness of it all 1 ** But there came an end to this globe trot- ting. I felt myself getting old and unable to rough it, as I had done for nearly twenty years. Then again I began to have a longing for the old country and I determined to return. My people had long regarded me as dead, Into a Far Country 83 and I did nothing to undeceive them. What good could it have done ? They were but the ashes of a burnt-out life I was bringing home. I came to New York, and sank lower and lower with every passing day. I worked spasmodically, just in order to get liquor. But there came a time when I flung the whole thing up. Hope died right out in my life and I loafed about the city, and slept in the Mulberry Bend Park pavilion — down on the stone floor. I was beaten at last. There's a story I once heard, which, although it has a touch of humour that my awful condition had not, may serve to indicate my utter helplessness and need. There was an Irish- man one day passing near St. George's landing-stage in Liverpool and he saw an English beggar asking alms. The poor fel- low was a dreadful cripple, having lost an eye, an arm and a leg. Pat gave him some money and passed on. Then he came back and gave him some more — and yet a third time. The poor cripple was profuse in his thanks, and asked the Irishman if he would tell him the reason why he had acted so gen- 84 ' Into a Far Country erously. * Sure I'll tell you/ said Pat jubi- lantly, * an' be mighty glad to. It's this — you're the only Englishman I've iver seen in my life that had been properly trimmed — trimmed to my likin'.' And, believe me, in some such fashion the devil must have chuckled over me, just before I went to Water Street, for he certainly had me trimmed to his liking. But, praise God, I'm out of his clutches now — once and forever." The days immediately following his con- version were not easy, languorous ones for John Tyler. A man who has been a drunk- ard and a vagabond for forty-two years does not easily fit in with respectability and good citizenship. But the man persevered. God helped him and he strove to help himself. His first job was in a Bowery lodging-house, which brought him seventy-five cents a day, his next a clerkship at seven dollars a week. Then he secured work in Bellevue Hospital — working as a painter. Eventually a man who had known him years before gave him a chance which he eagerly seized. To-day he is the successful superintendent of an JOHN TYLEB. Into a Far Country 85 up-town office building. "Jesus Christ has done much for me/' he will tell you. ** Health restored, faculties regained, life changed, hope renewed I go on my way rejoicing.*' Mr. Tyler is much sought after to speak in churches, mission-halls and elsewhere. And he readily responds. Nowhere is he more popular than at the East Northfield Summer Conferences. He has often spoken there and always with acceptance and power. As a public speaker he has commanding nat- ural gifts. When one remembers that these gifts have lain unused and neglected for more than a generation, their quality to-day is little less than marvellous. It is my delib- erate opinion that forty years of wanton and reckless vagabondage have deprived this country of the services of a man who, under happier auspices, had ranked as one of the greatest of living orators. Something has, however, been saved from the wreck, and out of the salvage God is fashioning for Himself an instrument of usefulness and hon- our. VI SAVED TO SERVE " They shall be in bondage . . . and after that, shall they come forth, and serve Me in this place.'* — Acts vii. 7. OUT of the bar of a dingy, third-rate hotel in a small city of eastern Penn- sylvania, a man, loaded with liquor, staggered uncertainly up to his room. All through a long day he had hung around in that bar, pouring down his parched, cracked throat the vile concoction an indulgent ex- cise authority permitted the proprietor to retail to his patrons in lieu of whiskey. Yet he was not, in the ordinary sense, drunk. He had reached that stage of debauchery, fa- miliar enough to drinking men, when, having reached a certain condition of comatose stu- pidity, it became possible to swallow down draught after draught of ruinous rubbish, without its having any further apparent effect. Once in his room, the man locked the door, and pushed the bureau behind it as a barri- 86 Saved to Serve 87 cade. He turned the contents of his pockets out on the table, tore all his papers into tiny fragments, flung them into the grate, set a light to them, and watched them consume. He crossed to the windows and closed them down tight, then taking the heavy bedspread, he stuffed it into the chimney opening of the fire-grate. Then with a hand palsied and shaking he turned out the gas-jet, and stood for a moment with his hand resting on the bracket. A pale, sickly moon, thrusting its face timidly from behind a bank of clouds, shone in at the window flinging its ghostly rays on the features of the drunkard standing with outstretched arm. For a moment or two he stood almost motionless. Then, with a swift jerk he turned on the current of gas, staggered towards the bed, and flung himself down to die. Half an hour later, the hotel proprietor, having closed his premises for the night, passed along the hallway on his way to his room where strong fumes of escaping gas met him. It was the work of a few min- utes to summon help, force the door, and 88 Saved to Serve drag from his intended death-chamber the unconscious form of the would-be suicide. It was a narrow shave. A close, close call. Yet this man, ruined by a sordid ambition, and goaded by an uncontrollable love of liquor to the attempting of his life, had once looked out on the world with eyes unbleared, with heart unstained. Born of Christian par- ents, petted child of a mother who cared little for herself and whose only concern was that her lad should grow to be a good man, Carl- ton Park had of his own willfulness brought himself to so dire a pass. Reared in the bosom of the Methodist Church, nurtured in its traditions, and surrounded from birth by its uplifting influences, he had at seventeen joined himself to her communion in active membership. In spite of this outward confession, how- ever, he failed to make good as a loyal- hearted Christian. This he attributes to his lack of courage to witness in an out-and-out fashion for his Lord. Retrogression followed, attended by the acquisition of habits which were one day to hold him with the clutch o{ Saved to Serve 89 a vise. After a few years of this kind of apostate living God spoke to Park again, and he hearkened to the call, and began a career of usefulness in His service. ** At this period of my life/' he says, '' God was very dear to me, and used me in His service. I became a messenger of the Cross, and carried with me wherever I went a story of redeem- ing grace." Then came a time when a questionable ambition entered his life. As a young man, he had risen to positions of administrative importance in the trade society to which he belonged ; and later, his outward life, charac- terized by integrity and freedom from vicious habits, appealed to his fellow unionists and he was elected their national representative. " I took the question of my acceptance to God in prayer, as I did every other question in those days,'* Mr. Park has told me, "and had I listened to the promptings of His Spirit and my own better nature, I should have re- fused the position and thus saved both my loved ones and myself years of sorrow and pain. But the tempter used my vanity as a 90 Saved to Serve special pleader. I began to tell myself that enlarged opportunities as a nation-wide rep- resentative of my union would offer a corre- spondingly larger field for witnessing for Christ— that travelling all over the United States and Canada I should be able, in a way hitherto impossible to me, to tell of the won- derful love of Jesus. To my shame and hu- miliation, however, I have to confess that I never attempted to follow out this laudable idea. I accepted the post, began to travel, began to sin, began again to drink, and, finally, utterly lost myself — a wretched, power- less victim in the hands of the remorseless demon drink.'* Then like an unloosed gar- ment everything in life fell away from Carl- ton Park — home, kindred, position, friends, character, desire to live. And the wretched culmination of it all was that gas-filled bed- room in eastern Pennsylvania. Three days later, when in a measure recovered from his miserable effort at self- destruction, Carlton Park came to New York, and to Water Street. Shaken in health, broken in spirit, he sat in the old Mission Saved to Serve 91 brooding deeply on what he had done ; of what he was doing ; of what he might have been ; of what he was. He Hstened, as hun- dreds of other wrecks had done, to the songs and testimonies which flung his memory back to the days when he, Park, had also a testimony for God. " As I entered the room that night," he says, " the very first thing on which my eye lighted was a wall-motto which read — No Compromise with Sin. In a flash, as never before, that sentence, framed into a motto on a mission wall, showed me the real cause of my life-failure. I had compromised with evil of every kind, and the result had been — ruin. Listening to the voice of ambi- tion, I had crowded Jesus Christ out of my life." As the service wore along God^s spirit strove mightily with this renegade heart and led him into the valley of decision. At its conclusion Park knelt with others at the old bench so often wet with penitential tears. In contriteness of spirit he prayed to the Christ he had denied — betrayed — for pardon and peace. He rose from his knees with no 92 Saved to Serve larger circle of acquaintance in New York than when he knelt down. Yet a whole host of conquering forces seemed to 'have ranged themselves on his side. He was once more allied to the overcoming Christ. Nervous and broken from his ' long de- bauch, unable either to eat or retain solid food, the new convert left the Mission that night, fit only for a hospital ward. Even at that, however, he has stated that a new strength and force were within him that made for ultimate victory. **It sounds in- credible of course to unbelieving ears," he says, " but to a thoroughly weakened mind, and well-nigh shattered body, Jesus, the con- quering Christ, gave immediate and suf^cient grace to start me with my face towards re- habilitation and righteous living. From that very hour God began a work of grace in my soul which He will one day finish in the presence of the world's redeemed.'^ Then came the leading of the Divine Hand. Mr. Park was invited by the superintendent to spend the next morning at the Mission in order to get his nerves settled somewhat and CABLTOX PARK. Saved to Serve 93 his mind into something hke normal shape. While thus engaged he picked up a morning paper and saw an advertisement which called for services such as he felt, even in his weak- ened condition, he might render. "In less than an hour I was working," he said in re- lating the circumstance. " It was not much of a job, certainly, but still, it was just the medicine that both mind and body needed." And Park "went to it," like a man. God blessed him, enabled him to win out over old habits, to hold inviolate his new covenant with his Saviour, and to rise from job to job, until to-day he holds a position of trust and responsibility with a large commercial con- cern in New York. Carlton Park has, from the very commence- ment of his association with Water Street, given the finest sort of indications that he had been saved to serve. Earnest, devoted, sympathetic with distress and misfortune, tolerant with erring humanity, he has dis- played all along the earmarks of a rescue mission worker. And men of this order are almost as rare as men of great genius. It 94 Saved to Serve looks pretty easy, from outside, to superin- tend a rescue mission. Yet the very reverse is the case. It is not so much a question of ability as fitness. The strain on a man's patience, — his long-suffering, — is continual, appalling ; and not one in a thousand, even among the ranks of thoroughly consecrated men and women, are, or would be, equal to the task. Carlton Park, however, is one that happily is; and since April, 191 1, he has been in charge of a rescue work in the down-town district of Brooklyn — the Kent Avenue Mis- sion. It is a rough, uninviting quarter of the city in which Carlton Park is labouring, but God has blessed him and continues to bless him in his work of peace and labour of love. Meetings are held every night in the week — every day in the year, and through the consecrated ministry of this man, who but a little more than two years ago essayed to fling himself unbidden into the presence of his Maker, wrecked lives are making har- bour, broken hearts are being healed. Mr. Park is not a salaried mission worker. Kent Saved to Serve 95 Avenue knows him only in his spare time. And if any friend knows of a finer instance of devotion to the service of storm-tossed humanity than this busy man of affairs, hurrying to his charge after the thousand and one worries incidental to a New York business day, I, for one, should be glad to have it indicated. Mr. Park has, of course, had restored to him both the love and loving association of his wife and children — and furnishes as signal an instance as may be found anywhere of the power of the Cross to save and keep. Moreover, he has been saved to serve. VII SONS OF ISHMAEL "And these are . . . the sons of Ishmael." — Gen. XXV. /j. THE specific work of the McAuIey Mission is, of course, the rescue and reclamation of drunkards. Yet it does not finish there. Men, who have erred and lost their way by contracting and foster- ing pernicious habits other than a love of liquor, seek the friendly shelter they instinc- tively feel awaits them in Water Street. And none are denied. " The drunkard may come, the swearer may come, Backsliders and sinners are all welcome home." To be cordially received in Water Street, there is but one qualification necessary — that a man, feeling himself a sinner, is seeking a Saviour. In this chapter is recounted the story of one who found peace and pardon in Water Street, whose drinking habits were, 96 Sons of Ishmael 97 possibly, the least of his offenses. A few years back, he was regarded by the police of New York City as one of the "slickest'* cus- tomers they had to cope with — a deft, dan- gerous thief. He was an adept at covering his tracks, and for many crimes of which he was guilty, he went unpunished. For others he had to bear the brunt. His name will not be given here — nor yet his portrait — for reasons perfectly obvious. Yet his story is vouched for in every particular and he, him- self, is known and loved by all the folks in Water Street. He commenced life as a telegraph opera- tor, and, almost immediately, became a thief. Having to receive and transmit race-news, he caught what he calls the " betting fever," and, to cover his losses, began to borrow money from the ofifice cash. One day he realized that it was impossible to hide his de- falcations any longer ; and concluding that he might just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, he absconded with all the office money he could lay his hands on. He was ap- prehended four months afterwards, and sent 98 Sons of Ishmael to a state reformatory in June, 1885. Paroled in June, 1886, he strove for some little time to lead an honest life. Circumstances were, how- ever, against him, and his criminal tenden- cies led him still further along the downward road. " The whole world owes me a living," he said to himself, " and I'll make it ' cough up.' '' Putting this theory of brigandage into prac- tice, he swooped down on a Wall Street bank and stole from the teller's window, in broad daylight, the sum of twenty thousand dollars. Betrayed by a confederate, he was arrested three weeks later and sent back to the reform- atory to serve out his unexpired term of five years. On his release in 1890, he at once re- sumed his nefarious role of professional thief, and engaged in a series of diamond robberies. Caught red-handed on one of his expeditions, he was sent to Sing Sing for five years. While serving out his sentence he was made shipping clerk. "When the prison indus- tries were discontinued in 1893," he says, " I was found to be thousands of dollars short in my stock. There was no trace of where Sons of Ishmael 99 the stuff had gone to, though, so I escaped punishment. But the warden said to me one day : * The only reason you haven't shipped away the whole prison, I suppose, is because you couldn't get it into a packing- case.' " On the expiration of this sentence he man- aged to steer clear of arrest for more than a year, although thieving systematically the whole time. Eventually he was sent back to the penitentiary for robbing a jewelry store, and, on again regaining his liberty, committed a burglary which landed him there again — this time for four years and six months. In addi- tion, he was brought under the provisions of the Habitual Criminals Act, which meant that his next offense would entail imprison- ment for life. Declared to be incorrigible by the Sing Sing officials, he was drafted to Damemora. While there his health failed and he began to be haunted by the probabil- ity of his dying a convict's death. Under the nervous strain, this poor wretched crimi- nal became something almost worse — a drug fiend. Cocaine and morphine were easy to loo Sons of Ishmael obtain in Damemora, when one knew how, and a year's vicious indulgence converted the erstwhile hardy criminal into a mental and physical wreck. Coming out into the world again, he ex- perienced all the horrors of that awful strug- gle awaiting any victim of the cocaine habit who endeavours to " break away." Then it was that the poor wreck turned to drink — fiery, ardent spirits — in order to quench the undying craving for drugs. For seven months the struggle lasted, and at the end of it, the drug fiend had become a drunkard. Instead of cocaine, he wanted whiskey — wanted it, and craved for it, more than for anything else on earth. What a life ! What a record, for a man barely arrived at middle age ! Then one day in the old Jerry McAuley Mission he saw the light that Saul of Tarsus saw on the Damascus road, and heard the voice that said, ** I am Jesus" ; and the grap- ple began. For the next three or four years he lived right on the line of battle, striving to put up a stiff fight, wounded desperately, smitten and going down, starting to his feet Sons of Ishmael loi again, facing the enemies of his soul in an almost heart-breaking struggle to be Christ's man. Is that the end of the story ? Oh, no I In the plan of God's mercy there's some- thing better than defeat for a man like that. He stopped his hopeless, futile fightings, and placed himself behind the shield of the Con- queror. He has realized that if victory is to crown his life, it will be through the power and virtue of Another. Thus this one-time hardened criminal, drug fiend and drunkard, has found peace. The life he now lives is beyond and above reproach. Almost nightly he is to be found testifying to the saving and keeping power of Jesus Christ. And not only have the old habits passed out of his life forever, but the indwelling Spirit of the Most High has mellowed and subdued his nature ; so that not a trace of the bitter cynicism consequent on fifteen years' en- forced captivity remains. He stands to-day a trophy of pardoning Love. What think ye ? ** Is anything too hard for the Lord ? " Here is another story — a darker record 102 Sons of Ishmael even than the one just given — told by a man whose life has been so marvellously trans- formed that one can scarcely imagine him as ever having had sufficient lawlessness in him to steal ten cents. His conversion is a remarkable instance of how Redeeming Love, operative in the life of a sinner, can renew and cleanse the worst natures. For more than four years he has been engaged in active Christian work, and many souls have been brought to God by and through his ministry. Read his story. " I was born and raised in this city. My father owned and ran a saloon over on Washington Street for thirty-five years. I be- gan to steal before I was ten years old. I may never tell this story in detail again, but I want to tell it here so that you may see out of what a deep pit God has brought me. It is not a pleasant story to relate, but I do it in order to show you how, if a man will trust Jesus, He will bring him out of darkness into light. " I started my life of crime by tapping tills. From that I passed to snatching pocketbooks Sons of Ishmael 103 from people in the vicinity of the Desbrosses Street Ferry. My own people knew what I was, and it cost them hundreds of dollars to keep me out of trouble. When my father died, he left me several thousand dollars. After getting the money I started for the West, after going from here to Philadelphia. In the state of Pennsylvania I started out on a criminal career that cost me many years in prison. I robbed a post-office in that state, was arrested, but acquitted, although it cost me eight hundred dollars to get out of that scrape. I then went to California, and was not there long before I was arrested on a charge of highway robbery, convicted, and sentenced to San Quentin prison. After serv- ing my sentence I had to leave the state at once, as there were sufficient charges against me to send me * up ' for life. ** I went next to the state of Oregon, there to continue the highway business, but had to get out again pretty quickly. Next I drifted into Montana. There I was arrested for highway robbery, and sentenced to five years in Dear Lodge Penitentiary. Upon my re- 104 Sons of Ishmael lease from that prison I went into the state of Washington, and in the city of Tacoma was arrested on several charges of burglary and highway robbery. I escaped from jail, however, and turned all hands loose with me. I then went to Seattle, and from there to Olympia. Here I was arrested for robbing a Jap, but once again escaped from jail tak- ing all the other prisoners with me. "I then went back to Seattle and was again arrested on two charges of highway robbery, but managed to get away. I went back to try and get my pals away from the officers, but was caught. While in jail awaiting trial, we nearly managed to escape again by tun- nelling our way out, and would have suc- ceeded but for a Federal prisoner who * squealed * on us. I was sent to Walla Walla Prison for seven years. " While in Walla Walla I plotted to escape. I bribed a man to bring in a couple of guns. In this prison the convicts work in a brick- yard ; and we had it all arranged to grab the warden and throw him on an engine that came into the yard, and in that way escape, Sons of Ishmael 1 05 as one of my pals said he knew how to run an engine. When we got on the engine, however, instead of running out of the yard he ran the engine further into the prison yard, and both my pals were shot dead by my side. They caught me and gave me eighteen months in solitary confinement, and for the first twenty days I received scarcely any water to drink or bread to eat. At the time of my release I was nearly dead, and they took me down to the train and sent me out of the state into Oregon ; but I came back to Washington in a few weeks. " About this time my partners and myself planned to hold up a train, but the job was bungled. I stationed my partners at the entrance to the cars while I went through the train and collected the money and valuables. While I was busy in the car, however, my partners got * cold feet,' and deserted me, and matters got so hot for me that I had to drop the bag and run. Bullets were flying all around me, but I managed to escape without injury. A short while after this, I blew open a safe in a little town just outside of Spokane 1 o6 Sons of Ishmael Falls. Two weeks later myself and pals were arrested and some of the goods found on me. My pals turned state's evidence, and got two years in prison. I stood trial, * beat ' the case and was acquitted. " I next went to Butte City, Montana, and after committing many crimes in that state, without being caught, returned to Washing- ton. I managed to get arrested about eight miles from Spokane Falls for burglary. I was tried, convicted and sentenced once more to prison — this time for two years. "After the expiration of this sentence I came back to New York City, and for many years continued thieving over on the West Side. One day I went into the office of a business man. He was alone, and I robbed him of all the money he had — something like two thousand dollars. Often, since I have given my heart to God, that man's face has come back to me and I can see the awful look on it as I held a revolver to his head and took his money. ** Shortly after this transpired I met an old thief who knew me and my career. I told Sons of Ishmael 107 him I was sick and tired of a life of crime, and he told me about the McAuley Mission, and advised me to come down and see Mr. Hadley. I didn't go for about five days after he told me, but at last I wandered in one evening, and asked for Mr. Hadley. The janitor went up and told Mr. Hadley that there was a man down-stairs that wanted to speak to him. It was just before the evening meeting, and soon Mr. Hadley came down, and spoke to me. He asked me how I felt and I told him, and he spoke encourag- ingly to me, and asked me if I intended to take Jesus for my Saviour that night, and I said I would if I died in the street that night. Jesus came into my life that night, and the past two years have been full of happiness and sunshine, and I intend to continue in God's work to the end. Until seven years ago I never knew what a Christian life meant, nor had I ever given a thought to sweetness or goodness as far as I can remember. * But thanks be to God who giveth us the vic- tory through our Lord Jesus Christ' my life which once was entirely taken up with lo8 Sons of Ishmael scheming how to rob people is now devoted to the work of trying to save them. As long as I have breath I mean to cling to Jesus, and I know that He will keep me to the end." Behold what God hath wrought with these and many more like them whose crim- inal records could be related ! Sons of Ishmael I For the greater part of their lives at war with society — with hands against all mankind, but now stretching them out in love and helpfulness. Once aliens and strangers, to-day, of the household of Faith. VIII THE PORTION OF MANASSEH " Which took Manasseh among the thorns and bound him with fetters. . . . And when he was in affliction he be- sought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers and prayed unto Him ; and He brought him again . . . into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God." — 2 Chron. xxxiii. 12, ij, OF Alec Russell, the story of whose fall from grace and ultimate restora- tion through the ministry of " Water Street *' is here recorded, the superintendent says : " His was such a disheartening case that we almost gave up hope of his ever mak- ing a permanent stand for Jesus Christ. He had a terrible experience in trying to cut loose from the devil. He first came to Water Street about six years ago, and for a long time was first up and then down. We never gave him up, however, and I felt certain that the time would come when he would make a full surrender. And it rejoices my heart to 109 1 1 o The Portion of Manasseh know that the time finally came when he committed his ways to Christ, and his rebel- lion and backsliding ceased." "I was born and brought up in Bonnie Scotland," said Mr. Russell, " in a godly home where father, mother, brothers and sisters were all active Christians. There I early heard the old, old story of Jesus and His love, and when quite a boy, gave my heart to the Saviour and for years loved and served Him. I soon began to take an active part in gospel work, and it was the joy of my life for a long time to preach the Gospel. I had always been a total abstainer and if any one had suggested to my friends or family the pos- sibility of my ever becoming a drunkard, they would have been laughed at. But how needful the exhortation, * Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall.' Tis often the most unlikely that the devil brings down. " I can well remember in those happy days a business friend, who having been a notori- ous drunkard and brought to God through reading the life of Jerry McAuley, bringing ALEXANDER RUSSELL. The Portion of Manasseh 1 1 1 the book to me to read, and how my soul was stirred as I read of the wonderful things God was doing in Water Street. Little did I dream then that the time would come when, as a poor helpless drunkard, I should cross the threshold of that Mission. During a very serious illness I was induced to take wine as a tonic. In my physical weakness the stimu- lating effect appealed to me and bit by bit (unconsciously at first) the awful craving got possession of me, until I lost business and everything worth having in this world. Four years ago, leaving behind a loving Christian wife and three bairns, I set sail for New York, full of ambition, and with good prospects of soon making a home for them. But alas, I soon began to nibble at a glass of beer, then beer was not strong enough. I wanted * good ' Scotch whiskey. " He who plays with sin will soon find out that sin will not play with him. It will hold and hurt. I realized this to my sorrow when the time came in my Hfe when I loved whiskey better than the dearest friend on earth. I did not love the saloon but I would take the drink 112 The Portion of Manasseh into my room and saturate myself with it At this time it was my good fortune to meet with Dr. Edgar W. Work, of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, who later became my pastor. He helped me in many ways and for over eighteen months stuck to me and refused to give me up, though several times I told him to let me go as I was not worth saving. He held on, however, until he saw me saved and sober, and a member of his church. The debt I owe him and the deacons and members of his church for the way they helped me I can never repay. " I believe it was the Holy Spirit that brought to my mind the reading of the * Life of Jerry McAuley,' about sixteen years be- fore, and I paid a visit to his old Mission. There I heard many testimonies of the men as to the saving power of Christ. I went forward when the invitation was given and asked God to save me. I meant to do what was right, but I was weak, and I am afraid I relied too much upon my own self. I fell time and time again. It seemed as if the devil had got such a hold upon my life that The Portion of Manasseh 1 1 3 it was impossible for me to break away, but thank God the friends in Water Street never give a man up. I marvel at the patience of Mr. and Mrs. Wyburn with me. How I longed to get back to my Saviour and to the former happy days of Christian life ; but the devil kept telling me God had said about hie what He said concerning Ephraim of old, * He is joined to his idols, let him alone.' I kept working all the time, but I was willing to go hungry, to sleep out in the open, to neglect my loved ones — all for the love of whiskey. I was fast killing myself when at last on March 30, 1909, hopeless and helpless, on the verge of a drunkard's grave, I went up to the mercy seat once again and kneel- ing down, held up the white flag and made an unconditional surrender to Jesus. Praise His name ! He came back into my life, cut the cords of sin that bound me, and re- stored unto me the joy of salvation. What marvellous grace, to take back one who had known His love yet deserted His cause, and to reinstate that one in His serv- ice I 1 14 The Portion of Manasseh ** * O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee ; I give Thee back the life I owe, That in Thine ocean depth its flow May richer, fuller be.' " To-day with all my soul I praise God for salvation from the power of sin, and for a Saviour who can save and keep. While the old sinful life is gone forever, yet its effects are still felt in many ways. The wound is healed but the scar remains. Words fail to express my gratitude for the help I received at Water Street from Mr. and Mrs. Wyburn, Mrs. Lamont, as well as all the converts. ** The Mission was not only the place of my redemption ; it was also my home. I was permitted to enter the inner circle and the home up-stairs was thrown open to me. I think my dear wife never could have stood the strain of those past four years, but for the kindness of Mrs. Wyburn in constantly writ- ing her across the water cheering her on. At last, after weary days of waiting, it has pleased God to open up the way for me to enter the ministry. I realize full well how unworthy I am of such an honour, but with The Portion of Manasseh 1 15 God's help I mean to do my best. Out here in the far West I am seeking to build up three new churches, scattered over thirty miles. The difficulties are great, the forces of evil are numerous, but with God in front we shall soon leave the difficulties far in the rear — transformed into memorials of victories. By God's grace I mean to devote the balance of my days to preaching the glorious Gospel, and to win souls for Christ." As Mr. Russell has indicated in the fore- going testimony, he is now preaching the Gospel under pretty trying circumstances, away in the pioneer town of Carter, South Dakota. He is a licentiate of the Congrega- tional Church. The difficulties facing him are tremendous, but all his friends are sanguine that, with God's help, he will win out. He is now happily reunited to his family, who are with him out in Carter. The following letter received from him gives a vivid account of the splendid work this one-time drunkard is doing out in the far West : ** The subject of the sermon was * From the East to the West.' I thought they would 1 16 The Portion of Manasseh be interested to hear the Easterner compare east and west. I only made a passing refer- ence, and then proceeded, quoting from Psalm ciii. 12, * As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgres- sions from us.' The people all seemed to enjoy it. Then I addressed the Sunday- school. Got lunch. Then got a chance to ride part of the way to Jordan in an automobile and walked the remaining three miles, and then I spoke to a Sunday-school, and later preached here again to a most encouraging turn-out. I got a lift back three miles and started to walk the remaining six miles. At seven o'clock it grew dark and 1 lost my way. For over an hour I walked around and had about made up my mind to spend the night on the prairie. I went along singing, * Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me.' Soon I struck a house and was directed home. Got back tired and weary at eight-thirty. The next three days will be devoted to visiting, where oftentimes there are two miles be- tween the houses. Then on Friday there is that thirty mile drive again to preach on The Portion of Manasseh 1 1 7 Sunday. So you see what a busy life I am living. "As usual the most attractive and best lighted up places are the saloons, the only places that the men have to sit in. So I am going to raise money to heat up the church, then I intend to open it every night as a reading-room and to make it a social centre. For this purpose I will have to have it well heated and get hold of some old magazines, song-books and a few games. I have a little organ and will give them some music. Then I am going to find out the men who can sing, and organize a male choir. I am going to get a magic lantern and give them some light entertainments, throwing on some gospel pictures, etc. All this towards getting them to attend church to hear the Gospel. Now, Brother Wyburn, you can help me by sending me fifty or one hundred reports and old magazines, and any old books that you have no use for. By the grace of God I mean to do things out here for Jesus Christ. The opportunity of my life is before me and I mean to seize it, and by God's help I mean 1 1 8 The Portion of Manasseh to hold this lonely fort for Christ and His kingdom. Pray — pray for me." That is a brave, manly letter, written by a man who is determined to push the battle to the gate. And the promises of God are for him. *' The glory of this latter house shall be greater than that of the former, saith the Lord of hosts ; and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts." IX " OUT OF NAZARETH " ** Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " — John i. 46. CHERRY HILL, once a pleasant spot in New York City where George Washington resided, is to-day a sor- did Italian colony. It positively teems with life, part of which may be seen to continually overflow from the crowded tenements to door-step and pavement. Foul smells and gentlemen of the push-cart fraternity abound, while unkempt women with arms akimbo chatter ceaselessly from open doorways. Children there are aplenty ; and where they play about in the wretchedly paved thor- oughfare puddles of foetid water are com- mon, and an occasional dead cat lies bleach- ing in the sun. It is not an attractive or pleasant neighbourhood, but, save for an oc- casional shooting affray arising out of some 119 1 20 " Out of Nazareth " gambling squabble, is law abiding enough, and occasions the police but little trouble. It was a very different story thirty years ago. In those days Cherry Hill earned for itself a sinister reputation even in the old fourth ward — an area in no way particular or squeamish. Strangers rarely ventured down there ; some that did neglected to re- turn to their friends and were never seen or heard of again. The inhabitants were almost exclusively Irish — drunken, lawless, well-nigh ungovernable. Old Jerry Sullivan, who for many years kept a shoe-repairing store in Water Street, has told many a dark story of what happened in Cherry Hill in those bad old days. Jerry was a County Cork man, and maintained that for years the "Hill" was under a ban. ** 'Twas of a Sat'dy night years ago,'^ he said one day, as he sat hammering away at a shoe, " whin the Hill had had a dhrop an' the divil was in 'em ; an' what wid the singin' an' the dancin' an' ivery wan rushin' up and down the Hill yellin', why, you wouldn't b'lave the row ! Then they began a-cussin' " Out of Nazareth " 121 an' a-fightin' an' the blood began to flow, till some wan, afeerd o' murther, run for the priest. An' shure the priest he come, an' he talks to 'em, an' thritins 'em, but they wouldn't heed. So thin he walks the length of the strate, callin' on 'em to remimber the judgments of the Almighty. But the divils on'y laughed an' swore the harder. So the priest — Gawd help us — whin he got to the top ov the hill, he turns round and looks down it an' he hears the min an' the wimmen, aye, an' the childher, all blasphemin' an' cussin'." Jerry paused a moment and crossed himself. " Sure, 'twas like listenin' at the gates of hell 1 Thin the priest o' Gawd he stretches out his hand, an' sez he, 'May the curse ov the Almighty be upon this Hill, for 'tis the wickedest place on earth.' An' bedad, the curse stuck to Cherry Hill till the Irish all cleared out." Somewhere around forty years ago, when the neighbourhood was at its worst, two lads were born into this welter of lawlessness and sin. Both grew up in vice and ignorance ; both subsequently led lives of superlative 122 " Out of Nazareth " evil ; both are now Water Street converts ; both are rough-cut diamonds — but diamonds all the same. Although there is little, if any, difference in their ages, one man is uncle to the other. The uncle — known to his inti- mates as " Lucky Baldwin " — is Chris J. Balf ; the nephew, William H. Johnstone — who re- joices in the sobriquet of *' Bull." The testi- mony of each man is allowed to appear just as he himself has furnished it, in the belief that those who may read the following chap- ter may be the better able to realize what miracles of grace these two men are. Chris Balf came to the Mission in a dreadfully drunken condition, scarcely knowing what he was about. But God sobered and saved him. Here is his own story : " I was born on Cherry Hill about thirty- seven years ago. I had a good father and mother, but, God bless them, they could not do anything with me. At that time this neighbourhood was known all over the world because of the tough gang who lived around here, and I was one of them. I would not go to school or do anything else " Out of Nazareth *' 1 23 my parents wanted me to do. I was deter- mined to have my own way and please my- self, so, of course, I turned out to be a thief and a drunkard. I remember the McAuley Mission years ago, and I along with others did all I could to annoy them here by break- ing windows, pulling out the board, and try- ing to break up the meetings. **As far as I can remember, my first * drunk ' was when I was about eleven years of age. I was standing in Cherry Street one day, with some boys about my own age, and across the street there was a brewery wagon, and the driver was bringing in kegs of beer into a store. He took about twenty-five small kegs off from the wagon, and laid them on the sidewalk, for a man to come out and count them. After the bar- tender had done so, the driver started to roll them into the store, and when he had rolled in about four or five, the thought came into my mind that I would like to roll one into the alley, which was next door. It was no sooner thought than done. I started right over to take one, and rolled it into the alley. 1 24 " Out of Nazareth " When the driver got the rest of them in, he got up onto his wagon and drove away, never missing the one I had stolen. My pal and I started to cut, and bust in the bung- hole of the keg. It broke, and as the foam flew up, I held my head over it and drank all I could. By this time a few of the other pals had got a can, and then we started in to do as we had seen the ' big fellows ' do. That is the first time that I remember of ever being drunk. " In my drunken condition my brother took me home. My mother laid me down on the sofa, and waited for my father to come home from work. When he came he told my mother that he would let her take charge of me. The next day she sure did take charge of me, and, standing me in the middle of the floor, gave me all that was coming to me — and a little that should have gone to my brother. But I got up that night, and cleared out and for three months my people never saw me. I went over to Jersey City, and got on a barge at the Morris and Essex Canal, and went to Port Delaware. I " Out of Nazareth " 1 25 came back from Delaware, and went to New- ark, N. J. — with a thief. I stayed in Newark a month, then came back to New York. Now that was the commencement of my downward career. I then got in with a street gang, and got to be leader. We used to steal boxes of groceries, tubs of butter, etc., from wagons, and buy drinks with the money we received from selling the goods. Being now about seventeen years old, I got tired of this sort of life, and wanted to go to work. So I went to work at different things, trying everything, but could not bring myself to stay anywhere. I was arrested several times, but my poor old mother would always get me out, and I tried hard to reform. My father now took hold of me, and tried to teach me a trade, but I would not stay with him, and left. I roamed around on the streets a while, and then went to work driving a truck. This seemed to satisfy me for a time. But I spent more time in idleness than at work, hanging around the fourth ward. Getting tired of this, I turned my steps towards the Bowery, where for twenty long 1 26 " Out of Nazareth " years I was lost to home, friends, and every one that was dear, and there led a life that is almost indescribable. " After leading this kind of a life from New York to San Francisco, I came back one day to see the old Bowery, as it had always been * Home Sweet Home ' to me — I had made it my home for twenty odd years. I had spent all my money. Just a week before I had held a man up and took thirty dollars from him, but that was all gone and I was sick. I was talking to a fellow that day and you can imagine my surprise when he asked me to go to the old McAuley Mission with him, as he wanted to get a cup of coffee. I looked at my shoes and then at his shins, but I was too weak and sick to do what was in my mind. I told him what I wanted was whiskey, not cofiee. Thank God, he knew what I wanted better than I did. This man started for the Mission and I got up and fol- lowed him. Now, although I was born and raised around the neighbourhood, I never knew they gave out coffee and sandwiches there in that Mission. Some of my people CHRISTOPHER J. BALF. " Out of Nazareth " 127 were in business not far from the Mission and were highly respected, but I never went to see them. I went in the Mission that afternoon and got the coffee, and then came back again at night to the service. I was drunk, and the man who read the lesson was deaf, and had an ear-instrument like a box, which he placed on the desk. Seeing this, I said to a fellow near me, * Go up there and tell that guy to telephone to heaven that I am coming.' I listened to the testimonies and yet I did not believe them. It was not that I wanted to be bad, but I knew no bet- ter. However, when Mr. Wyburn asked all those to come forward who wanted to lead a better life, I was the first to start. When I knelt down to pray I almost went to sleep on my knees. Mr. Wyburn came to me and asked me to pray. I said, * I don't know how to pray.' He said, *Pray the prayer of the publican.' I replied that I was no Republican ; I was a Democrat. You see, I was so ignorant I did not know. Finally I did cry, * God be merciful to me a sinner, for Jesus' sake/ and the tears began to flow. 128 "Out of Nazareth" I had not shed a tear since I was a Uttle child, but God melted my heart. He heard my prayer that night and I have never wanted a drink of whiskey since, and better still He has taken away all those sins that go with a drunkard's life, and enables me to live a true, honest Christian life. ** Five or six weeks after my conversion, Mr. Thomas Savage Clay, a trustee of Water Street Mission (God bless him !), took an in- terest in me and invited me to go with him and hear Dr. A. F. Schauffler talk to Sunday- school teachers. I had never read the Bible up to this time, but I heard this man speak of the third chapter of Acts. I went down to the Mission and asked for a Bible and had one of the converts find this chapter for me. I took the Bible and read every word of that chapter and understood it, too. Now I can read any part of the Bible, and God helps me to understand what it means. Oh, how I wish I could impress on people how real this new life is to me. It is wonderful that God could care enough for me to stoop down and pick me up out of the mire and the clay " Out of Nazareth '* 1 29 and place my feet upon the solid rock, Christ Jesus. God has blessed my testimony and used it to His honour and glory. For the past three summers I have had the pleasure of attending the Students' Conferences and also the General Conferences of Christian Workers at East Northfield, Mass. I can never thank God enough for the spiritual blessings I have received there. I have also had the joy of giving my testimony up there to the saving and keeping power of Jesus Christ. I shall never be able to thank God enough for having led me to the old Jerry McAuley Mission, 316 Water Street, where I found the way out of my trouble. It was there Jesus found me. He reached down and brought me up out of the miry clay, and out of my degradation, and cemented my feet on the solid rock — there to stand for time and eternity. " It was there I also first met the best friend I have on earth — Mr. T. S. Clay. He saw me struggHng; being a Christian he com- menced to help me bear my burden, and under God he has been my friend ever since. 130 " Out of Nazareth " God has raised up many friends for me. It was through Mr. Clay and Mr. Wyburn that I was sent to Northfield, and God blessed me there. Now I am studying at the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, and God has by His Holy Spirit saved many a poor mother's boy in Chicago through my efforts. I have tested both sides of life, and found that the Christian life is the only one to lead and the only life in which a man can have true satis- faction. Pray for me that I may remain steadfast to the end.'' Like uncle, like nephew. The same crass ignorance of early years ; the same mis- guided youth and early manhood ; the same vicious living out of maturer years. And both have found pardon, restoration and peace at the same precious Cross-foot. Chris Balf has told his story and here is Bull John- stone's : *' I was born on Cherry Hill right behind the McAuley Mission. On the day I first saw daylight the whole neighbourhood was up in arms. It was Orangemen's Day, and the Irish were all fighting like mad so I've been "Out of Nazareth" 131 told. The bringing-up I got was the sort that most other lads got there in those days — being left to yerself to do as you liked. I never thought of God for a minute, and re- ligion never entered my mind. I grew up a big, husky sort of a fellow, good-natured and easy-going. There were two things that, from the days when I was quite a little chap, I made up my mind to be — a gambler and a professional ball-player. And I made good, or made bad (whichever you like to call it) at both. ^^ *' And that caused me to start in with the booze quite early. Soft drinks didn't cut any ice with me. I thought I had to stand up at the bar and drink whiskey to be a sport, and before I was twenty years of age I could swallow it down to beat the band. I never side-stepped anything in the way of liquor in those days. As I've already said, I was a strong, healthy fellow, and getting a jag on didn't trouble me a bit. I was always fit next morning and ready for hitting it up again. Well, I kept on going round with the bunch, and that soon queered my ball- 132 " Out of Nazareth '' playing. The manager told me this was a ball-team, not a distillery, and that he hadn't any notion of carrying a booze-fighter around with him. So whiskey put me out of busi- ness as a player. After I quit as member of a team I took to umpiring — that is, in the summer; in the winter I lived by gambling. I've picked up a tidy chunk of easy money in my time, being always on the lookout for lemons. When I laid hold of one I cleaned him up pretty good. Now as I look back on such mean, miserable ways of getting along as I had, it makes my face burn with shame. **Well, the game couldn't go on forever. Fifteen years of the sort of life that I led had to show somewhere, although I never bar- gained for it at the time ; and when the blow came it hit me pretty hard. I contracted some sort of complaint that settled in my joints and made me a cripple. Fd struck a hoodoo for fair. No dough, friends gone, health bad, completely down and out. But I managed to keep on getting whiskey. I thought perhaps it would cure me. A fellow " Out of Nazareth ** 1 33 can nearly always get ^/la^ — worse luck — one way or another. But I led a miserable life for years. Then about two and a half years ago I came back to New York. I was cer- tainly all in, and didn't care much whether I lived or died. " I went to stay for a while with an aunt over in Brooklyn. But she soon got tired of having me around (as was only likely) ; so she told me to get a hustle on me and look round after a job. I couldn't work, so I went to inquire after an uncle of mine named Chris Balf — Lucky Baldwin he was best known as — and I was told he was to be found at the McAuley Mission. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard that. * Lucky ' was at a mission ? Well, that beat cock-fighting I A saloon or a gambling joint had always been more in his line. Well, I went after him. I didn't care where I found him so long as I could separate him from a dollar. The night I went to the Mission Hall, uncle was not present. I was invited to stay and as I'd never seen or heard anything like it, I consented. I want to tell 1 34 " Out of Nazareth " ' you frankly that I thought the whole outfit was a fraud. The boys who testified I put down in my own mind as four-flushers. You see I was such a crooked, no-good sort of guy myself I thought everybody else was as bad. I never gave it a thought that these men were on the level. So thinking Fd got a line on the whole bunch I went away„ " But I couldn't rest. The wonderful stories I had heard kept popping up in my mind. Could they be true? I wondered. And if they were, what about my chances ? As far as I remember now, that was the way I began to try to figure things out. Well, I went back to the Mission — this time to listen and take notice. The testimonies I heard had the right ring about them. I found out in ten minutes that I'd doped 'em out wrong the last journey. God spoke to me through those men. Thick, ignorant, sinful as I was, I felt my need of His help and pardon. I limped up to the mercy seat and "gave my heart and life to Jesus Christ. What He has done for me since that happy hour I cannot begin to tell. First of all, my " Out of Nazareth " 135 ailment has had proper attention so that, with all the rotten booze cut out, I'm a pretty good healthy fellow again. Yet after all that's nothing in a way of speaking. Think of the way He has cleaned up my life ! — of the way in which I am able to resist tempta- tion and remain true right among the old gang. I know I can't tell the story as I ought — Cherry Hill's to blame for that. But I know, thank God, what I feel — what I know. I'm saved, kept, and blessed every hour of my life by the power and love of God." " Can any good thing come out of Naza- reth?" So ran the ancient query, and the answer was a transcendent affirmative, in- volving the salvation of the race. And out of Cherry Hill, a place with as infamous a reputation as that which clung to the hillside city of Galilee, have come two magnificent trophies of the power of pardoning grace. X THE BLOSSOMING DESERT " And the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." — ha. xxxvi. i. ONE striking evidence of Rudyard Kipling's wide appeal is that, when- ever half a dozen men begin to dis- cuss him, almost invariably each man will voice his preference for a different story. One will declare for ** Without Benefit of Clergy," another for " They." A third will swear by " Love O' Women," a fourth by " The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows," or, " The Man Who Would Be King." So it goes — each to his fancy. I am reminded of the final story in " Plain Tales— To Be Filed for Reference." Almost everybody will recall that masterly study of an English 'varsity man, gone ut- terly to the dogs in India. To be sure it is only a half-filled sketch — a little better than a fragment — therein lies its power. I have 136 The Blossoming Desert 137 known, intimately, half a dozen men who might well have sat to Kipling for his Mcin- tosh Jellaludin — men whose tragic stories spring vividly to remembrance, when I read such passages as these : "He was, when sober, a scholar and a gentleman. When drunk, he was rather more of the first than the second. He used to get drunk about once a week, for two days. On these occa- sions he raved in all tongues except his own. One day he began reciting * Atalanta in Caly- don,' and went through it to the end, beat- ing time to the swing of the verse with a bedstead leg. ... * Man,' said he, * when you have reached the utter depths of degra- dation, little incidents which would vex a higher life are to you of no consequence. Last night my soul was among the gods ; but I make no doubt that my body was writhing down here in the garbage. . . . I am as the gods, knowing good and evil, but untouched by either. On the soul which I have lost, and on the conscience which I have killed, I tell you that I cantiot feel — I who am the son of a man with whom you 138 The Blossoming Desert have no concern — I who was once fellow of a college, whose butter-hatch you have not seen.' . . . His voice stopped for ten or twelve breaths and then he began mumbling a prayer of some kind in Greek. The native woman cried very bitterly. Lastly, he rose in bed and said, as loudly as slowly : * Not guilty, my Lord T " Perhaps his last sen- tence in life told what Mcintosh had once gone through. Then he fell back and the stupor held him till he died. The story of one such is set down here. The man was a New York ** bum " — one of the tragic units that go to make up the un- derworld of the Bowery, the bread-line and the ten-cent "flop." At the lodging-house to which (when he had the price) he ex- tended his patronage, he passed for some- thing of a mystery. None of his fellow- lodgers knew anything of his personal history, and the man himself never volun- teered to meet the deficiency. Concerning his past, he was as close as a clam. Not even when thawed, and rendered more com- municative by Nick Solomon's " third-rail " The Blossoming Desert 1 39 whiskey, did he ever abandon his reserve sufficiendy to discuss his antecedents, or impart any information as to whom or what he had been, before he blew down to the Bowery and Mulberry Bend. So it came about that the absence of reliable data, coupled with the fact that their mysterious associate was obviously English, well-edu- cated, and (when sober) well-mannered, dis- posed ■ the boys of the lodging-house to endorse the conclusions of Brady the night- clerk — '*that he'd bet anybody ten bucks the fellow was one o' them sky-hittin' college guys, gone on the bum I '' Mr. Brady's diagnosis of his taciturn lodger's social status was perfectly correct. He was a "college guy," and one gone, most assuredly, "on the bum.'* Times there were, however, in circles far away from the Bowery, when the seal of silence would be lifted, and the story of a hideous past re- tailed for all it was worth, to pry open the pocketbook of a sympathetic listener. In out-of-the-way corners of the city where men " whose limbs were made in England " 140 The Blossoming Desert are wont to foregather, he would unload the sordid recital which foreran a touch. When he chanced on a newcomer he would open up with his usual formula. " Pardon me,'* he would say, " but I fancy you're an Oxford man. . . . Ah I — thought so. Never rubs off, y' know. Baliol, eh ? I'm Maudlin." Then would follow talk of Jowett and Christ- church Meadows, of Bishop Stubbs and Guy Nickalls, of Henley and Putney, — of the thousand and one things dear to, and never forgotten by, men on whom the spell of the fair city of Oxford has been laid. Then would come the shameful story of shattered years. Almost invariably he would get what he asked for. Then back to a Bowery gin- mill to drink up the proceeds of his pan- handling crusade, and fall, almost insensi- ble, into his wretched hammock mumbling, " God for Harry, England and St. George ! " Yet this man, in other respects as utterly fallen as Mcintosh Jellaludin, has, through the goodness and mercy of God, been saved that outcast's fearful end. And the story he was once careful to screen from all save The Blossoming Desert 141 those to whom he chose to tell it he has now given, broadcast, to the world. From many a pulpit and platform in this fair land he has told it, impelled by the same motive as with which he has allowed it to be set down here — to the honour and glory of God. Richard Hugh Roberts was born an Eng- lish gentleman. A luxurious home, godly parents, refined surroundings and an unsul- lied name was part of the heritage into which, at birth, he entered. He was put to school at Lismore College, Ireland, the principal of which being a family friend. His early de- sires, as well as those of his mother, were to enter the English Church, and with that view he proceeded to a great university. When the time came to decide, however, he elected to prefer another profession and entered the service of his queen. *' Never," he says, ** shall I forget bidding my dear old mother good-bye. How faithfully I promised to preserve the honour of the old name, to ab- stain from every act unworthy of a gentle- man, to never drink ! Yet I had barely left home before I began taking my glass of beer, 142 The Blossoming Desert then brandies-and-soda and pegs of whiskey. Almost before I was aware of it, I was living the life of a man-about-town, and right in the clutches of strong drink. To the dissipations of London I added the revelries of Naples, Paris and Marseilles." Standing on life's threshold, equipped with everything the heart could reasonably desire — social position, financial resources, mag- nificent physique — this young Englishman deliberately chose the downward road. Fash- ionable drinking clubs, stage doors and green rooms claimed him for their own. Some of his friends, knowing of the headlong pace at which he was travelling along the road to ruin, said with a foolishness as fatuous as it is common — ** He's only sowing his wild oats. He'll settle down after a while." He did settle down ; but it was into a quagmire of iniquity from which, in his own strength, there was to be no escape. Not a word of his mode of living reached his mother's ears, and she, in her blissful ignorance, ever thought of her boy as one who fought the good fight. Then came India. When a white man be- EICHAED H. EGBERTS. The Blossoming Desert 143 gins to sink in the great Eastern peninsula and is not sent home by his friends as soon as may be, he is as good as done for. The dunghill is almost certain to get him. Roberts was not sent home — until it was too late. Now thoroughly alarmed, his friends strove to help him, but in vain. Everything that medical science could suggest was tried. A celebrated specialist advised a long sea voyage — a trip around the world. It availed nothing. Treatment in Australian, French, German and English sanitariums was resorted to, but with the same result. A return to India plunged him to a deeper depth of de- pravity than before. In Bombay he was confined in a padded cell, and later operated upon for abscess of the liver brought on by acute alcoholism. By this time the drink fiend had gotten him, body and soul. A few years had sufficed to change a man of parts and promise into a hopeless, nerveless dipsomaniac. With his fortune and commission gone, he returned to England. His father and then his mother died — their deaths hastened 144 '^^^ Blossoming Desert by the knowledge of their son's failure and life of shame. One by one his friends turned from him, wearied out in their bootless efforts to effect his reformation. Finally a wealthy cousin sent him to Canada. At first he did not do so badly there. Then the old appe- tite asserted itself and he became a common vagrant, pestering the English community for assistance and sleeping on the docks and in lumber-yards. One day he met a man who became interested in him and paid his fare to New York. Here he continued to lead the Hfe of a homeless outcast. Now and again he would tackle a job addressing en- velopes, carrying signs in the gutter or wash- ing dishes, simply in order to buy liquor. Suffering from delirium tremens he was at one time or another an inmate of every alcoholic ward in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Winter after winter for ten long years he stood shivering on Fleischman's bread-line, thankful to be given a crust of bread. Thus he drifted along, having reached the point where a man gives up the struggle and cries in utter hopelessness : The Blossoming Desert 145 ** Here — ^judge if hell with all its power to damn Can add one curse to the foul thing I am." For four consecutive nights previous to June 7, 1909, he slept on the floor of the cel- lar of Nick Solomon's saloon on Mulberry Street. Kicked out from there he staggered to the park at Five Points and sat huddled upon one of the benches. Here he accosted two men and tried to panhandle them for the price of a drink. They refused him and one of them said, " You'd better beat it down to Jerry McAuley's Mission in Water Street. They're looking for guys like you." The words stuck to him. Next night, half drunk and on the verge of delirium, he made his way down to Water Street. He was given a seat near the door, and there fell asleep. Presently he woke to find the company sing- ing a hymn that had a familiar sound. He knew that hymn — it was one his mother used to sing to him in happy childhood years. Sweedy the words rang out : " I love to tell the story of unseen things above, Of Jesus and His glory — of Jesus and His love- 146 The Blossoming Desert and as the outcast Hstened, he began to think of his weary wanderings into a Hfe where the air was heavy and accursed — where the river of Regret flowed through a flower- less land. He thought of how the world, that once had beckoned him to the banquet and offered smilingly the reddened chalice, now gave him only husks — the portion of a castaway. The singing of another hymn recalled him from his bitter broodings. An- other of his mother's favourites — " Nearer my God to Thee," the one she loved best of all. How the tender words pierced the heart of the outcast : " Though like a wanderer The sun gone down ; Darkness be over me, My rest a stone " and over him surged a great yearning to re- turn. He thought again on the sweetness of an earlier time — the rest and peace of other days. Yet return was not easy. His soul had grown callous with the passing of the sinful years. His mother's voice kept calling — calling — as the Mission folks sang : The Blossoming Desert 147 " Still all my song shall be, Nearer my God to Thee — Nearer to Thee." At last he struck the homeward trail. Up to the praying bench he staggered, and flung himself at the foot of the Cross. He lifted his heart to his mother's Christ. The heart that met him had no upbraidings, and the wanderer realized that the Love with which he had been watched and pitied was inter- woven with, and akin to, that of his mother's. He prayed the prayer of deep contrition, and, instantly, the joy of pardon flooded his soul. Richard Hugh Roberts was born again. What medical science, the entreaties and help of friends, or the galling defeats of twenty years had failed to accomplish, the saving power of God effected in the twin- kling of an eye. Once sin-stained and leprous, the man, now cleansed, felt his flesh come again to him like that of a little child. Once again life grew sacred and joyous. In his soul a great reverence for purity and right- eousness sprang up. The night died down — the scent of morning filled the air. Across 148 The Blossoming Desert the horizon of his darkened life came a glim- mer of the dawn. Soon, for him, the rising sun burned along the levels of the sea, while bracing winds ran east and west, blowing the clarions of the day. " But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise, with healing in His wings.'^ Mr. Roberts made the quickest '* recovery " ever known in Water Street. In less than two weeks from the day of his conversion he obtained a position of trust and responsi- bility. In the course of a few months he was finding employment for half a dozen other converts of the Mission. To-day he is the trustee and valued representative of a great corporation in a territory over which he has entire charge. There is an old say- ing in England that " blood will tell." Un- fortunately one never knows what it will tell, until it begins to speak. In this case it has said the thing, and with no uncertain voice. To-day, after years of bitter forfeiture, Rich- ard Roberts once more bears "without abuse the grand old name of gentleman." To his intimates he is the soul of chivalry, to the The Blossoming Desert 149 world a man of honour, to the fallen a faith- ful friend. More than all this, he is a faithful witness for Jesus Christ, and a glorious tro- phy of the saving power of the Crucified and Risen Son of God. XI BY A GREAT DELIVERANCE « And the Lord saved by a great deliverance." — / Chron. it. 14. EDWIN C. MERCER was brought to God in Water Street, August, 1904. The story of his ruin and restoration is here set down in his own words. I want to anticipate this wonderful testimony by the statement that since September, 1907, he has been at work among the students of the colleges and universities of America. In fully seventy-five per cent, of them has our friend laboured during the past five years. A col- lege man himself, he is persona grata with students everywhere ; and his labours have been abundandy owned by God. A report dealing with Mr. Mercer's work has been published recendy and contains the following statement: ** All the large student centres from coast to coast have been visited by Mr. Mercer, with results that have been remark- 150 By a Great Deliverance 151 able. Probably no man in the country is more acceptable in the fraternity houses and athletic circles of the colleges than Mercer, and the demands for his services far exceed the possibihties of his fulfilling any but the most important. The third year of his work has been far the most successful of his three years in the field, and the committee is deeply gratified at the results achieved.'* Mr. Mercer's story ought to be heard or read by every young college man in the country. The sad experience of this bright young Vir- ginian may very easily be duplicated a thou- sand times. The pitfalls into which he fell yawn as widely as of yore. The devil is as keenly afoot, for the mauling and marring of promising young lives, as he ever was. It is with the hope that valuable careers may be conserved, and young lives saved from utter shame and ruin, that Mr. Mercer's testi- mony finds place in this book. " The man who has never in his life taken a drink of alcohol cannot well appreciate the wonderful blessings enjoyed by a deliverance therefrom. While on the other hand, the 1^2 By a Great Deliverance man who has been literally chained by its appetite and made a demon to its craving, who has sacrificed everything worth living for to appease his yearning for the greatest curse that this world knows, can alone fully value and appreciate the great happiness which springs from a knowledge of the fact that the old shackles are broken, the craving been taken away, and the precious blood of Jesus applied to the heart. Having been for a number of years addicted to the use of alcohol and chained to its destructive appetite, and in addition an abject slave to the many sins which invariably accompany a drunkard's life, I can to-day lift my heart in grateful thanksgiving to God, who forgave me my sins and washed me in His precious blood, August 6, 1904. That day I became a new creature in Christ Jesus. ** We cannot well deny the power of hered- ity, nor the consequent fact that the taste for alcohol is born in some men's lives. The great majority of drunkards, however, culti- vate, rather than inherit, the taste for strong drink. In my humble judgment, it is very By a Great Deliverance 1 53 seldom the case that the desire to drink alcohol is a natural impulse, but rather one disastrously cultivated through the desire to be a ' good fellow ' — to be popular — and con- sidered big and manly. The taste for strong drink in my case was not an inherited one, for none of my ancestors — unless very remote — were drinking people. My first drink was taken at college, and taken not because I really wanted it (for its taste was at that time most repugnant and repulsive to me), but simply because the men I started to associate with were drinking men. "I feared the cruel taunts which I knew would result if I made a determined stand as a total abstainer. I was not able to muster the spunk to withstand the jeer of being ' effeminate ' and a * sissy.' The plea of my friends was that every young man had to learn such experiences and * sow his wild oats ' some time in life. Would that I had then possessed the determination of a Daniel, who * purposed in his heart he would not de- file himself,' but I did not *' I little realized then that in sacrificing my 1 54 By 3. Great Deliverance principles for the fear of unjust criticism I was right there forming habits which, as time advanced, were to merge themselves into a power which would control and later wreck and ruin my life. * Sow an act you reap a habit; sow a habit you reap a character; sow a character, you reap a destiny ' — an old and familiar quotation this, the truth of which no man knows better than I. The very drink which was at first repulsive to me afterwards became my bread and meat. My God ! what would I not do for it — even pawning my clothes, my ring, my watch, my very soul itself. How little I thought, on taking my first drink for sociability's sake, that alcohol would one day master me body and soul ! ** Even before leaving the University of Virginia I had enough sense to know that business men, even though not professed Christians, were bitterly opposed to their employees drinking. So I resolved at the expiration of my college career to give up the bottle when I returned to my native city in the South for that reason, if for no other. But you will seldom find that men carry out EDWIN C. MERCEE. By a Great Deliverance 1 55 such good intentions as these, and that, as a rule, when once the habit of drinking is formed it is generally carried through life. I did not give it up when I returned home, but on the contrary drank more than I ever did at college. "Then again I was the very last one to see (the drunkard always is) that my moral character was gradually slipping away from me ; that my tastes were degenerating ; that my friends were becoming anxious about me and that the hearts of my dear ones were bleeding for me. I was reasoned with, but would not listen — drink deafens a man to that — and my sole thought and ambition was the social glass. Soon I began to desire as my companions the gambling element in preference to Christian friends, and the race- track was far more pleasing to me than the parlour and pure womanhood ; the club and the saloon more attractive than the home of my parents. My father, brothers and sister pleaded with me to forsake the life I was leading, which they plainly saw would ulti- mately end in ruin — morally, mentally, phys- 156 By a Great Deliverance ically, socially and spiritually. My wife begged me to mend my ways, but all to no avail. The taste for the damnable stuff had me tightly chained, and no one then told me that Jesus was the only one to break those fetters. I made resolutions, sincerely enough, but with will power totally gone would break them fifteen minutes after they were made. I wanted to do right. I began to see the terrible dilemma in which myself, my wife and my dear family were placed, and I strug- gled in my own weak strength to break away from my evil companions and the drink which was killing me, but I might as well have tried to dam up the Atlantic Ocean. "Finally the time came when my disgrace to family, wife and self became so pronounced that I was strongly advised to leave my home town, strive to change my way of liv- ing, and commence life all over again. I went to a city about seven hundred miles from my home, and in two months I secured a very good position. But I had carried with me to my new home the old appetites, and passions, and instead of forming, as I had By a Great Deliverance 157 promised myself I would, a circle of helpful friends, I sought out barroom associates, club companions and the race-track element. I cannot blame my employer for discharging me, after I had worked for him for about a year. He had warned me against drink and given me a fair chance, so that it was my own folly which caused me to lose my position. I had sent my wife home a short time before this, be- cause I had foreseen the end and desired to spare her a little of the misery of my wrecked life. There I was in a practically strange city, seven hundred miles from home, without employment, without money and without friends, and well in debt. 'Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.' I had sown and now I was reaping good and hard. I borrowed from a drinking companion enough money to purchase a railroad ticket as far as Trenton, N. J., and to that city I went seeking employment but finding none. " Just outside the city of Trenton is a monu- ment to my great-great-grandfather. General Hugh Mercer, of Revolutionary fame, and there I was, pondering over the fourteenth 158 By a Great Deliverance verse of the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke: * There arose a mighty famine in that coun- try ; and he began to be in want/ I was in want, not having a cent to my name, and for two nights forced through dire poverty to sleep on the benches in the square about the capitol. One morning I was standing in front of the Western Union Telegraph office, hungry, tired, dirty, and almost hopeless, when an unknown party came up to me and calling me by name said, * You seem to be in trouble. What is the matter ? ' It seems this man had met me some months before in a hotel in the town I last worked in, and he claimed that I had been kind to him there and desired to reciprocate. He advised me to go to New York City, and kindly paid my fare. " I reached New York City in July, 1904. My old college chums living in New York had been warned against helping me, and they made it plain to me that they did not want me hanging around their offices. These were the fellows I learned to drink with, to know through them the taste of By a Great Deliverance 159 that which had ruined me. My brother was in Europe, and things looked very blue and discouraging for me. I hardly knew what to do or where to turn. I had a Chris- tian cousin on Wall Street, but as I had de- ceived him in some money matters a few months before, I was ashamed to face him and have to admit to him my guilt. This gentleman was Mr. Thomas S. Clay, himself an honoured trustee of the Water Street Mission. I would have stayed away from him if it had been possible, but I had ex- hausted all other resources, and he was my last chance. I now thank God that I sought out this cousin, for he was not only willing to forgive me for my past wronging of him but spoke very kindly to me and helped me financially. He also directed me to the dear old Water Street Mission, telling me that if I would go there I would be helped. At this wonderful Mission I heard, for the first time, that the blood of Jesus Christ could save a drunkard, and that that was the only sure way a drunkard could be cured and saved. " I attended a meeting and conferred with i6o By a Great Deliverance Mr. John H. Wyburn, and from the testimo- nies I listened to that night and from the council given me by Mr. Wyburn, hope be- gan for the first time in many years to spring up within me. At last I saw a possible chance for me. The testimonies of the re- deemed men impressed me wonderfully, and as I noted their happy, smiling faces stamped with the very spirit of the Living Christ, saw them handsomely clothed, and heard them telling gladly for Jesus' sake their stories of redemption, my heart began to beat faster and I longed to be like they were. When the invitation was given to all who really de- sired to change their way of living and sur- render their all to Jesus, I accepted the chance and went forward to the mourners' bench. '* I did so with a full determination to sur- render my life to Him who died for me. I was asked to pray for myself. Yet although seven years previously I was a Sunday-school teacher in my home church, I found myself unable to utter even the simplest kind of a prayer. Somebody or other asked me By a Great Deliverance l6l to repeat after them the publican's prayer: *God be merciful to me a sinner/ which I did. When I arose to my feet I felt better, and while I could not explain what had taken place in my life, yet I was conscious of the fact that some great event had happened. Thank God, as I write this testimony of my life, I now know what the event was — Jesus Christ had come into my life, and thank God He has been living and reigning there ever since. Oh, what a wonderful Saviour — how patient — how willing to forgive and forget — how anx- ious to help — how zealous to keep. I never knew what genuine happiness was until I be- gan in an humble way to serve Him who died on Calvary to save a lost, sinful world. I now know, thank God, that the world and the things of the world can never truly sat- isfy, but that a surrendered life to the will and wish of Him who saves and keeps not only satisfies, but is beyond all comparison the happiest and the best. " For the past four years my life has been spent among the young men of our American universities, colleges and preparatory schools. i62 By a Great Deliverance I am trying to preach to these men a prevent- ative message of God's power to save them from the depths of hell, which I sounded through dissipation and sin. Mine is a won- derful field among the two hundred to three hundred thousand young men who so greatly need Jesus Christ at the centre of their lives. When you realize that the college men of to- day are to become the leaders in civic and national life of to-morrow, then you can be- gin to appreciate the significance of my work. God has privileged me to give my life story at seventy-five per cent, of the uni- versities and colleges of America ; to address some 80,000 young men ; to meet personally in club and fraternity houses, at training tables, and on the campus about 35,000 col- lege men ; to have personal interviews on vital topics with some 8,000 young men, and to have in my evangelistic meetings about 4,000 take a definite stand for the Christian life. " This gives some faint idea of the definite side of the work, and yet who can meas- ure the unconscious influence and good By a Great Deliverance 163 which we never hear about? I am just about to enter on my fourth year of work among the college men of America and I seek the earnest prayers of all my friends and all Christians who read this brief chap- ter. It promises to be the most important and hardest year I have yet had in the work. I have every day of the coming year taken up and my committee are now picking and choosing the most needy places for me to labour in. Those in charge of my work have in hand enough invitations to keep me busy day and night for the next three years. Con- trast this blessed service with the awful life I once led, and you will see that I have a right to claim that * the Lord has saved me by a great deliverance.' " XII THE LIFTED BONDAGE " The Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve." — Isa. xiv. j. ''W THENEVER I visit Water Street," ^y^ said a prominent business man one night in the Mission, ** I al- ways experience considerable difficulty in bringing myself to even a faint realization of what these converts were two, three or five years ago. Look at them," he went on, in- dicating two or three score of men, with a sweep of his arm. " Doesn't it seem incred- ible that these splendid fellows were once drunkards and Bowery * bums ' ?" ** It does," was replied, '* but then, surely the transforming power of God counts for something?" "Yes, yes — I know," was the rejoinder. ** There, of course, is the secret. Yet even when that, and every other contributing in- 164 The Lifted Bondage 165 fluence, has been reckoned in, the marvellous transformation effected in McAuley Mission men constitutes one of the standing wonders of the city." There is nothing hyperbolic about this pro- nouncement. Clean-cut, alert, courteous, in many cases evidencing culture and refine- ment, these Water Street converts exert an influence which renders it positively difficult to think of them as having been anything other than they are to-day. And of none can this be affirmed with greater truth and aptness than of Howard Thompson. If one did not know he would never suspect this man's bitter past. There is no outward clue. He has been, however, as far away from God as most men, but to-day he is at home in the Father's house. He is of splendid stock and family. Yet in spite of the fact that the influences surrounding his early years in a beautiful Western city were calculated to de- velop the best that was in him, he very early in life rebelled against God ; and until a little over five years ago, lived his life without spiritual help of any kind — in factj without l66 The Lifted Bondage believing that any such help existed. In his own family there was abundant evidence of the contrary, but he chose to ignore it, and for his choice he has dearly paid. " Now that I look back into the past," he said to me one day, *' I can scarcely remem- ber any portion of it when I was not in either physical or mental misery brought on by vicious and selfish indulgences. For me it has been * pay as you go.' " Finally, these evil practices brought him to the most unhappy condition to which any man can be brought in this life — that of be- ing bound by habits over which he had no control, with which even medical science was entirely unable to cope. Chief among them was the love of liquor against the inroads of which he struggled vainly for many years. He underwent several courses of treatment, and entered sanitariums to take most of the well-known ** cures." None of these proved effectual and were helped to failure by an- other pernicious habit — that of inordinate cigarette-smoking. For more than fifteen years he had smoked incessantly, right The Lifted Bondage 167 through the day, and often a good part of the night. His nervous system became all but shattered from these excesses, and he re- sorted to drugs. *' This last," he says, "just about clinched the business of my ruin. In spite of the entreaties of friends, the claims of my children, and the appeal of a hundred other reasons, I continued in my evil courses until I became utterly helpless. I was un- able to work, and although still a young man, became a burden on my family. And the thought of my sheer helplessness, the sense of my total defeat embittered me against everything and everybody. I was a hopeless, fettered slave." On May 30, 1906, he was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital in what was thought to be a dying condition. Under careful treat- ment, however, he slowly recovered. While still in the hospital he was visited by a mem- ber of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, who came at the instance of a man who knew Mr. Thompson and had often helped him. This good brother sent him, when convales- cent, to the New York Christian Home for i68 The Lifted Bondage Intemperate Men at Mount Vernon. It was while in that admirable institution that he heard the news of a Deliverer who could free him from his awful bondage. To one of the religious services came E. C. Mercer, telling the story of the Saviour he had found in Water Street, and of the glorious change that had been effected in his life. The story- gripped Mr. Thompson as nothing had done before. Somehow, he had not realized hitherto that the root-cause of all his misery was sin and rebellion against God ; but that afternoon he saw it with startling clearness. After leaving Mount Vernon he made his way down to Water Street, determined to learn more of this wonderful way of escape. Many such stories as that which he had heard Mercer tell at Mount Vernon were given that night. The evidence was over- whelming. In the after meeting, Mr. Thompson, with a score of other men, went forward to the penitent form, and on his bended knees promised God that with His help he would begin to fight the good fight. That was more than five years ago, and he The Lifted Bondage 169 is still in the ranks of the King's army. The Lord has wonderfully blessed Howard Thompson during the passing of these years. He has given him joy and peace ; He has given him the strength to live decently, hon- esdy, uprighdy ; He has put a new song into his mouth and established his going; He has enabled him to secure and hold a re- sponsible position with an excellent business concern — a corporation of which to-day he is secretary ; He has given him means where- withal not only to support those dependent upon him but to pay off the debts con- tracted in less happier days. Respected and loved by all who know him, he is, to-day, entirely freed from the foul habits which once securely held him, and is being signally used of God. He never loses an opportunity to tell old and young that the secret of all moral victory and well-being lies in putting one's trust in Jesus Christ. His great, clear, definite affirmation is that God never loses sight of them that put their confidence in Him. The Master Potter has put His hand on 1 70 The Lifted Bondage this once marred piece of human clay and is now shaping it into a vessel of usefulness and honour in His service. ** To what pur- pose is the waste ? " is sometimes the cry of men and women as they behold efforts made to reclaim the lost. Howard Thompson is a magnificent vindication, and a prophecy of greater things to come. "For the encouragement of those who may be praying for dear ones," he some- times says in his testimony, " I would say, * Never give up,' no matter how hopeless the case may seem. I am convinced that it was in answer to the prayers of my family — es- pecially the unfaltering love and faith of a dear sister — that I was finally led to deliver- ance in Jesus Christ." XIII THE SECOND SPRING «' Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone ; the flow- ers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come." — Solomon^s Song it. ii, 12. WATER STREET has been bless- edly used of God, not only to lift men from the depths of spiritual ignorance and lifelong rebellion, but in bringing back those who have played the apostate — who for some mess of licentious pottage have bartered away their birthright. Many such have begun life again in the old McAuley Mission. " A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind." Very few men ever strike Water Street, who have not a shame- ful chapter or two in the story of their lives. Thus it comes about that when a man, who has at one time denied his Lord, comes back into His service, he finds it easier to start again in Water Street than almost anywhere 171 ijl The Second Spring else. No man is ever reviled or slighted because of his past. It is the present that counts — and the future. McAuley Mission men are bound to each other in a spiritual esprit de corps. Among them is one whose name is here withheld in the interest of others (not his own), but whose authentic story follows : ** To set down a record of one's prodigal years, broken vows and wasted, weary days is, as it were, to put oneself in the pillory, yet, in view of all that has been done for me down in Water Street, it is a very little thing to do, after all. ** I am an Englishman — raised and educa- ted in one of her most ancient cities. On my father's side I come of a line of Methodist preachers that stretches away back to Wesley himself ; on my mother's, from the men who, since the days when they drew bow at Crecy and Agincourt, have been the backbone of the British race — the yeomen of England. My early years were uneventful enough — sheltered, guarded, peaceful. Nothing ever really happens in that quaint, old, walled The Second Spring 173 city of my birth, with its story of a thousand years ; in it life moves but slowly. And the record of the halcyon days I spent in it, until 1 reached the age of twenty, is just an ordi- nary, happy, every-day one — the record of a healthy, mischievous, English college boy, blest with an ardent love of every kind of out- door sport and game, and cursed with an ex- traordinary penchant for getting into innu- merable scrapes of every imaginable kind. " Friends hoped and believed that I should one day make some sort of a mark in the world. Father and mother prayed that their son might become a minister of Jesus Christ. I was born, bred and nurtured in the tradi- tions of the Methodist Church. Mother's cradle-songs and lullabies were the old-time hymns of Zion. Nothing of example or pre- cept was ever set before me in my home-life but what was pure, lovely and of good report. I had troops of friends whose influence, had I but heeded it, would have conferred on me incalculable benefit, for it was wholly cast on the side of truth and righteous living. Every encouragement was given me to seek and 174 The Second Spring tread a path calculated to lead to some signal achievement — some high destiny. But I laughed it to scorn, went out from the old roof-tree, and when I came to the part- ing of the ways, chose the lower road. I knew of the right path — none better — of what it would mean, of Avhither it would lead. Yet I deliberately and perversely turned away. Like Kipling's Mulvaney, I saw and knew the best, yet followed and did the worst. And so, on the very threshold of manhood, I began, with careless abandon, to form habits and associations that were one day to hold me fettered as with rings of steel. **The next ten years of my life passed rap- idly enough — swished along in one wild whirl. I attained to considerable skill in several directions which for years I followed with passing success in various parts of Eng- land. I always enjoyed splendid health, as most athletes do, and drank during the whole of those wander-years whatever I thought fit, and as much of it as I pleased. Time and time again, I grew tired of a town or a job, The Second Spring 175 and sought some other mode of livelihood. I turned my hand to newspaper and maga- zine work, to running a big vaudeville house in a Midland town, to managing a large sa- loon in the city of Manchester, called *The Blue Ball.' All this time the trend of my life was downward — ever downward. My imme- diate friends were men of my own kidney — wild, careless, irresponsible prodigals, gener- ous to a fault, but without a thought save for the passing hour. For most of them, poor boys, there has come a day of terrible reck- oning. One after another they were flung away on life's wayside — self-robbed and self- slain. There were eight of us in that little- band of revellers. Two alone survive — my- self, and one man now resident in St. Louis, Mo. Of the rest, one died fighting in South Africa ; the others — God help us I — lie buried in suicides' graves I ** In the year 1900 God cried a halt. I had at this time left Manchester for London, and by the merest chance came under the influ- ence of James Flanagan, the great South London slum-missioner. At Eastertide, in 176 The Second Spring this portentous year, one of my brothers came to spend a short vacation with me; and as I had known for years that he had been sincerely and earnestly serving God, I questioned him as to which of the great London preachers he would like most to hear on the forthcoming Sunday. He de- clared for a preacher I did not know, whose name I had never heard. Indeed, I was not at all likely to have heard it, seeing that I had not attended a single religious service of any kind since coming to London. Nor did I, on this particular occasion, have the slightest personal inclination to go, but simply sug- gested the arrangement out of courtesy to my brother, and in deference to what I knew would be the way in which he would like to spend his Sunday. So we went to church, my brother and I, and, immediately, I fell under the spell of a great Irish preacher. On that very first occasion of my hearing him preach, he succeeded in making me thor- oughly miserable — showing me, as I had not hitherto seen it, what a prodigal I was, what a wreck I had made of my life, what a heap The Second Spring 177 of useless, human rubbish I had become. Unbeknown to my friends, yet utterly unable to keep away, I returned again and again on Sabbath evenings to this man's church and came, finally, to where I had, perforce, to make a decision. I had either to cease going to services — for I could no longer continue to listen to this man's preaching and remain what I was — or give myself to Jesus Christ. I did the latter, and found pardon through the blood of the Cross. " With its more than seventy meetings a week, there is always plenty of work waiting to be done at this great mission centre, and I at once flung myself whole-heartedly into its activities. To the next eight years of my life I now look back with pleasure and with poignant pain. They were eight years of crowded, happy days — days spent in the service of Christ and humanity, yet destined to end in a night of bitterness far worse than death. Shortly after my conversion the man who led me to Christ left to make a world tour. He was succeeded by one of the no- blest men on all God's earth, by whose side 1/8 The Second Spring I worked, week in and week out, for eight years in those awful sin-smitten slums of Southeast London. I became a lay- preacher and pleaded the case of the downtrodden, outcast poor, both on the lecture-platform and in the pulpits of the churches of my native land. I contributed hundreds of ar- ticles to the religious press of England, and in view of it all, I believe I can honestly lay claim, and that without the faintest suspicion of egotism, to eight years of strenuous, suc- cessful labour spent in the service of Jesus Christ. " But I fell — God help me — and the fall was as from heaven to hell. Not as a man falls over a sheer precipice did I reach my Ge- henna, but by a gradual declension. To put it in a sentence, I was ruined by forming un- desirable literary friendships and associations. I got to know quite intimately a number of literary men I ought never to have known at all. They were of the life I had left behind eight years agone — and I knew it. But in my arrogant pride I imagined myself strong enough to be able to fraternize with these The Second Spring 179 habitues of the Fleet Street taverns and still preserve inviolate my Christian integrity. Well, I was mistaken — blindly, utterly mis- taken. I lost grip of Christ, became cold and lifeless in the very spiritual heart of me. Like the church at Sardis, I had a name as of one that lived, yet who was dead. I drifted lower and lower. I commenced to drink again — I who had not touched the cursed stuff for eight long years. I severed my connection with my church, sold a mag- nificent library for a song, parted from my wife and little one, and went generally and unmistakably to the devil. " Yet all this time an unceasing remorse was eating the very heart out of me. I be- lieve I never slept for weeks. Through the influence of some friends I obtained a posi- tion of greater lucrative value than I had ever held before. But I walked the streets of London a lost soul — enduring the tortures of the damned. Finally, the whole thing be- came absolutely intolerable and I determined to leave England for America, there to start life afresh. I came. But with me I brought l8o The Second Spring the renegade heart — the apostate life. Im- mediately on reaching New York I struck up acquaintances of a totally undesirable character — notably that of a one-time bril- liant physician, but who, like myself, had lost himself. These were not the men whose friendship I should have sought ; they could do nothing to help me — they could not help themselves. And so I did nothing towards winning my way back to the place whence I had fallen. I drifted about the states of New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, spend- ing the money I had brought with me, get- ting lower and lower in the social scale and rapidly qualifying for the lodging-house and the gutter. And there I finally landed. " One Tuesday — a day that witnessed the heaviest rainfall New York had experienced in twenty years — saw me, soaked to the skin, applying for admission at the Industrial Christian Alliance Home in Bleecker Street. I was admitted, and while in that institution heard for the first time in this country of the Jerry McAuley Mission. Of course I had heard of it when in England. As a mission The Second Spring 181 worker I could not easily have missed doing so. When Mr. Hadley's book, * Down in Water Street/ was published, I reviewed it for several prominent religious journals. But the whole matter had escaped me, and had not so much as crossed my mind since landing in this country. It was, however, brought back to me at the religious service, which is part of the weekly schedule of the Alliance Home. The speaker was Mr. George Hall, himself a convert of Water Street, who related his testimony, with simple directness and telling effect. I de- cided to visit the Mission — something I had often wished to be able to do in the days when I was engaged in similar work in the slums of Southeast London. I had no thought or anticipation of its exercising a saving effect on myself. I was, if anything, harder, more embittered, than before. But I went to Water Street — certainly not seek- ing temporal aid, for I had not the remotest idea that it could be obtained there. I had imagined the McAuley Mission as attending only to the spiritual needs of men. And I l82 The Second Spring was certainly not seeking spiritual aid, for my heart was as if turned to stone. ** That meeting I shall never forget — shall never, I trust, desire to forget. While sit- ting listening to the testimonies of the con- verts, there came upon me a rush of old memories that completely swept away my callous indifference to the things of God. My heart was stirred to its innermost depths, so much so that I could not resist the impulse that came upon me to stand up in my place and testify — not as the others were doing, to a newly found joy in Jesus Christ, but as one who, though once a child and servant of God, was then an utter castaway. I then hurried from the hall, intending never to visit it again. But God planned otherwise. With- out knowing it I was followed out into the street by one of the Mission converts, Mr. Howard J. Thompson, a man who to-day is my dearest friend. Some considerable dis- tance from Water Street Mr. Thompson overtook and spoke to me. He did not com- mit the tactical blunder of attempting to preach to me in the street about my obviously The Second Spring 183 lost condition. He had a far better concep- tion of the work he had undertaken than to do anything of that kind. He just began, kindly and sympathetically, to evince a friendly interest in my welfare. I suppose that, at first, I resented and endeavoured to repulse my brother's kindly intentions. But he persisted — persisted with that patience which only a man with the love of God in his heart can exercise. Finally he completely won my confidence, and ten minutes later I found myself frankly telling him — an utter stranger — my whole wretched story. He in- vited me to visit the Mission again. I did so — and yet a third time. During these days the spirit of God was drawing me consciously nearer to Himself. Touched by a loving hand — the loving hand of Howard Thompson — wakened by kindness, cords once broken began to vibrate again. On the occasion of my fourth visit to the Mission I made the great, glad surrender. Christ spoke pardon to my weary, wandering heart. Since that hour I have tried to follow Him — to be His child. At many times and in many things 184 The Second Spring I have failed. It has been harder to do than I had imagined — I had wandered farther away than I had ever dreamed. "One thing however is certain — I have continued unto this hour. Avenues of serv- ice and usefulness have opened up for me which by Christ's help I am trying to tread like a man. I pray God that He may ever give me the power of overcoming, and the strength to hold fast that which I have, and see that no man take my crown." ' XIV SAVED TO THE UTTERMOST " Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him. . . ." — Heb. vii. 2^. THE story which here follows is that of a cultured German who so com- pletely lost himself, here in New York, as to become a mere barroom loafer, who wandered hungry, neglected, and rum- soaked about the Bowery and the lower East Side, until his life was that, almost, of a wild beast. To what depths of sheer depravity Reinhold Schultz sank, is known only to himself. What is known, however, is that God has most marvellously raised him up to a level of good citizenship, righteous liv- ing, and fellowship with Himself. While this wonderful trophy of redeeming grace walks the earth, no living man, amenable to the appeal of appreciable, tangible results, can reasonably doubt the power of God to save and keep even the vilest of the vile. I have interviewed this man many times, and his 1 86 Saved to the Uttermost story, so full of tragedy and sorrow, can be authenticated in every detail. Perhaps it were best to let him tell his story in his own way — the story of his great, his won- derful redemption. "It is with a sense of shame and sorrow that I tell the story of my past life as a drunkard, but I shall be more than happy if this story- will lead some other wretched drunkard to see how God can transform a man from being a curse to himself and to the world, into being a blessing to his family. " When a foreigner with a good education comes to this country to start a new life, lots of people imagine there must have been something wrong with him. It is not always the case by any means, but in my case it certainly was. " I was born in Germany, and had all the advantages a young man could desire. I graduated from the high school at seventeen years of age and went to a university. I fought lots of duels as student, and scars from these escapades are still visible on my Saved to the Uttermost 187 face. After a time, my father found out that I was doing little at the university but drink and dissipate. So he took me away and started me on a commercial career. For three years I was engaged as German and French correspondent in one of the largest forwarding houses in Russia. Later I came to Hamburg, and while in that city became identified with the Socialist movement and attained to some prominence as a lecturer at the meetings of that party. " By this time I had lost all faith in God. Rejecting and ridiculing the religion of Jesus Christ myself, I strove in my public utter- ances to induce other men to do the same, urging them to accept the theory that their only hope of social salvation lay in breaking away from churches and refusing to be hood- winked by ministers and priests. For in- citing to riot, I was seized by the authorities and imprisoned for thirty days. After finish- ing my sentence, I experienced a great re- vulsion of feeling for the ideals which had made my life, up to this point, an utter failure. I accordingly left Germany and l88 Saved to the Uttermost came to America. I easily secured a good position, and, after a little while, married a good woman who had known me since boy- hood. For a year or so, all went well, and I led a tolerably happy life. But domestic happiness did not last long, either for my wife or myself. In my native land I had drunk heavily of the strong German beer, and so, on coming to this country, com- menced to drink the lager brewed here in large quantities. But I found it weak and insipid compared with the European brand and, consequently, began to drink whiskey. Before many months were over, this newly- acquired appetite gained such a mastery over me as to goad me to do almost any- thing on earth to get liquor." Then began a period of wretchedness and undoing for this man who, with half a dozen qualifications, each one sufficiendy valuable to have given him a respected position in society, did nothing with himself but drift utterly to the dogs. He lost position after position, went in business for himself, and of Saved to the Uttermost 189 course dropped, commercially, to pieces. In less than a year from the time he began to drink whiskey, he had become a besotted, helpless drunkard. His wife, hoping against hope, did everything a woman could to save the man she loved from going down to ruin. Nothing, however, availed. The household furniture went — the home stripped of every stick and stone. Finally the drunkard's wife left him, taking the child with her to Mount Vernon. There the poor, driven woman se- cured a position for herself, and an arrange- ment was effected with her husband, whereby he had access to his child for a few minutes one day each week. The little girl was sent to a street corner, where the father would wait to talk for just a few brief moments with the child he loved, yet whose home he had flung away for a still more dominating flame — the love of a fiery, soul-destroying liquor. Finally the man's appearance became so utterly wretched and repulsive that the meet- ings were discontinued. ** I remember very well the last visit I 190 Saved to the Uttermost made to Mount Vernon," he said to me one day. " I stood for a moment on the corner of Fourth Avenue and First Street, before boarding a car for New York. I was all trembling and palsied with recent excesses — shivering like an aspen leaf. My little girl, whose home I had wrecked, stood with me, tears running down her cheeks like pearls. * Papa,' she said to me, * every night I kneel down at my little bed, and ask the dear Lord to send my papa home again.' Yet much as I loved this litde child — as God knows I did — I sank lower and lower. All my friends had now left me. I was unable to pay room rent any more ; my clothes w^nt to the pawn-shop, and I finally drifted down to the Bowery and my home was just any place where I could hang up my hat. Walking the streets night after night, or, when I had a nickel to buy a glass of rum, spending the hours between darkness and dawn in the back room of a saloon ; with scarcely anything to eat for days at a stretch, my life became a perfect hell. On the afternoon of Thursday, March 30, 191 1, I sat half sober, half drunk, in the EXTEEIOE VIEW OF THE OLD BUILDING, McAuley Mission, 316 Water Street, New York City. Saved to the Uttermost 191 dirty back room of a Bowery saloon. With greater force than at any time previously I realized, that afternoon, that with not a cent to live on, with not a friend in the world, nor a place to sleep, I was nothing but a homeless, hopeless, drunken loafer. I came to the con- clusion, too, that life was no longer worth living and that the sooner I got out of it the better for everybody concerned. With the intention of flinging myself into the river, I left the Bowery saloon and walked down through Roosevelt Street towards the East River. On the corner of Water Street my attention was attracted by a group of men standing together. One of them, seeing my wretched condition, asked me if I did not want to go into the Jerry McAuley Mission (which was only a very short distance away) and warm myself up. It was a bitter night, and I was suffering terribly from the cold. I had no underwear, and my clothes and shoes were all used up. So I accepted the invitation and staggered into the Mission, and I shall never forget the impression that bright, cheery room made upon me, coming as I did from 192 Saved to the Uttermost the filthy Bowery saloon. I came at once into contact with men, who stretched a hand of welcome out to me, who called me friend and brother — me, an outcast, one whom everybody who knew him would rather see go than come. I told them my story and they told me that sin was in my life which had brought me down to the gutter. I sat and listened, too, to a wonderful series of testimonies, given by redeemed men — stories which were more wonderful than any- thing I had ever heard. Then the superin- tendent, who led the meeting, invited any who wanted to get away from their sinful, wretched existence, who wanted to lead a Christian life, to come forward and kneel down. I did as Mr. Wyburn invited me to do — went forward and knelt down at a bench and cried unto Christ to save me and to take that terrible appetite for liquor out of my life. " I rose from my knees a changed man. I cannot explain the change. Yet I knew it had been effected. I felt as I had not done for years — brighter, happier, possessed of a great peace." Saved to the Uttermost 193 This is the story of how Reinhold Schultz found pardon through Jesus Christ in the Water Street Mission. Showers of blessings have come his way since the night he knelt in penitence and prayer. He is no longer a forlorn, wandering outcast. He is a redeemed man — clothed and in his right mind. He has a position of trust to-day. He has his wife and litde girl back living with him ; his home is the abode of love and harmony. No more wonderful instance of saving grace is to be found in all this broad continent than this one-time drunken outcast. His whole life — the way he lives it, I mean — is a mag- nificent proof of the efficacy of the salvation of Jesus Christ — a salvation that can save to the uttermost all who come to God through Him. XV PILGRIMS OF THE NIGHT " In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night." — Prov. vii. 9. ONE of the most remarkable phases of the work in Water Street is what may fittingly be called its unofficial ministry. By that I mean the personal work which individual converts feel constrained to do, apart altogether from the regular activities of the Mission. Every man whose life-story and testimony finds place in this book is en- gaged in it, as are half a hundred more. They call it ** getting out to help the other fellow." Remembering the lost, helpless condition that once was theirs ; knowing from bitter ex- perience the sordid wretchedness of it all and how welcome a little material help is in times of stress and storm, these men go out — some- times until two and three in the morning — en- deavouring as far as their limited resources 194 Pilgrims of the Night 195 allow to relieve the needs and suffering of the pilgrims of the night. In an endeavour to acquaint myself with some of the contributing causes of so much failure I have often accompanied these good men on their errand of mercy, and chatted with hundreds of park-benchers. Some talk readily enough, others are sullen and taciturn. One thing, however, I have found to be absolutely necessary in interview- ing an average " down-and-outer," namely, to prevent his imbibing the notion that you are amenable either to the blandishments of a highly sensational story, or a prospective source of revenue. Once let him suspect that your charitable intentions may be enlarged by the recital of a weird, wonderful tale, and you may bid good-bye to the likelihood of obtain- ing anything of an authentic character. For he will straightway proceed to pitch a hair- raising yarn made up of a hundred tragic happenings which have come to his notice in the course of a vagabond, knock-about life, but with little or nothing pertaining to him- self in the whole sordid recital. But with no 196 Pilgrims of the Night discernible advantage attendant on his pull- ing the long bow, he will, in all probability, content himself with telling his real life-story. I have listened to many such stories — sordid, tragic, pitiful ; differing in detail, fundamen- tally the same — a dreary dirge of divers tones. And I have ventured to bring together in this final chapter some of the fruit of my inquiries, and also to relate some authentic incidents that came to my notice while prosecuting them. They are illustrative of the lives of New York's " down-and-outs," — men who do not drink to any extent, nor thieve, nor, in fact, do anything but drift, the flotsam and jetsam of life's tideway. As far as my experience goes, the men who find themselves wrecks of fair promise on the slope of the years are there from one or more of the following causes — perverse en- vironment, simple error, unavoidable disaster, the machinations of an enemy, press of circum- stances, lack of opportunity, criminal mis- deeds, unbridled appetite. Some have ac- cepted the r61e of failure at the mere say-so of an employer whose own credit was knocked Pilgrims of the Night 197 to jam-rags within the year. But whatever of tragedy marks the contributing cause of failure, nothing is half so tragical as the ap- parent sheer inability of so many poor fellows to ** come back." With some, the barrier preventing a return to better things is the bar of social relation- ship, the mistrust of their former contempo- raries, or the edict of conventional pronounce- ment. With the majority, however, the real trouble is that, battered and discouraged, the man himself has lost heart and grip, and simply cannot come back. Just that. Heart- ache, regret, mortification, shame, bitterness — any or all of these have undermined his power of mental and physical resistance. When on rare occasions he has made it, his eflort at rehabilitation has been weak, listless, never more than half-hearted. With pride, self-respect and ambition gone he has been content to drift, and when a man on the down- grade gives up the fight and just drifts, he is next door to done for. He is down to stay — not only down but out. Of course, in stat- ing anything of this sort one is prepared to 1 98 Pilgrims of the Night meet with the criticism that it relates to the " residuum " — that something of the kind is unavoidable — inevitable — in a city like New- York. Well, possibly it is — possibly not. But what all Christian men and women re- quire, should be pressed continually upon their attention, is the fact that this residuum is all the time being fed from above. Every day some man or woman — boy or girl — slips through into the awful labyrinths of the giant city's underworld. It was a bitter night in February, and City Hall Park was deserted except by one lone man. By the light of a near-by arc-lamp I could make him out distinctly. He was not old — not a day more than fifty. His old derby, greasy and with broken brim, was pulled down low on to his forehead. The nape of his skinny neck rested on the back of the seat ; his face, yellow and livid, turned up towards the stars. His eyes were closed, and his mouth, wide agape, showed three or four ugly gaps where the teeth were missing. His trousers, patched and mud-stained, were Pilgrims of the Night 199 worn to shreds at the ankles. As he sat cross-legged they had drawn away from the tops of his broken shoes to reveal two stock- ingless shins. The old Prince Albert coat he wore had the collar turned up and fastened at the neck with a huge safety-pin. He had light brown, shaggy moustaches and a thin beard, through which the apple of his throat stuck out sharply. I walked on a few yards, then turned back. The man had not moved. Suddenly the thought flashed through me that possibly he might be dead. Starved out creatures were being found lifeless in the parks right along. The eyes were still closely shut — the mouth still open. There was no discernible motion of breathing — no heaving of the narrow chest. I sat down on the bench near him and coughed slightly, but he did not stir. I laid my hand on his shoulder and said, " Hello there, brother ! " The man unclosed one eye and looked at me without moving his neck from the rail of the seat. The yellow, starved face with the gap-toothed mouth and one eye shut looked 200 Pilgrims of the Night now more dead than it did a moment before with both eyes closed. ** Cold night, isn't it?" I continued. *' Who said it wasn't ? " snarled my com- panion. " Don't yer think I know about it, setting out here ? " The gaping mouth closed at last. Still one eye remained with the lid glued to the cheek. **What did yer go to wake me for?" he began again. " It's hard enough to get snoozed ofi in this weather, without bein' woke up for nothing. What d'ye want? " ** Why, I thought I might help you some- how," I answered. " Are you ill ? " ** Paralyzed," the man answered laconically, touching his left eye and running his right arm down his left side. " Can I do anything for you ? " ** Yes, if you've got the sense to do it. Look it here, half of me's dead. The job for you to do is to clear out and let the other half die in peace." He rose painfully and slowly from the bench. Pilgrims of the Night 201 " What did yer go to wake me up for ? " he said again. ** I didn't interfere with you ; why should you interfere with me?" "I have some food and shelter tickets here," I said, laying my hand on his shoulder. " Would you care to have one ? " The wretched cripple eyed me suspiciously for a second or two. *' What have I to do to get it ? " he said. *' Yer gen' ally have ter go to a mission and pretend to be saved to git one o' them. If that's yer game, I don't want it." ** There is only one condition attached to this, my brother," I made reply—** which is, that you make use of it." '* Oh, I'll do that, and be glad to." He held out a grimy hand, which looked like the claw of some unclean bird. I gave him the ticket which he took sullenly — with- out a word of thanks. Then with his hand thrust into the breast of his greasy coat, he moved slowly away in the direction of Park Row, dragging his paralyzed leg after him as he went. Surely his was a living death — a long-drawn-out torture. 202 Pilgrims of the Night As he passed the end of Frankfurt Street a gust of night wind swept up from the Hud- son almost knocking him off his feet. He halted a moment, then bracing himself afresh, slouched miserably on. * * * :K * * One sultry night in last July, I sat on a bench in Madison Square. The heat was stifling — not a capful of wind anywhere. I glanced at the man sitting next to me. He was a long, loosely-built lump of a fellow, apparently about twenty years of age, fair- haired and (as it turned out) a Scandi- navian. " Been blazing hot to-day," I said, by way of engaging him in conversation. "Ya, someting fierce," he replied — he spoke but very indifferent English — "hot to- night too. It's been hotter, though, this summer. Ya, I know. I've slep' out tree weeks." ** Three weeks ? Out here on the benches ? " " Ya." " Well," I said, " I don't suppose that has hurt you much, after all. As a matter of fact, Pilgrims of the Night 203 you're heaps better off out here this weather, than breathing in the rotten atmosphere of some overcrowded lodging-house. But how about eats ? " "Eats?" "Yes — food. . . . When did you eat last?" "Yesterday morning. . . . None to- day." "That's too bad. Well, there's a lunch- room over there," — we sat opposite Twenty- third Street — "perhaps we can attend to that trouble. But you Surely there's no occasion for a great, big fellow like you to be sleeping out, and going without food two and three days at a stretch. It's almost a dead certainty that you could get work of some sort — if you really meant business." " Not with this." He held out his right arm. I gave a jump. His hand was miss- ing — severed at the wrist ! I looked at the poor fellow's mutilated member, and saw by its red, raw ugliness, that the injury was of re- cent date. My conscience smote me for hav- ing rallied him on his supposed shiftlessness. 204 Pilgrims of the Night "Forgive me," I blurted out. "No — you can't do much with that. How did it hap- pen — and where ? Tell me about it." " I got it all mangled up in a paper-cutting machine," he replied, "about eight months ago." He gave me the name of the firm for whom he had worked. " Have they given you any compensation — any money, I mean — to cover this fearful disablement?" The man shook his head. " While I was in the hospital a man came to see me, and offered me one hundred dol- lars. The nurses and the doctors told me not to take it." "Very properly, too. A hundred dollars for a man's hand ! The pilfering thieves 1 But since — what has there been done since ? " " Nothing. The people I worked for have gone — what you call it ?" "Bankrupt?" "Ya — that's it. Busted up — gone out o* business." Gone out of business I The Lord help him ! Pilgrims of the Night 205 "Well," I said lamely, "I guess there is somebody can be held liable yet — whom I don't know. But come along, let us go over to the lunch-room." After I had gotten him "going" at the lunch-counter, I asked him whether he had any friends in New York. He shook his head. " How long is it since you came here from Europe ? " " Two years. I came to this country with two others, but I don't know where they are now. They went to Pittsburg a year ago." " Have you ever heard of the Legal Aid Society ? " I asked him. No, he had never heard of it. " Well, it exists to assist such cases as yours." I wrote the address of the society on a card, and handed it to him. " Go down-town in the morning, and state your case to these people. In all probability they may be able to help you. I wish I could — but I can't. I'm only a poor man, with next to no influence. And take this other card. On it are two addresses. One is a Bowery lodging-house — the other a res- taurant. I will arrange for you to have grub 2o6 Pilgrims of the Night and a bed for a week. That is all I can da Good-night." As I bade him good-bye the poor fellow tried to kiss my hand. I snatched it away from him. " Don't do a silly thing like that," I said. ** God help you — and God bless you. I wish I could do more." With that I left him to finish his meal. Maimed for life, without money or friends, scarcely able to make himself understood, there he was, — just a unit of that welter of misery and misfortune which goes to the make-up of New York's underworld. The usual complement of outcast humanity occupied the park benches as I came through Union Square early one morning in Septem- ber. I singled out a man who sat gazing moodily across the square, and proceeded to draw him into conversation. **Out of work, mister?" I began clumsily. "Think I'd be out here if I wasn't? I've not done a stroke for six months," he growled. Afterwards he grew more communicative. He was a housesmith by trade, he told me, Pilgrims of the Night 207 and for more than a year had been told con- tinually that he was " too old." His age was fifty. In the gloom of the night I had guessed him to be but little more than forty. "While there's life there's hope," I said, for lack of something better to say, at the same time feeling I was talking the most ar- rant nonsense. •* While there's life there's' hunger, so far as my luck goes," retorted the old iron- worker grimly. ** But you haven't given up the idea of being able to work again some day, have you?" "There ain't much chance. Trade's fair rotten. Bosses don't want anybody just now, and when they're busy they tell me I'm too old, and that's pretty well true, I guess. I can't go up to any great height any more. I've always had a good character, but what difference does that make ? I stand a worse chance of getting a living than the loafers who never did a square day's work in their lives. They're used to a game o' this sort I'm not." 2o8 Pilgrims of the Night " Is your health pretty good ? '* " Not very — chest trouble. To tell the truth I haven't been much good since my old woman died. That'll be three years come next Christmas Day." "You mean your wife, I suppose? Sort of took the backbone out of you ? " He nodded. *' It sure did," he answered. Then his voice broke. " Tve gone all to pieces since then. Poor old girl I We've weathered many a storm together What's the time, boss?" he concluded, abruptly changing the subject. ** Twenty minutes to three." The old housesmith got up from his seat and commenced to move away. I detained him for a second, and he thanked me quietly. " Nights are not half bad in the summer. I can stand 'em all right so long as it don't rain," he said. " It's the winter nights that settle me. Well, good-morning. It'll be sunup soon." He trudged off in the direction of Four- teenth Street — a brave old fellow who de- served a better fate than that which had Pilgrims of the Night 209 come to him. Yet his was a common heri- tage — the penalty of growing old * * * * * * I walked over to the Broadway side of the park and sat down next to a man even more shabbily dressed than the one from whom I had just parted. He was far more willing to talk than the other, and I found out that he had followed a number of occupations. Some of the positions he claimed to have had were of a quite responsible kind. " Sort of Jack-of-all-trades," I suggested. The man looked up. Despite a certain weakness, his face had a well-chiselled pro- file and a pair of quizzical eyes. " You may complete that old saw without fear of offense, my friend,'* he said with a grin. "For, judging from appearances" — he spread out his hands deprecatingly — " Fm master of none." " Well, what seems to be the trouble ? You're clever, aren't you ? " '* Fairly — but not sufficiently so. I should have done better with either more cleverness less. Thafs the trouble. I'm all right 2 1 o Pilgrims of the Night for ideas — quite a philosopher, in fact — but I can't carry them out. I hate detail, I'm not cut out for manual labour, and I'm more than a trifle lazy. Now you have the whole story. Awkward facts, I grant you ; but facts, never- theless." " What are you doing out here ? " " Well, at the moment when you did me the honour of joining me on this seat, I was watching those two fellows on that one oppo- site." "Why?" *' Well, they appear to be going to beat it. That would leave sufficient room for me to stretch out if I can get across before some of my fellow boarders do." " Can you sleep out here in the open ? " "Surest thing you know. All I want is carte blanche with that seat. It's this infernal sitting that wearies me." " But sleeping out — you can't expect — that is — your condition " I blundered out. " Quite so. Pray don't spare me ! " he broke in understandingly. " No better worth you would say, eh? Guess you're about Pilgrims of the Night 21 1 right. Anyhow, it's all my own fault — that I admit. I might have been in one of those swell hotels to-night," he went on, jerking his thumb in the direction of Broadway, ** had I but played my cards better. But there — what's the good of grumbling, anyway?" "Not much, is it? Do you always get along in this fashion ? " ** Generally. I vary the program now and again by going to the Municipal Lodging House. There I get my clothes fumigated, indulge in the luxury of a bath, get a feed and a good sleep." "And then?" "Then? Why, this." "And when this is over?" He looked at me curiously. "The long sleep?" I sug- gested. He nodded. " Guess you're right, my friend. Got a cigarette?" he inquired care- lessly. " No. Here's ten cents ; you can get one later — or better still, some cake and coffee." " Thanks. I prefer the weed. I'll stroll as far as the lunch-cart yonder and buy some," 2 1 2 Pilgrims of the Night he yawned, rising from his seat and stretch- ing himself. " You're my Good Samaritan. My luck's not quite died out yet, apparently. Good-morning." "Good-morning." He sauntered off towards the lunch-wagon that stands opposite the Metropolitan Tower, whistling sofdy as he went — a philosopher of the park bench — a cynic in rags. ****** Outcasts of the city I Who and what can work out their deliverance? Well, if this book has not failed utterly of its purpose, it has demonstrated that there is but one way, there is but one Name, whereby such help- lessness and apparent uselessness can be redeemed and reclaimed. " He can save to the uttermost all who come to God through Him." 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