Prisons and Prayer; Or, a Labor of Love. Elizabeth Ryder Wheaton
W. F. Barnes, Chaplain.
Dear Mrs. Wheaton:
Your postal to the Warden concerning – was put into my hands. This is the first moment I have had to devote to an answer. He is in the city working. He has made excellent friends. He stands well in the church he has joined; is connected with a very large Bible class of young men and frequently has to be its teacher. He is active in the church, but closely confined to his work.
We are in fair condition, comparatively, in the prison. We have tonight, 761 prisoners. I send you one of our reports with this.
A. is still keeping a Rescue Mission and doing well.
I presume you are still after the welfare of the prisoners. I have been very ill since I saw you, but am able to be at my work again. Our little prayer meeting on Saturday P. M. still goes on doing good. The Lord is with us in the enlightening and building up of souls.
Such work as you used to do has been left out of the prison life and no one is allowed now to go into the chapel on Sundays. Once each month I take in some people to help us sing in our praise service. The same people every time, however. Pray for us.
Dear Sister Wheaton:
Yours came on Monday last. I was glad to hear from you, and to get the enclosures in your letter. They are good—very good—for my work and my own life. I heartily reciprocate all your good wishes for me and pray that you may be preserved from all evil.
We have had some blessed conversions here and one or two of our men have gone to their reward in great peace and joy.
F. is doing well and much loved in his work for Christ. He is at same address I sent you before.
CHAPTER VI.
Some of My Prison Boys
The writer of the following letters was one of the most remarkably conscientious persons I ever knew. As a prisoner, he was very highly respected by the officers. His chaplain has ever remained his sincere friend and counselor. Years have passed since he left prison life and he still remains an earnest Christian and an honorable member of society. No one but his pastor, employer and former friends know his past history.
He was converted in prison during services I held in 1884 or 1885. He presented me some years ago with a book of poems of his own writing. Not being able to carry them with me, I have lost trace of them. Otherwise would be glad to furnish some of them to my readers.
To Mrs. Wheaton, My Dear Mother in the Lord:
I call you by this name because I am young and have lost my mother in the flesh, and I am writing this letter because, as you have given up all for Jesus' sake, you only can help me as I wish. You can pray for me as a mother prays for a son. I am twenty-four years old, have an eighteen years' sentence, have served four years of it and expect to serve the whole of it for I have no influential friends to help me.
I had not been here a year until I realized what eighteen years of prison life meant—the deprivation of all earthly pleasures, and the wasting away of youthful hopes and ambitions in vain regret. Grief, misery and despair overwhelmed me every night, and every night I wished that I were dead. A great struggle was going on in my soul. A struggle for either life or death, and, thank God, life had the victory.
I am now a Christian. A night of revelation came to me in which God, as Judge, and Jesus, as Saviour, revealed to me—the one, the power and glory; the other, the love of God.
But my way is not like the peaceful flow of a river, but like a stream of cascades. By leaps I draw nearer to God. In the meantime I do not keep the image of Jesus before me. Pray, dear mother, this special prayer for me, that my faith may be constant; that self shall no more come between it and Jesus; that surroundings shall not weaken it; that youth shall not neglect it. Jesus has stamped my soul with his blood. It can never be effaced, but my soul does not thrill as often as I wish with the joy of right-doing. Belief in Jesus permeates my whole being. Why do I sometimes stray from his love? Repentance is doubly grievous then, and repent I must. My conscience compels me. The prayers of a saintly woman will be heard. You will pray for me for Jesus' sake.
Dear Mother in the Lord:
With what mingled emotions of joy, gratitude and love, I read your faith inspiring letter. I did not expect it, for one Sunday in the chapel the Chaplain read one from you addressed to us all in general. He also told us something about your way—what a lonely, weary way. What a sorrow yours has been! Can we poor mortals ever forget our sorrow? Does it not rise to the surface at times and overwhelm us, so that nothing but the soothing presence of Jesus can comfort us? "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you."
A common saying here is: "I don't believe in a man coming to prison to reform." Ah! little they know what reform is, for where on earth does one need the Spirit that reforms more than in prison? Our poets tell us that prisons are the types of hell. I bless God for bringing me to this prison. Out of its depths I cried and He heard me, nor do I pray to be free from its thrall. Indeed I do pray for His will to be done in me and beseech Him to keep me here until He calls me to Himself, rather than I should go free again and forget Him. That I never can. Though I fell to the lowest depths, I could never forget Him. Dear Mother, we will meet Him—Jesus—in Heaven. Oh! I do not want the pleasures of this life! I do want to be, like you, His humble follower. How I wish I could be near you always that your faith might ever increase my own. I need, very much I need, the pure and tender influence of a holy praying "mother." My own mother had a loving heart, but neither she nor my father did I ever see praying. My precious Saviour was never revealed to me from the lips of either. What would have become of me had God deferred this discipline? Would I not have gone on in sin until too late, even had I been sent here for a short term of years? My only thought would be for them to end, that I might pursue again the delusive hopes of sin.
I fully realize my position here. I see the providence of God that makes it a blessing.
I would tell you the way Jesus came to me, or rather how I came to Him. When first I came here I did not think of what was in store for me—eighteen years of prison life. I was wild and thoughtless. The strangeness of the place helped to divert my mind, but the solitude of my cell at night forced me to look into the future. At length my fate dawned upon me. Oh! it was terrible! During the day I would try to forget the thoughts of the night by being more wild than ever, but the night brought the ordeal again and it was driving me to despair. I longed to be dead, but one night the thought came: "Suppose you were dead, what then? Would you be at rest?" I say thought, but if ever the Holy Spirit spoke to the soul of man, it spoke to mine that night. In an instant I saw the enormity of my sins and the punishment in store for me. In terror I cried: "O, what shall I do? Oh, I cannot die! I cannot meet this doom!" Need I say that my cry was not in vain? No, the spirit of Jesus taught me of Himself that night, and the Chaplain showed me some words in the gospel of John. I never read the Bible before, but there were Christ's words, and those words I now read often. The Psalms and St. John contain for me the Way of Life.
I do not forget you in my feeble prayers morning and night, and I hope you will be indeed my "Mother" for Jesus' sake. Amen.
My Dear Friend and Spiritual Mother:
I thank you very much for your kind letter, which I received today. I pray that you may die in the harness, leaving your work to just pass over the river into Heaven.
Have you heard that our dear Chaplain's helpmeet has recently taken this journey? The Chaplain takes it just as one would expect he would, calmly, with faith unabated, rather increased, for he said to me the day after the funeral: "The peace of God in my heart passeth understanding." This evidence of real