CHAPTER IV

AN ELEMENT OF HUMOR IN RESCUE WORK

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

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

AUNT MARY

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

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

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

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

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

MR. E. C. CONNAUGHT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PSYCHOLOGY

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

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

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

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