TWO WAYS | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 26, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 21.

TWO WAYS.

In these days, when so many sincere people are trying to help their weaker brothers, this incident, true in every detail, may have its significance and use:—

Three years ago the pastor of a city church appealed to the members of his congregation to take a more active part in helping the poor and the criminal classes. The next day two young married women, wealthy and gently bred, went to him in response to his appeal. He sent them to the women's ward of the city prison. They went together, separated after being taken to the ward by an attendant, and in an hour or two met again at the gate.

"Tell me how you were received and what you did," said Mrs. C. anxiously. She was a timid, diffident woman.

"The work is, of course, new to me," said Mrs. V., "and I know nothing of the habits and minds of these women, nor what would appeal to them. The gulf between us seems so wide that I concluded the more direct and plain I made my condemnation of their evil habits of conduct the better.

"At the window of each cell I spoke kindly but firmly to the occupant, and told her I had come to talk about her life and its sinfulness. One of them was stolid and dumb. Two were really abusive. I do not feel sure that one of the four or five with whom I talked was impressed by the truths I told her.

"I shall come again," she continued, "but I believe it to be useless. Between us and them there certainly is a great gulf, and I do not see how it is to be covered."

The two women walked in silence for a while, and then Mrs. V. said, "What did you do?"

"Oh, so little!" exclaimed the other. "I only went to one cell. I saw a poor woman who had been convicted of larceny. Her defense was that her child was starving, and so her sentence was light. When I saw her, I

thought I might be where she is if God had given me poverty and a hungry child—"

"Ridiculous!" said Mrs. V. indignantly. "You could never have been a thief!"

"God only knows. At any rate I could not preach to her. So I only talked of her child, and told her about my little Jack, and said how sorry I was she could not be with her baby. I am going to see it, and I shall go to-morrow to tell her about it."

Mrs. V. visited the prison twice after this first interview, and lectured the women, but, finding that she was received coldly, she abandoned them, and ever after spoke of the criminal classes as "hopeless."

Mrs. C. looked after the poor baby while its mother was in prison. When the woman was released, she took her into her house, contrary to Mrs. V.'s advice, and gave her work and a home.

"I cannot think she will steal from me," she said smiling. She taught and watched over her as tenderly as a sister.

The poor thief is now a member of the church, earnest and hopeful in her struggle to do right and to make a good man of her boy.

We cannot stand upon a height and order our brother out of vice.

Christ, let us remember, when he blessed the weak and helped the wicked, first laid his loving hands upon them.—Selected.