It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 45

"'Forgive me my sins as I forgive Mr. Hawes his cruelty to me.'"

"Now ponder over those words. Keep them before your eye here, and try at least and bow your stubborn heart to them. Fall on them and be broken, or they will fall on you and grind you to powder." He concluded in a terrible tone; then, seeing Robinson abashed, more from a notion he was in a rage with him than from any deeper sentiment, he bade him farewell kindly as ever.

"I know," said he, "I have given you a hard task. We can all gabble the Lord's Prayer, but how few have ever prayed it! But at least try, my poor soul, and I will set you an example. I will pray for my brother Robinson and my brother Hawes, and I shall pray for them all the more warmly that at present one is a blaspheming thief and the other a pitiless blockhead."

The next day being Sunday, Mr. Eden preached two sermons that many will remember all their lives. The first was against theft and all the shades of dishonesty. I give a few of his topics. The dry bones he covered with flesh and blood and beauty. The tendency of theft was to destroy all moral and social good. For were it once to prevail so far as to make property insecure, industry would lose heart, enterprise and frugality be crushed, and at last the honest turn thieves in self-defense. Nearly every act of theft had a baneful influence on the person robbed.

Here he quoted by name instances of industrious, frugal persons, whose savings having been stolen, they had lost courage and good habits of years' standing, and had ended ill. Then he gave them a simile. These great crimes are like great trunk railways. They create many smaller ones. Some flow into them, some out of them. Drunkenness generally precedes an act of theft; drunkenness always follows it; lies flow from it in streams, and perjury rushes to its defense.

It breeds, too, other vices that punish it, but never cure it--prodigality and general loose living. The thief is never the richer by this vile act which impoverishes his victim; for the money obtained by this crime is wasted in others. The folly of theft; its ill economy.

What high qualities are laid out to their greatest disadvantage by the thief; acuteness, watchfulness, sagacity, determination, tact. These virtues, coupled with integrity, enrich thousands every year. How many thieves do they enrich? How many thieves are a shilling a year the better for the hundreds of pounds that come dishonestly into their hands.

"In ---- Jail (Mr. Lepel's), there is now a family that have stolen, first and last, property worth eighteen thousand pounds. The entire possessions of this family are now two pair of shoes. The clothes they stand in belong to Government; their own had to be burned, so foul were they. Eighteen thousand pounds had they stolen--to be beggars; and this is the rule, not the exception, as you all know. Why is this your fate and your end? Because a mightier power than man's has determined that thieving shall not thrive. The curse of G.o.d is upon theft!"

Then came life-like pictures of the honest man and the thief. The one with an eye that faced you, with a conscious dignity and often a cheerful countenance; the other with a shrinking eye, a conscious meanness, and never with a smile from the heart; sordid, sly and unhappy--for theft is misery. No wonder this crime degrades a man when it degrades the very animals; Look at a dog who has stolen. Before this, when he met his master or any human friend he used to run up to greet them with wagging tail and sparkling eye. Now see him. At sight of any man he crawls meanly away, with cowering figure and eye askant, the living image of the filthy sin he has committed. He feels he has no longer a right to greet a man, for he is a thief.

And here the preacher gathered images, facts and satire, and hurled a crushing hailstorm of scorn upon the sordid sin. Then he attacked the present situation (his invariable custom).

"Not all the inmates of a jail were equally guilty on their arrival there. A large proportion of felons were orphans or illegitimate children; others, still more unfortunate, were the children of criminals who had taught them crime from their cradles. Great excuses were to be made for the general ma.s.s of criminals; excuses that the ignorant, shallow world could not be expected to make; but the balance of the Sanctuary is not like the world's clumsy balance; it weighs all men to a hair. Excuses will be made for many of you in heaven up to a certain point. And what is that point? The day of your entrance into prison. But now plead no more the ill example of parents and friends, for here you are cut off from it.

"Plead no more that you cannot read, for here you have been taught to read.

"Plead no more the dreadful power of vicious habits that began when you were unguarded, for those habits have now been cut away from you by force and better habits subst.i.tuted.

"Plead no more ignorance of G.o.d's Word, for here day by day it is poured into your ears.

"Your situation has other less obvious advantages. Here you are little exposed to the soul's most dangerous enemy--self-deception. The world destroys thousands of sinners by flattery. Half the great sinners upon earth are what is called respectable. The world tells them they are good--they believe it, and so die as they have lived, and are lost eternally. The world, intending to be more unkind to you, is far more kind; it tells _you_ the truth--that you are desperate sinners.

Here, then, where everything opens your eyes, oh! fight not against yourselves. Repent, or fearful will be the fresh guilt heaped upon your heads! Even these words of mine must do you good or do you harm. I tremble when I tell you so. It is an awful thing to think." The preacher paused. "You know that I love you--that I would give my life to save one soul of all those I see before me now! Have pity on me and on yourselves! Let me not be so unfortunate as to add to your guilt--I, whose heart yearns to do you good! Oh, my poor brothers and sisters, do not pity yourselves so much less than I pity you--do not love yourselves so much less than I love you! Why will ye die! Repent, and be forgiven!

"Some of you profess attachment to me--some talk of grat.i.tude. There are some of my poor brothers and sisters in this jail that say to me, 'Oh, I wish I could do something for you, sir!' Perhaps you have noticed that I have never answered these professions. Well, I will answer them now once for all."

While the preacher paused there was a movement observed among the prisoners.

"Would you make me very--very sad? Remain impenitent! Would you make me happy? Repent, and turn to G.o.d! Not to-morrow, or next day, but on your knees in your own cells the moment you go hence. You don't know, you can't dream what happiness you will confer on me if you do this!"

Then, suddenly opening his arms with wonderful grace and warmth and energy, he cried, "My poor wandering sheep, come--come to the heavenly fold! Let me gather you as a hen gathers her chickens under her wing.

You are my anxiety, my terror--be my joy, my consolation here, and hereafter the brightest jewels in my heavenly crown."

In this strain he soared higher than my poor earth-clogged wings can follow him. He had lashed sin severely, so he had earned a right to show his love for the sinner. Gracious words of entreaty and encouragement gushed from him in a crystal stream with looks and tones of more than mortal charity. Men might well doubt was this a man, or was it Christianity speaking? Christianity, born in a stable, was she there, illuminating a jail? For now for a moment or two the sacred orator was more than mortal; so high above earth was his theme, so great his swelling words. He rose, he dilated to heroic size, he flamed with sacred fire. His face shone like an angel's, and no silver trumpet or deep-toned organ could compare with his thundering, pealing, melting voice, that poured the soul of love and charity and heaven upon friend and foe. Then seemed it as though a sudden blaze of music and light broke into that dark abode. Each sinful form stretched wildly forth to meet them--each ear hung aching on them--each glistening eye lived on them, and every heart panted and quivered as this great Christian swept his immortal harp--among thieves and homicides and oppressors--in that sad house of G.o.d.

"What did you think of the sermon, Fry?"

Fry. Liked the first part, sir, where he walked into thieving. Don't like his telling 'em he loves 'em. 'Tisn't to be supposed a gentleman could really love such rubbish as that. Sounds like palaver.

Hawes. Now I liked it all, though it spoiled my nap.

Fry. Well, sir, it is very good of you to like it, for I don't think you like the man.

Hawes. The man is all very well in his place. He ought to be bottled up in one of the dark cells all the week, and then brought up and uncorked in chapel o' Sundays. It is as good as a romance is a sermon of his.

Fry. That it is, sir. Comes next after the Newgate Calendar, don't it now? But there's one thing about all his sermons I can't get over.

Hawes. And what is that?

Fry. Preaches at 'em so.

Hawes. Why, ye fool, that is the beauty of him. How is he to hit 'em if he doesn't hit at 'em?

Fry. Mr. Jones usen't.

Hawes. Oh, Jones! He shot his arrow up in the air and let it fall wherever the wind chose to blow it, and then, if it came down on the wrong man's head he'd say, never mind, my boy, accident!--pure accident!

No! give me a chap that hits out straight from the shoulder. Can't you see this is worth a hundred Joneses beating about the bush and droning us all asleep.

Fry. So he is, sir. So he is. But then I think he didn't ought to be quite so personal. Fancy his requesting such a lot as ours to repent their sins and go to heaven just to oblige him. There's a inducement! I call that himper dig from the pulpit.

"What d'ye call it?" growled Hawes snappishly.

"Himper dig!" replied Fry stoutly.

In the afternoon Mr. Eden preached against cruelty.

"No crime is so thoroughly without excuse as this. Other crimes have sometimes an adequate temptation, this never. The path to other crimes is down-hill; to cruelty is up-hill. In the very act, Nature, who is on the side of some crimes, cries out within us against this monstrous sin.

The blood of our victim flowing from our blows, its groans and sighs and pallor, stay the uplifted arm and appeal to the furious heart. Wonderful they should ever appeal in vain. Cruelty is not one of our pleasant vices, and the opposite virtues are a garden of delights: 'Mercy is twice blessed, it blesseth him that gives and him that takes.' G.o.d has written His abhorrence of this monstrous sin in letters of fire and blood on every page of history."

Here he ransacked history, and gave them some thirty remarkable instances of human cruelty, and of its being punished in kind so strangely, and with such an exactness of retribution, that the finger of G.o.d seemed visible writing on the world--"G.o.d hates cruelty."

At the end of his examples he instanced two that happened under his own eye--a favorite custom of this preacher.

"A man was tried in London for cruelty to animals; he was acquitted by a legal flaw, though the evidence was clear against him. This man returned homeward triumphant. The train in which he sat was drawn up by the side of a station. An express-train pa.s.sed on the up-line at full speed.

At the moment of pa.s.sing the fly-wheel of the engine broke; a large fragment was driven into the air and fell upon the stationary train. It burst through one of the carriages and killed a man upon the spot.

That man was seated between two other men, neither of whom received the slightest injury. The man so singled out was the cruel man who had evaded man's justice, but could not escape His hand who created the beasts as well as man, and who abhors all men who are cruel to any creature He has formed.

"A man and his wife conspired to rob and murder their friend and constant guest. Determined to escape detection, they coldly prepared for the deed of blood. Long before the murder they dug a hole in the pa.s.sage leading from their parlor to their dining-room, and this hole was to receive the corpse of the man with whom meantime these heartless wretches eat bread day after day and drank his health at their own board. Several times the unfortunate man walked with his host and hostess over this concealed hole, his destined tomb, before the time came to sacrifice him. At last they murdered him and buried him in the grave they had prepared for him. The deed done, spite of all their precaution fear fell on them and hatred, and they fled from the house where the corpse was and from each other, one to the north, one to the south. Fled they ever so fast, or so far apart, justice followed to the north, justice followed to the south, and dragged the miscreants together again and flung them into one prison. They were convicted and condemned to death. There came a fatal morning to this guilty pair, when the sun rose upon them and found them full of health and strength, yet in one short hour they must be dead. They were taken into the prison chapel according to custom, and from the chapel they must pa.s.s at once to the gallows. Now it so happened that the direct path from the chapel to the gallows was blocked up by some repairs that were going on in the prison, so the condemned were obliged to make a long circuit. It was one of the largest of our old prisons, a huge, irregular building, constructed with no simplicity of design, and one set of officers did not always know at once what was going on in a distant department. Hence it befell that in a certain pa.s.sage of the jail the condemned and their attendants came suddenly upon a new-made grave! Stones had been taken up, and a grave dug in this pa.s.sage. The workmen had but just completed it. The grave filled up the pa.s.sage, which was narrow and but little used. The men who accompanied the murderers paused, abashed and chilled.

The murderers paused and looked at one another; no words can describe that look! Planks were put down, and they walked over their own grave to their death. Is there a skeptic who tells me this was chance? Then I tell him he is a credulous fool to believe that chance can imitate omniscience, omnipotence and holiness so inimitably. In this astounding fact of exact retribution I see nothing that resembles chance. I see the arm of G.o.d and the finger of G.o.d. His arm dragged the murderers to the gallows, His finger thrust the heartless, cruel miscreants across the grave that was yawning for their doomed bodies! Tremble, ye cruel, G.o.d hates ye! Men speak of a murder--and sometimes, by way of distinction, they say 'a cruel murder.' See, now, what a crime cruelty must be, since it can aggravate murder, the crime before which all other sins dwindle into nothing."

Of minor cruelties that do not attack life itself the most horrible he thought was cruelty to women. Here the man must trample on every manly feeling, on the instinct and the traditions of s.e.x, on the opinion of mankind, on the generosity that goes with superior strength and courage.

A man who is cruel to a woman is called a brute, but if the brutes could speak they would appeal against this phrase as unjust to them. What animal but man did you ever see maltreat a female of his species? The brutes are not such beasts as bad, cruel men are. Or if you ever saw such a monstrosity the animal that did it was some notorious coward, such as the deer, which I believe is now and then guilty in a trifling degree of this dirty sin, being a rank coward. But who ever saw a lion or a dog or any courageous animal let himself down to the level of a cowardly man so far as this?

Here sprang from his lips a true and tender picture of a wife. The narrow and virtuous circle of her joys, her many sufferings, great and little--no need of being cruel to her; she must suffer so much without that. The claims to pity and uncommon consideration every woman builds up during a few years of marriage! Her inestimable value in the house!

How true to the hearth she is unless her husband corrupts her or drives her to despair! How often she is good in spite of his example! How rarely she is evil but by his example! G.o.d made her weaker that man might have the honest satisfaction and superior joy of protecting and supporting her. To torture her with the strength so intrusted him for her good is to rebel against heaven's design--it is to be a monster, a coward, and a fool!

"There was one more kind of cruelty it was his duty to touch upon--harsh treatment of those unhappy persons to whom it has not pleased G.o.d to give a full measure of reason.

"This is a sacred calamity to which the intelligent and the good in all ages and places have been tender and pitiful. In some countries these unfortunates are venerated, and being little able to guard themselves are held to be under Heaven's especial protection. This is a beautiful belief and honors our fallen nature. Yet in Christian England, I grieve and blush to say, cruelty often falls on their unprotected heads. Who has not seen the village boys follow and mock these afflicted persons?

Youth is cruel because the great parent of cruelty is general ignorance and inexperience of the cla.s.s of suffering we inflict. Men who have come to their full reason have not this excuse. What! persecute those whom G.o.d hath smitten, but whom He still loves, and will take vengeance on all who maltreat them. On such and on all of you who are cruel, shame and contempt will fall sooner or later even in this world, and at that solemn day when the cruel and their victims shall meet the Judge of the quick and the dead, He on whose mercy hangs your eternal fate will say to you, 'Have ye shown mercy?' Oh! these words will crush your souls.

Madmen! know ye not that the most righteous man on earth can only be saved by G.o.d's mercy, not by His justice? Would you forfeit all hope, all chance, all possibility of that mercy, by merciless cruelty to your brothers and sisters of the race of Adam? Does the day of judgment seem to you uncertain or so distant that you dare be cruel here during the few brief days you have to prepare yourself for eternity? If you are under this delusion here I tear it from your souls. That day is at hand, at the door."