Читать книгу Prisons and Prayer; Or, a Labor of Love - Elizabeth Ryder Wheaton - Страница 30

which is in the rear of the chapel, and in the same building. Here are sights that touch hearts. Some are dying with consumption, and some with broken hearts. One poor boy's sunken cheeks and thin, wasted hands especially touched me. Taking him by the hand, I began to talk to him. He said: "No one cares for me." "Yes, God cares for you and He loves you." "Why does He let me stay here and die if He loves me?" "Have you a mother?" "Yes, I have a good Christian mother, but she doesn't know I am here." "May I write and tell her you are sick? I am sure she wants to know about you?" "Oh, no; I had rather die all alone than to have mother know I am here."

So it is all through these places. For, though I have briefly described one prison, they are all in a great measure alike, yet vary in different states to some extent. All are not so clean and neat as this one spoken of, and though a prison might be lined with costly gems, it is still a prison, and without Jesus in the heart it is only a living tomb to those confined therein. Let none think that it is a pleasant place to be. One man may want to be a Christian, or at least a moral man and a man of cultured tastes, and such men find it doubly hard when they must work side by side with the most degraded criminals. One may leave the prison worse than when he went in.

In these places children hide their ruined lives and breaking hearts from their dearest earthly friends. No mother to smooth the dying one's pillow, though small it may be! No sister or brother to wipe away the bitter tears that will fall; no father to say good-bye. O mothers, let the memory of your boy's innocent childhood fan all your tenderness and love into a flame that would leap over the highest breastwork Satan could erect and take your boy or girl back to your heart. If you have been a true Christian and have done your duty faithfully, trust still in God. What we need is faithful teaching among the unsaved, to warn them against their danger, before they get into such awful places.

NEW FEDERAL PRISON AT FT. LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS.