A GOOD WORK WELL DONE.
WE shall tell our readers without preface a little story which seems to us to contain a very marvellous spiritual fact, which made us as we read it feel, as one seldom can be made to feel, what a real force, explain it as you will, there is in prayer. If it and what little more we shall add from the same source com- mend the little book* which lies before us, and the good work of which it is a very simple and pathetic record, it will be well. A certain Mrs. V., living in Brighton, has devoted herself, for some years past, to the work of reclaiming fallen women. She has always found, as indeed one would expect, a special difficulty with the base creatures who make their living out of the shame of these women. On one such Mrs. V. had tried all her persuasions, it seemed, in vain. At last the woman sought her. She would aban- don, she said, her evil trade, but there was a difficulty in the lease of her house. "I can't be -better while I live in that house," were her words ; and the lease had still several years to run, nor had she any hope that her landlord would release her. The next day Mrs. V. went to him ; he was a respectable butcher. She told him the whole story. Would he cancel the lease ? The man would not hear of such a thing. The woman always paid her rent. It was no matter of his for what she used the house. Would be like to see his own daughters in the house? was Mrs. V.'s next question. It moved him, but with- out changing his purpose, in which, we are told, his wife acquiesced. At last she asked the two to kneel down with her and pray that God would guide them to what was best to be done. To that they had no objection. " So she knelt down and uttered an earnest cry that God would do what her words had no power to do," and then took her leave, full sorely discouraged. Late that same evening the butcher came to her. He had thought the matter over. He could not forget what she had said about his daughters. In short, he would cancel the lease. So the woman was set free to earn an honest livelihood. "And a great change passed, too," we are told, " over the butcher." He shut his shop on the Sunday and went regularly to Church with his .family, — matters, which, whatever their intrinsic importance, were, anyhow, recognition of a spiritual life, in the reality of which the man probably believed for the first time when he saw Mrs. V. go down on her knees.
How few, one cannot but think, as one reads the story, of persons really, even fervently, pious would venture to do such a thing. .To pray by the bedside of the sick or dying, that is possi- ble enough, but to go down upon one's knees in the parlour of a "respectable butcher," possibly of one's own butcher, and to pray for guidance, not on some high subject which would dignify the action, but on some vulgar matter of pounds, shillings, and pence,—the idea is even ludicrously distasteful. Not a few would have shirked all interference. " What right had they to ask such
WorL Among the Lost. London: William Macintosh. 1870. a sacrifice of another man ?" A wealthy man., with a conscience pricking him in the matter, would have found a solution of the diffi- culty in paying for the remainder of the lease out of his own poc- ket, would have saved the woman, but left our friend the butcher wholly unregenerate, hoping to get such another tenant for his house, and such another philanthropist to buy her lease. For we hold the effect upon the butcher to have been quite as valuable as the rest of Mrs. V.'s work. Most of us, if we had ever found our way into the man's parlour, would have lost our temper, called him, and not very unjustly, every hard name that we could think of, and, in all probability, left him much harder, and more selfish, and generally all the worse for our med- dling. Shyness, the horror of what seems bad taste, the shrinking from all display of religious feeling, would be insurmountable obstacles to our taking the one effective way. So, at least, we account for it to ourselves. But the real obstacle, after all, is the want of faith. It is impossible to conceive that a man who actually believed that God could be spoken to, would listen if he were spoken to, should feel shy, or consider for a moment whether what he was saying was in good taste or no, or what other people would think about his saying it. It was exactly this simple, down- right conviction of one who heard her quite as really as the butcher heard her that Mrs. V. possessed, and that removed moun- tains for her. We say the conviction, the faith, removed them, so in- veterate is the habit of attributing such results to secondary causes. But why should we not simply say that God removed them? If he exists at all, it is far easier to believe that such a power should dwell in him, and be exercised by him, than that it should belong to some particular condition of this or that human mind. And in this case, as it happens, we get free from some of the speculative difficulties that beset the subject of prayer. If we are ever to pray at all, it must be that God may move our own wills or the wills of those about us to good. Some other particulars which we read about Mrs. V.'s methods of proceeding very much increase our interest in her and her work. The strong enthusiasm which can make a lady fall down on her knees and pray under such circumstances as we have described would not improbably, one would think, be wanting in discretion and judgment. It might be apt, for instance, to encourage the exhibition of vehement religious feelings in those whom it was seeking to reform. To such exhibitions the unhappy subjects of Mrs. V.'s care are peculiarly liable. "A single, earnest, and rather sensational address to them on the Prodigal Son, or some moving portion of Scripture, with some allusion to their mothers and their early homes, is enough to throw them into an agony of uncontrollable weeping." We cannot do better than continue the quotation, because it expresses with admirable force a very valuable truth, and one which, in the very natural desire for manifest results, those who devote them- selves to such work often forget. You want penitence in these poor creatures, and so you feel disposed to rejoice in the signs of penitence. "But what have you gained? You have only min- istered to the very want of self-control which has been one of the great sources of all their misery." Nor can we forbear to give the very vigorous homely image in which we probably have one of Mrs. V.'s own utterances on the subject,—" Satan knows well enough, that just as a pot boiling over, for all the noise it makes, will end in putting out the fire, and half emptying itself, so if he can but get a young convert to boil over into much talk, loud professions, and preaching to others, before he can well stand him- self ; above all, if he can get him to boil over in his own estima- tion, and fancy himself something wonderful, he will soon cool down, and be left half empty with the fire gone out,"—words of wisdom, indeed, to which many persons of the most admirable motives and zeal might profitably take heed. Every glimpse that we get of Mrs. V.'s management seems of a piece with this practical wisdom. There is one rule, for instance, which sounds harsh, but which a little reflection shows to be perfectly right. A girl who leaves the Home to go back to evil ways is not received into it again ; other means are taken to help her if she comes again to a better mind, but that privilege she is held to have forfeited. It is said with perfect truth that the rule of repeated forgiveness cannot practically answer. " Surely we cannot learn too early,
or keep in mind too steadily, that justice is the backbone of mercy, and that the most merciless thing you can do in the whole world is to make sin easy to the sinner." One exception is made to
this rule, and proves it, certainly, admirably well, according to the genuine meaning of that proverb. This is the case when the girl has been put into prison. That is held to be punishment enough, in fact, to have vindicated the same law which the exclusion is intended to vindicate. If any of our readers should be disposed to think Mrs. V. a little stern, let them look at another phase of her character,—read, for instance, how she hears of a woman who had attempted suicide, finds her in a miserable lodging, resolves to put her in the way of earning an honest livelihood, and begins by hiring a room for her, giving to the friend who is entrusted with this part of the business these special injunctions :—" I want you to hire a room with a nice sunny aspect, and get some flower-pots to put in the window. Mind, the plants must be in full flower." In the same spirit she makes all the domestic arrangements of the Home as cheerful as possible, avoids clothing her charges in anything like &penitential garb, delights and not a little surprises them by giving them well- fitting and becoming dress, and specially wins their hearts by allowing them to wear stays. Every page is full of such proofs of sagacity and kindness. One learns with regret rather than surprise that Mrs. V. finds this work of hers very exhausting. The task of raising funds for the support of the institution is especially burdensome. Of this, at least, she could be relieved. Any one who will help to set her free from " serving tables " for the divine work of saving human souls may feel sure that his gift will be well bestowed. Mrs. V.'s direction is,—The Home, Albion Hill, Brighton.
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