Harriet Earhart Monroe

“ I was coming off the platform one evening when I met a large, fierce-looking, scowling man, who looked as if he wanted to strike me. I stopped at once. “Friend,” I said, “you are in trouble.” “What is that to you and such as you?” “It is much to me. You look like an employer of men, yet here you have been taking the bread and coffee of charity.” “Well, I have been an employer of men, but now I cannot even get employment. I have been behind bars; now what hope in life is there for me?” “Many men who have been behind bars have afterward made good citizens and even made fortunes. ”

“ I was given a wonderful taste of the ups and downs in New York City, especially the downs. I certainly am grateful to Providence for subjecting me to that awful experience in New York City, for in that way I learned to know human nature. I learned to know that the so-called submerged masses were composed of human beings, not brainless individuals; that, as a matter of fact, there are better people, especially morally, among the poor than among the so-called society people. ”

“ The Church is doing the real Christian work of the world in keeping people from going wrong. Missions and their branches only hope to catch the driftwood of humanity before it floats out into the great ocean of eternity.
But every church in the land should have an investment in money or personal representatives in the nearest city rescue mission. The young people of the churches should be the choirs of the missions. They will get inspiration as to how to do work for God in securing the conversion of every soul committed to their care in the church and community work. ”

“ I remember one occasion at the Breakfast Association, Philadelphia, at the twilight service, New Year's Eve, I saw five hundred men stand for prayer at one time. Our Mission is much smaller, but on New Year's Eve and during New Year's Day, when we have a continuous service from 12 o'clock midday to 9.30 P.M., with an entire change of leaders and musicians each hour, I have seen your nominal Christian, the toper, the criminal, all so overcome by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit that social differences melted away and they knelt side by side at the mercy seat ”

“ I honestly believe that such a man is more to be pitied than the ones who, either through their own fault or being victims of circumstances, have lost their hold in life and finally found themselves 'down and out.' A man may temporarily be without food and shelter, but this is nothing compared to trying to live without God. However, a man who is a wanderer on the face of the earth and who has lost his God, is indeed a wretched being. ”

“ THE NEED OF RESCUE WORK “Washington is a dreadful place for a man out of work. The city having no manufactories, and all rough work, such as excavating, is let by contract to men who prefer Italians or Negroes as diggers, while stores and offices have room for only the efficient young person, so that, when from age, inefficiency or lack of political influence, people are dropped from the government service, we are often at our wit's end to provide means of subsistence for these worthy persons most anxious to labor. We have some old men whose working days are over. ”

“ Bishop Simpson, even in his day, eloquently described the mission of the Church in the world: “The Church must grope her way into the alleys and courts and purlieus of the city, and up the broken staircase, and into the bare room and beside the loathsome sufferer; she must go down into the pit with the miner, into the forecastle with the sailor, into the tent with the soldier, into the shop with the mechanic, into the factory with the operative, into the field with the farmer, into the counting-room with the merchant. Like the air, the Church must press equally on all the surfaces of society ”

“ When a friend looked in on that crowd of superior business men helping distribute clothing and saying words of consolation to the broken men, he said, “I believe in my soul you would order in the President of the United States to help at the Gospel Mission.” “Oh, no!” I replied, “President Taft, good man as he is, would not be permitted to drive so much as a tack at the Gospel Mission. He does not recognize Jesus as His Saviour; only orthodox Christians who can tell the sinner of the redeeming power of Jesus the Christ can successfully work in a rescue mission like this.” ”

“ The greatest evil in New York City is, as everywhere, the saloon. The majority of you men present here this evening must admit if it were not for the saloon you would not be here as applicants for bodily assistance. There are evil spirits in us and around us to lead us astray; the devil's worst temptation is whisky or any other intoxicating drink. Man was made in the image of God; when a man gets drunk he is worse than a beast. A man will get drunk again and again, a beast will not, having seemingly more sense than a man. The saloon is the greatest foe to the spread of the gospel. ”

“ Dan Crawford, the great missionary to Africa, says not Livingstone, not Taylor, not Dan Crawford, are the real pioneer missionaries, but the Spirit of God Himself, and when the word is brought to a prepared soul it is a spark of powder. ”

“ The people of the Mission had been more or less in prayer from three o'clock to eight when this man came in. He saw religion in action in the person and speech of redeemed men. But even if these testimonies were factors it was the Holy Spirit that did the work. It was the divine spark to human tinder, or, as Henry Drummond better puts it, “The spiritual world reached down and carried this worldly soul into the world above it.” “He that hath the Son hath life, he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Life depends upon contact with life, it cannot develop out of anything that is not life. ”

“ Religion holds many a woman whose son is a wanderer, either criminal or otherwise, from insanity. I know a woman who has not looked into the face of her wandering son for six years. She stands up and sings with radiant face, “I am going through whatever others do, I am going through with Jesus,” and in spite of what looks an unbearable sorrow, leads a useful and apparently happy life. ”

“ If people will come before daylight in the winter, or at that early hour in the summer for coffee, without cream or sugar, and a quarter of a loaf of bread, we believe they need it, and we gladly give it, not as a charity, but as a visible token of our sympathy. Now, the fact that 22,800 fewer people took bread and coffee free in the year 1912 to 1913, compared with the preceding year, can only be accounted for that when a man has a few pennies in his pocket he could buy a satisfactory breakfast, and gladly did so rather than to line up for an unrequited kindness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He did not take a seat, but marched to the front and prostrated himself at the altar, crying, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” In such cases, no difference what we are doing, all formal program is suspended and we go at once to prayer. Jake was in deep earnest, men and women acquainted with God kneeled all about him, presenting his case to the Saviour of men. We did not then know his special need, but a soul in the depth of conviction wanted God, not for one sin, but he needed cleansing from all the sins of his past life. It must have been an hour before that soul received light. ”

“ At the different banquets and at their monthly meetings all forms of reforms, from purely a humanitarian standpoint, are discussed, but we, who go at the open sores of the world with the only sure cure earth has yet received, the religion of Jesus Christ, we receive no recognition, we are given no hearing at banquets, and are never spoken of as part of the city's force for betterment, yet we comfort the prisoner, we bring hope to the hopeless, and we are the real protection of the city. No hungry man is turned from our door unsatisfied. ”

“ These are for the most part good men, for the wicked do not live out half their days. A few immigrants from northern Europe, sick men who are able to walk about, but could not work if they had it; the shoestring man, the umbrella man, the sandwich man, the men who are half insane for lack of food and enforced lack of sleep, for they have no place to sleep oftener than once a week. Then we have the criminal classes, which must be touched with the Spirit of God, or they will become the dynamite which will destroy our cities, also the men just out of prison. ”

“ Now, in the great day of accounts, of whom will that soul be required? If the defective intellect, what there is of it, can be turned to believe God, the defective is prevented from becoming a criminal. We have them at the Gospel Mission. The very first thing is to have the physician talk to Jeff of the sacredness of his own body to absolutely prevent all secret habits which injure the body and brain, and the motive of self-restraint both for physical habits and for drink must be that these things offend a loving Saviour who walks with each one of us. ”

“ Paul says, a new creature in Christ Jesus.
I heard a distinguished man who had long been in official connection with prisons and reformatories, say, “A reformed man is always in danger; he may stand twenty years and then fall back into sin, but a regenerated man is as safe from his sinful besetments as if they had not been the weakness of his life.”
I fancy I can hear some preacher say, “If it is the word and the Holy Spirit do the work, why does not the church have as many conversions as a mission?” The very first element of spiritual power is lacking in most churches. ”

“ Those tender feelings which enter so largely into the deeper currents of our domestic and social life—love, pity, joy, hope, the striking of the glad hand, comradeship locking arms under the same great banner to do deeds of heroism in the same great cause—religion calls them all up, and fires them all with a conquering zeal. ”

“ When he wants God more than he wants deliverance from his besetting sin, when he wants God more than he wants his deserted wife and children, when he wants God for what God can do for his poor soul, the God of his soul comes down, and at that second the soul passes from death unto life eternal, for that soul the decisions of the judgment day have been settled, for Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my words and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” ”

“ I never went after my tools, and from that day to this I have not entered a saloon. Satan has camped on my trail many times. I have had trials and temptations, but God has delivered me from the sins of the flesh, whisky, tobacco and their accompanying sins. No man who has been a drunkard can ever again safely use tobacco. An experience of ten years in mission work, where I have seen thousands of souls born into the kingdom, convinces me that the convert who retains tobacco will surely slip back. Christ's redeeming blood cleanses from all sin. ”

“ A mission is a blessed thing for enthusiasts. 104It sends them with flowers and literature to hospitals and jails, it sends food to private families in need, it gives the enthusiasts tracts to distribute, it puts musical instruments into their hands and says, “Praise the Lord with pleasant sounds,” it sets women to repairing clothing for the poor, to caring for little children, while mothers earn money for food. As we do these things we talk religion, we tell of Jesus, the friend of sinners, we make a steady effort in very many directions to have each soul brought into harmony with God. ”

“ Wheeler is called to see a soldier, a sailor, a sick man in the hospital, who must be seen in business hours, he never, as all other government members of the Board do, pleads loss of any kind, but goes at once on the errand of love and mercy. Then he gets on well with his Board of Directors; if debate runs high and a measure is carried without his favor, he holds no grudge, he is universally kind. ”

“ People of deficient brains become fanatics; now, if these unbalanced people become filled with an enthusiasm of righteousness they absolutely do much good. They constitute three-fourths of the street preachers, and they reach many a soul who never enters a church. Religion prevents insanity. There is no doubt that fanaticism run riot leads to the asylum. We had one man who was insufficiently fed, badly clothed, who spent the entire night in prayer, two or three nights of the week. ”

“ In almost every instance where sorrow in a family has been the result of sin; and Jesus is allowed to become to each of them a personal Saviour; the home is electrified by a new enthusiasm; the parents become efficient, self-supporting, happy; the children become self-respecting; are taken from the class needing help; and become helpers. Religion eases the burden of life and heals the welts of adversity. ”

“ Every one of them knows that sin is the cause of his downfall, and they also know that they must get right with God before they can forsake evil habits. Scarcely one of them but what has tried again and again to leave off their grosser sins but have failed, but when at the watch-night service they are told of a Saviour mighty to save, hope comes again to the broken-hearted. ”