Article May 11, 1899 Issue

Prison Work

M. F. W. with contributions from J. B.

Dear Friend:—I know it is cheering and encouraging to know that Christian Science workers in the Field realize that the seed which is sown by placing Science and Health and the Journal in the hands of a poor, struggling mortal is bringing forth fruit. I will enclose a letter which I feel you will enjoy reading. I will give you a brief history of this man's case: Mrs. McK. and myself started one year ago last January to do missionary work in the jail. The entire work had been in the hands of the W. C. T. U. of this city for years. The president of this society gave Christian Science a very warm welcome at first, but when orthodoxy found out how popular Christian Science teaching was becoming in the jail, and how many of the poor men were reading Science and Health, we had all we could do for a time to keep our books from being destroyed. We soon had twelve copies of Science and Health and as many Bibles, and from thirty to forty Journals in circulation. The officials in the jail were very helpful in giving us all the time we needed to do our work, and the good work has been kept up until the present time.

We had passed by a certain cell where two men were confined, for, I think, three or four weeks, without stopping to offer them any books. Their faces, and general appearance bespoke for them such an unclean, hardened thought, that I seemed not to have enough pure love to give me sufficient courage to approach them. One afternoon as I had gone through my ward, feeling I had finished my work, one of the keepers came to me, and said, "I wish you would go to a cell with me, and try to say a word to a man who is soon going to the penitentiary. He is an object of pity." I went and found it to be the very one we had passed and repassed.

Well, there I stood face to face with one of the hardest criminals in the jail; one who was known far and near. If divine Love had not completely hidden me from all things which personal sense could have tried to say to me, I should have run away; but words from Science and Health and the Bible filled my consciousness, and I talked to one man about ten minutes, although he smoked in my face until it seemed I could not stem the tide, but I did, and told him I would bring him a book on Thursday, this being Tuesday. It seems I told him every Christian was his friend, and would lift him up out of despondency and sin.

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