THE CHAPLAIN.
The chaplain occupies an extremely important but delicate position in prison management. It is possible for him to be of vast influence and power for good.
The chaplain needs to be a man of large heart, aided by an abundance of sound common sense. He needs to bear in mind constantly, in the difficult and delicate work he is called upon to perform, that the discipline of the prison must be upheld and enforced.
Associate officers are frequently disturbed with the fear that the chaplain's influence will subvert the discipline of the prison; that the shrewd, unprincipled convicts by pouring into his ears their imaginary tales of woe, may succeed in working him.
The chaplain's first requirement, if he would succeed, is not to lose sight of the majesty of the law and of the prison rules.
The chaplain and the warden should go hand in hand, the one sustaining the other. They need to have a perfect understanding, neither mistrusting the other. Frequent conferences ought to enable them to proceed along proper lines. The chaplain's opportunities are limitless. I do not undertake to say what direction his duties shall take him. That will be discussed fully in the Chaplain's Association.
It is personal, individual work that counts in a prison. All the chaplain's work should be thought out beforehand, be methodical, premeditated, intentional, systematic and thorough. His chapel service should be rational, of the proper length, with exercises, song service and preaching service carefully chosen. There should be no room in a prison service for the spectacular, the highly emotional and the haphazard sermons and addresses of a chance visitor. A reasonably rigid censorship ought to be exercised over the contributions of outsiders to the chapel service.
The influence of sight seers and idle visitors to prisons, always bad, reaches the acme of its perniciousness in the chapel service, if unrestrained and unguided by prison officials of experience and firmness, who alone are in a position to know that sickly sentimentality is the worst possible pabulum to offer men already too eager to justify their evil deeds.