The missions are supported entirely by voluntary contributions left in the boxes by the door. Sometimes these run low. One night Jerry asked all who were glad to be there to hold up their hands. All hands up. “Now,” said he, “when you take your hands down put them way down—down into your pockets, and fetch something out to put in the boxes by the door.” He said, that to run a mission successfully required “grace, grit and greenbacks.” I fancy considerable of his influence was due to his knowledge of the secret hearts, the personal experiences of his auditors; he was like a priest at confessional, when out of meeting. There are no verbatim reports of his talks extant, and if there were they would give the reader no proper idea of the man, because the grotesqueness of his language would probably be the most striking feature of them. He must have been heard to be understood, and even then I think he could not have been understood save by those whose experience and modes of life gave them the touchstone.
Sister Maggie is a typical convert. At one of the Cremorne missions a Sunday-school worker from the East Side told of his class of fifteen street boys and girls. “I asked them,” he said, “how many of them drank beer, and all promptly put up their hands. I asked how many thought it a bad practice, and only four or five responded. I then told them of the evils that drink led to, and cited them numerous examples within their knowledge, and finally asked how many of them would resolve never to drink any more beer. About half of them kept their hands down, and in a way that showed they meant business.”
This discouraging incident brought to her feet, on the platform, a tall, thick-set, strong-featured woman. She spoke with a strident, energetic voice, a Bowery accent, and a manner to which all thought of shrinking or embarrassment was a stranger. It was Sister Maggie. She said, as nearly as I recall the words: “This teaching children beer-drinking is the beginning of all the deviltry. I was passing a dive yesterday and I saw a little kid come out with a pail of beer that she had been sent for, and no sooner was she outside the door than the pail went to her head. That’s the way I used to do, and learned to drink and steal at the same time. But God can help us to reclaim even beings so badly educated. He helped me, and there can’t be a worse case on the East Side. There is not a dive over there that I haven’t been drunk in. Brother S. knows how often I have drank with him at old C.’s dead-house (rum-shop). Sixteen years ago I was a leper, a confirmed sot. If you had seen me you would not have believed that I could have been saved. Christians said I was too far gone; they said there was not enough woman left in me to be saved. I had had the jim-jams twicet. [Laughter.] The first time I had ’em I thought my back hair was full of mice—oh, that was awful! [More laughter.] I was just getting over the tremens when I first come in here. I was a walking rag-shop, and if you’d a seen me you’d give me plenty of room on the walk. I staggered in and sat down on the very backest seat. Now they let me sit up here on the platform. What d’ye think of that? God helped me, and he has helped me now for sixteen years, and I am going through. I am happy. I have friends and good clothes, and more than all, I have a good home, and that is what I never knew before.”
At the mention of the word “home,” all the woman’s instinct asserted itself, and for the first time her voice softened, and her manner melted; she sobbed, and sat down.
I can give no complete idea of the effect of this, because the reader can know nothing of the surroundings, the antecedents of the speaker and of many of her listeners, and the keen rapport that ties them together. These worshipers are a class and an organization by themselves; they have no church affiliations, and their worship is sui generis; many of them were outcasts of society in former years, they stand alone since their reformation, and they are drawn close together in their isolation. True, there are many among them who were always respectable members of society; many who since their conversion here have joined churches; there are richly dressed and cultured-looking people scattered in these audiences; but the fact remains that the genius and distinctive personnel of the meetings are of the order of which Jerry McAuley and “Sister Maggie” and their ministrations are representatives.
I know of no religious exercises better calculated to inspire the true religious feelings of faith, charity, humility, gratitude, and rejoicing—the distinguishing marks of the original Christian following. But they differ from the noisy demonstrations which sometimes are taken for “primitive Christianity,” as they do from the cold and conventional worship which advertises itself in brownstone structures and double-barred mahogany pews. If one wants to get a breath of vigorous faith and wholesome humility, he should attend the Sunday evening services at one of the McAuley Missions.
Jerry McAuley died suddenly, but not unexpectedly, last September. His funeral, held at the great Broadway Tabernacle, was one of the largest ever seen in this city, and was attended by hundreds of abandoned characters who had been reclaimed through his instrumentality, and who were probably never inside of a church before, and may never be again. Women with painted faces, but with tears in their eyes and bits of crape fastened at their throats or arms, stood with downcast heads beside other women who, under other circumstances, would have shunned them. Thus did all classes testify to the power of simple faith and devotion in a poor, uncultured outcast. Over the platform in his chapels are his last, characteristic words:
“IT’S ALL RIGHT.”
“The workman dies, but the work goes on.” There is no calculating the power and extent of the influences this humble worker has set in motion. Beside the hundreds of living examples of his labor here, the seed has scattered to the four winds of heaven, and sprung up in various forms to bless the world—in other cities and other lands. The Missions publish Jerry McAuley’s Newspaper, which, extensively circulated, especially in prisons and “the slums” of cities, carries the glad tidings of the testimonies to do a silent and unknown work. An affecting feature of the private work of these converts is their efforts to hunt out and reclaim missing boys and girls. Letters are received from agonized parents, from distant points as well as the city, imploring the help of missionaries to find these estrays; and their efforts are often successful.
I close with one example of this radiating, ramifying influence: Michael Dunn was an English thief by inheritance, for his parents were thieves, and as he expresses it, “he had thieving on the brain.” He had spent the greater part of thirty-five years in different prisons, and continued the same life after coming to this country. One evening an unconverted man sent him into the McAuley Mission as a joke, but it proved to Dunn a blessing, for he found a Savior, and the desire for stealing was all cast out. He was moved to undertake that most important work, the provision of a home for refuge and work for his brother ex-convicts. After many trials and difficulties he finally established the Home of Industry, No. 40 Houston Street, New York, where many lost men who were a terror to society, have been made honest Christian citizens, and are working to save others. Nor did the work stop here. In the autumn of 1883, Dunn was called to San Francisco, California, to open a similar Home in that city, where his labors are as successful as they were in New York.