The Courier-Journal republishes herewith from the Ohio Penitentiary News an editorial by the Rev. D. J. Starr, D.D., chaplain at the Columbus, O., prison:
"The Rev. George L. Herr, whose address delivered in our chapel last Sunday morning was charmingly refreshing, is a man whose vicissitudes of life lead through a labyrinth that would require a half century of years to make its journey at an ordinary pace. But George L. Herr is not the man to do anything in an ordinary way. The itinerary of his life shows few curves—mostly acute angles. He was born in an old Kentucky family of the city of Louisville. His ancestral stock was golden, and his infancy was fed with a golden spoon on sugar and cream. When he was three months old his Christian mother went to be with God. When he was 18 years old his father, Richard S. Herr, a capitalist of Louisville, died and left George the heir of a large patrimony.
"The orphan was genial, sportive, rich and without domestic restraint. Men seized the opportunity to take advantage of his tendencies and youth to filch from him his wealth. He yielded, and threw on the neck of appetite the slackened rein and became woefully dissipated. He mounted the toboggan and went down the slide, landing in a few years in the gulch of destitution and near the precipice of suicide.
Teach me thy way, O Lord.—Ps. 86:11.
"Here in destitution and despair on the day after Christmas, 1893, the Rev. S. P. Holcombe, of Louisville, found the prodigal and led him into the Union Gospel Mission, where he sought and came to know God as a personal Saviour. What a change! New bottles for the new wine of the Spirit! As language cannot picture the degradation of the prodigal, neither can it picture the exaltation of the son restored to the Father. George was as whole-hearted in his new life as in his old. He had beauty for ashes and a spirit of praise instead of heaviness. After nearly five years of the new life George L. Herr, in the city of his fall and his recovery, was married by the Rev. Dr. Carter H. Jones, pastor of Broadway Baptist Church, to Miss Lillie M. Joyce. George says that if a man ever outmarried himself he's the man. He says God gave him this priceless treasure of a Christian wife in answer to prayer. Those who know Mrs. Herr speak of her as sweet-spirited, noble, devout, gifted in song and speech and one in spirit with her husband in the work of saving those who are out of the way. Their home is filled with the aroma of grace and their united lives are spent in doing good. How wonderfully God fulfills His ancient promise to present-day prodigals: 'As ye were a curse, so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing.'"
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