We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

But the problem that meets the Christian student, and the practical person who means to live the Christian life, is the problem of redemption and of self-sacrifice.

In a world where there is always ruin and misery, where the inexperienced are ensnared and the blind misled, and where fatal and inexorable penalties follow every false step, there must be a band of redeemers, seekers and savers of the lost. There must be those who sacrifice ease, luxury and leisure, to labor for the restoration of the foolish and wicked who have sold their birthright and lost their inheritance; and here is just the problem that our age and day present to the thoughtful person who, having professed, in whatever church or creed, to be a Christian, wishes to make a reality of that profession.

The night that Eva had spent in visiting the worst parts of New York had been to her a new revelation of that phase of paganism which exists in our modern city life, within sound of hundreds of church bells of every denomination. She saw authorized as a regular trade, and protected by law, the selling of that poisoned liquor which brings on insanity worse than death; which engenders idiocy, and the certainty of vicious propensities in the brain of the helpless unborn infant; which is the source of all the poverty, and more than half the crime, that fills alms-houses and prisons, and of untold miseries and agonies to thousands of families. She saw woman degraded as the minister of sin and shame; the fallen and guilty Eve, forever plucking and giving to Adam the forbidden fruit whose mortal taste brings death into the world; and her heart had been stirred by the sight of those multitudes of poor ruined wrecks of human beings, men and women, that she had seen crowding in to that midnight supper, and by the earnest pleadings of faith and love that she had heard in the good man's prayers for them. She recalled his simple faith, his undaunted courage in thus maintaining this forlorn hope in so hopeless a region, and she could not rest satisfied with herself, doing nothing to help.

In talking with Mr. James on his prospects, he had said that he very much wished to enlarge this Home so as to put there some dormitories for the men who were willing to take the pledge to abandon drinking, where they could find shelter and care until some kind of work could be provided for them. He stated further that he wished to connect with the enterprise a farm in the country where work could be found for both men and women, of a kind which would be remunerative, and which might prove self-supporting.

Eva reflected with herself whether she had anything to give or to do for a purpose so sacred. Their income was already subject to a strict economy. The little elegancies and adornments of her house were those that are furnished by thought and care rather than by money. Even with the most rigorous self-scrutiny, Eva could not find fault with the home philosophy by which their family life had been made attractive and delightful, because she said and felt that her house had been a ministry to others. It had helped to make others stronger, more cheerful, happier.

But when she brought Maggie away from the Home, she longed to send back some helpful token to those earnest laborers.

On revising her possessions, she remembered that, once, in the days when she was a rich and rather self-indulgent daughter of luxury, she had spent the whole of one quarter's allowance in buying for herself a pearl cross. It cost her not even a sacrifice, for when with a kiss or two she confessed her extravagance to her father, he only pinched her cheek playfully, told her not to do so again, and gave a check for the amount. There it lies, at this moment, in Eva's hands; and as she turns it abstractedly round and round, and marks the play of light on the beautiful pearls, she thinks earnestly what that cross means, and wonders that she should ever have worn it as a mere bauble.

Does it not mean that man's most generous Friend, the highest, the purest, the sweetest nature that ever visited this earth, was agonized, tortured, forsaken, and left to bleed life away, unpitied and unrelieved, for love of us and of all sinning, suffering humanity? Suddenly the words came with overpowering force to her mind: "He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves."

Immediately she resolved that she would give this cross to the sacred work of saving the lost. She resolved to give it secretly—without the knowledge even of her husband. The bauble was something personal to herself that never would be missed or inquired for, and she felt about such an offering that reserve and sacredness which is proper to natures of great moral delicacy. With the feeling she had at this moment, it was as much an expression of personal loyalty and devotion to Jesus Christ as was the precious alabaster vase of Mary. It satisfied, moreover, a kind of tender, vague remorse that she had often felt; as if, in her wedded happiness and her quiet home, she were too blessed, and had more than her share of happiness in a world where there were such sufferings and sorrows.

She had always had a longing to do something towards the world's work, and, if nothing more, to be a humble helper of the brave and heroic spirits who press on in the front ranks of this fight for the good.