Recollections of Windsor Prison; / Containing Sketches of its History and Discipline, with Appropriate Strictures and Moral and Religious Reflection

by of Vermont John Reynolds

This then is the sole reason why they set their faces against Mr. R.—HE HAD BEEN A BAD MAN. Whom then would they have? and how could they obtain him? In the Methodist Church the preachers are the property of the bishops, and they can dispose of them as they please. Accordingly the bishop was applied to, and a preacher was stationed in Concord for the coming year. This preacher was then recommended to the Legislature, and appointed chaplain of the prison, to the exclusion of the first applicant.

By how mean a motive is human nature capable of being influenced? In its idolatrous devotion to self, how reckless of consequences? By this act of pious selfishness, fifty dollars were gained by the Methodist Society in Concord, and a man who was peculiarly fitted for usefulness in a certain sphere, and who was trying to move in that sphere, was thrown out of all employment, and compelled to abandon a benevolent enterprise, which had twined round every fibre of his heart.

Is this a fair specimen of religious conduct? Is this the meaning of that divine command which requires all men, and christians especially, to do as they would be done by? Is this "not mentioning to the penitent sinner the sins that he hath committed?" Is this brotherly love? Is this the spirit of the prayer—"forgive as WE forgive?" With such records as these in the books which will be opened in "that day for which all other days were made," who would be willing to go to judgment?

One circumstance more, and I shall have done, for the present, with Mr. R. It is a rule in the Methodist Church that a local preacher shall be ordained deacon, when he has been licensed to preach four years; but Mr. R. has been on trial more than six years, and is not, I believe, ordained yet, though he has been recommended for it. He has also applied several times, with the best of recommendations, to join the annual conference, but has always been rejected. Why? Not that he has done any thing amiss, since he has been among them, but they fear he will! He is in good standing as a local preacher, but he must not ascend to the house of Lords, lest he should do something, or through fear that he has done something in days of yore, that might overshadow the dignity of their illustrious body. Mary Magdalene could be in the society of Jesus; the thief on the cross could be with his Lord in Paradise; and the disciples could give the right hand of fellowship to Paul; but things have altered vastly since those times. The servant who has been forgiven, takes his fellow servant by the throat now-a-days. Should our Father in heaven act as some of his professed children on earth do, universal and eternal damnation would be certain. This annual conference refuses to admit a man into its fellowship, whose life for many years has been that of a christian, and who lives in the confidence of all his numerous friends, for fear that it will be disgraced; and yet a similar body, under the same bishop, voted Rev. E. K. A. as pure as the morning dew-drop, when the public opinion had thrown upon his soul all the guilt of the fallen angels. Proh pudor!

So much for the Rev. Mr. R. and his connexion with the sympathies and charities of christians. Against those whose conduct I have condemned, I have no personal animosities to gratify; nor have I any particular feelings of extraordinary friendship for Mr. R., that would lead me to vindicate his conduct against truth and justice. I am his friend to the full extent of honourable and christian principles, but no farther. Were there any thing wrong in his conduct, I could see it as quick as any one, and our mutual rule has ever been, not to cover each other's faults. No one, I think, knows him better than I do, and unless his conduct appears to me very different from what it really is, he is certainly an injured man; and his wounds are the less excuseable, inasmuch as they were received in the house of his friends. My sole design is to state facts, which I mean to do faithfully, without reference to friend or foe. If I should err, it will be unintentional, and I shall be open to correction; if I am correct, I am not answerable for the inferences which may be drawn from my statements.

Another individual who has been brothered, and kissed, and smitten in the fifth rib, by the Joabs of modern christianity, I will introduce to your acquaintance under the title of THE AUTHOR.

But before I enter upon those events which belong more immediately to my subject, it is due to many pious and very excellent individuals to record of them, that the author ever found in them a spirit becoming the christian, and principles of oral and religious conduct which demonstrate, that, as there were seven thousand in ancient Israel, who had not bowed to the image of Baal, so there are many in modern Israel who are true to their profession. These he will delight to remember, and to cherish for them the warmest emotions of gratitude, while life remains. They are of that number who make actions the criterion of character, and who expect to be judged according to their works; and who claim not to be esteemed christians any farther then they live like christians.

As soon as the author was released from his long and dreary confinement, he united with the church with a view to the ministry, and to spending his life in publishing salvation to prisons. To this course he had been urged by many of his particular friends, and prompted by his most sanguine feelings; and to his mind, there was but one objection against it. This objection grew out of the popular interpretation of St. Paul's language, that a minister must have a good report of them that are without; which is generally understood to exclude from the desk all those who have, in any way, rendered themselves infamous, however sincerely they may have repented, and however thoroughly they may have reformed. On this he balanced for some time; but when he reflected that John Bunyan and the American Fuller, had been useful in the ministry, after having a very bad report of them who were without, he thought that he might be excused if he followed their steps. It occurred to him, also, that if Christ came into the world to save sinners—if the pious king of Israel came into the courts of his God, after washing his hands from the blood of murder, and bathing himself from the pollution of an adulterous bed—if the sacred orator of Mar's Hill came to the ministry from off a sea of martyr's blood, which his wicked hands had spilt—if the preacher on the day of Pentecost had been the Satan whom Jesus ordered to get behind him, and the profane denier of his accused Master—if, in fine, he who was with Jesus in Paradise, in the evening, had been conducted, in the morning, from a criminal's dungeon to the cross of an ignominious death; no good reason could be assigned why a man might not leave a prisoner's cell, and take that course to usefulness which providence seemed to point out.

The objection thus obviated, and a sense of duty prompting him, he cheerfully followed in the opening of providence; and in the usual time, after the customary examination, he was admitted into the ministerial fellowship of the Methodist denomination, and licensed to preach the gospel.

He now began to feel as if he was in the bosom of none but true and christian friends. In the deep blue firmament of his future hopes, no cloud was seen; and the earth around him was rich with the fragrance and verdure of promise. But "disappointment smiled at hope's career," and blight beneath, and clouds above, soon taught him that a "brother will utterly supplant, and a neighbor walk with slanders"—that "they will deceive and not speak the truth."