“I do not think a chaplain ought to be required to inspect and pass upon the incoming and outgoing mail of prisoners. In the first place his training and education unfit him to read between the lines of letters that need inspection, while the mental drudgery imposed upon him, if he carefully reads all outgoing and incoming letters in a prison of ordinary size, unfits him for the proper work of his office. Besides, the knowledge that he has read all their correspondence prejudices against him many prisoners and renders his efforts to help them vain.
“I doubt the wisdom of placing him in charge of the library in a large prison, save as a general adviser and aid to the prisoners in enabling them to select helpful books to read, and this work can be done during his visits to the prisoners in their cells and dormitories. This visitation is the most important work that he can do in the prison, and should on no account be omitted. The preaching service that he renders will be far more helpful and acceptable—as will also his Sunday-school instruction—if it grows out of and is tempered by his experience in cell visitation. A pastor who wishes to become helpfully acquainted with the inner life of his parishioners does not summon them one by one to his office for interviews and see them nowhere else. No more can the chaplain follow that plan and hope to succeed with his parishioners.
“Sometimes a warden deems it his duty to apply certain portions of the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians to his chaplain and require him to ‘bear all things, believe all things, hope all things and endure all things’; therefore it behooves the chaplain to be at all times as ‘wise as a serpent,’ and sometimes ‘as harmless as a dove’; but where the occasion arises (which fortunately is but seldom) for the chaplain to use the language of rebuke, it calls for the highest quality of courage, and the chaplain who then shirks or quails stamps himself as unfit for his high office.
“If the prophet Nathan, when he sought that interview with Israel’s king, had hesitatingly remarked that he had a very unpleasant matter to talk about, which might get into the newspapers and create a royal scandal, etc., the proud monarch would probably have kicked him downstairs. But the fate of a great nation depended upon his courage and when he said, ‘Thou art the man,’ his shaft of truth pierced the joints of the royal armor and brought the monarch to his knees. Comparing small things with great, even so may the fate of a public institution sometimes depend upon the fidelity to duty of one who esteems himself the least among all its officials, and when his word is backed by high courage and a consistent and blameless life, it may prove more potent for good than the utterances of wardens or commissioners or governors.
“From the warden’s point of view I beg to suggest that the clergyman who is called for the first time to the chaplaincy of a prison or reformatory should have the major part of his expectancy of life before rather than behind him. To make the chaplaincy a ‘snug harbor’ for the superannuated is unjust to the chaplain and to the institution. At no time in his life does a minister need to have his physical, mental and spiritual forces in fuller play than when he undertakes the chaplaincy of a prison or reformatory. He may grow old in the service, and his strength increase with his years because of his manner of life and the experience that faithful service has brought to him, but under ordinary circumstances the younger man has the best prospect of success.
“The question may arise, ‘Is anyone sufficient for these things?’ Not in his own strength, but ‘as thy day thy strength shall be’ is the promise held out to the sincere and faithful worker. And some of us can recall the names of men who have achieved splendid success in that particular line of prison work. Especially does the name of one come to me who took part in the organization of this Association, who served his Master and his fellow-men so successfully in the Michigan State Prison that when he was granted rapid transit ‘in the twinkling of an eye’ from the very corridor of the prison to the glory which was awaiting him, left a memory so fragrant and so well beloved that the name of Hecox is still an inspiration to hundreds of hearts, which, years ago, were turned by him into the paths of righteousness.”
Wednesday, November 18
MORNING SESSION
The morning session of Wednesday was given over to the Prison Physicians’ Association. Dr. Charles V. Carrington, of Richmond, read a paper on “Sterilization of Habitual Criminals.” As a believer in the theory of transmitted criminality, Dr. Carrington proved himself a strong advocate of sterilization as a method of preventing the multiplication of criminals.
“Prevention of crime is the motto of our juvenile courts, reformatories, probation officers and societies for the aid of the discharged convict.