In looking at the condition of our two Philadelphia prisons in respect to the provision for moral instruction, we are constrained to say, that it is not such either in efficiency or success, as we think desirable, attainable, and indeed absolutely necessary. Instead of bringing to view, however, what some of us might regard as grave defects in the present incumbents of the moral instructor’s office, we will suggest what we cannot but regard as indispensable requisites in such a functionary, and leave those who have the appointing and removing power to exercise it at their discretion.
I. A moral instructor should exemplify in the minutest particulars the moral principles he inculcates.—Any obvious neglect or evasion of duty, any appearance of hypocrisy or inconsistency, any sallies of ill-humour or fretfulness, any impatience of contradiction and unteachableness in his pupils, the most trivial breach of promise, or in a word, any departure from an upright, open and ingenuous deportment, will detract sensibly from his power to do good.
II. He should possess the faculty of adapting himself to the various characters and temperaments of convicts.—We do not mean by this that he should have any other faculty than such as shrewd men of common sense ordinarily possess, and on which they depend for much of their success in business. But it is by no means a rare thing to find a prison chaplain, or moral instructor peculiarly deficient in this point, and there is nothing which is likely to strike the class of people with whom he has to deal more quickly or more unhappily than a weakness of this kind, especially in one who is set to be their teacher and guide.
III. In such an office, the motive of benevolence and sympathy should be seen to have the predominance over the motive of self-interest.—The laborer in this department, as well as in all others, is worthy of his hire, but if those he would influence discover in the manner of doing his work, or in his general intercourse, that he acts the part of a mere functionary, having his beat like a police officer, and fulfilling an appointed task like a delver or ditcher, his usefulness will be greatly circumscribed. And this suggests
IV. A fourth quality in a chaplain or moral instructor, viz.: a warm, glowing, personal, enthusiastic sympathy with the population of the prison.—He is a physician among a company of diseased and dying patients. They are bidden to look to him for direction and to confide in his prescriptions, (though not in his power or skill,) for a cure of their maladies. If he has felt in his own person the presence of the same disease, (though perhaps in a less offensive and aggravated form,) and has known the value of a remedy, he will not look with indifference on their symptoms, nor hear unmoved their sighs and groans. He will have a tear of sympathy for the suffering; a helping hand for the weak and trembling, and will deal honestly but gently with the impatient and froward. They are guilty, and is he without sin? They are suffering the penalty of a wholesome law, and what but an unseen hand has restrained him from violating it? While therefore, he sets before them, honestly and faithfully, the evil of their ways, he will give power and persuasiveness to his words by the tender and sympathizing tones in which they are uttered. While he points them to a merciful and faithful high priest that has past into the heavens, and ever lives to make intercession for guilty, penitent men, he shows that, like that same high priest, he is touched with the feeling of their infirmities and sympathizes in their bondage.
V. A chaplain or moral instructor should have good judgment in the selection of subjects of conversation and instruction, and in his methods of illustration.—It is not unfrequently the case, that the most harsh and repulsive views of moral and religious truth are presented to those whose minds are already filled with prejudice and hostility, as if it were needful (as it is said to be in some bodily diseases) to make them worse before attempting to make them better. A man of ferocious temper is the last person to tame a wild beast; nor will a severe and offensive presentation of the most precious truth be likely to win an already alienated mind. To charge home their guilt on convicts, and make them feel that they have as good as they deserve, even if their situation were much worse than it is, will never pave the way for moral influences.
It requires good judgment to select topics for the moral and religious instruction of convicts, and much skill and tact to illustrate them. A false position on a moral subject will be quite as likely to strike a congregation of rogues as a congregation of honest men; and it is wonderful how the faith of a disciple is weakened by a single material error in a teacher. The moral instructor of prisoners, having nothing to do with points of polemic theology or subtle casuistry, has a plain and easy path if he is only willing to keep it. The elementary truths of religion and morality, which lie within the comprehension alike of a child and of an angel, and which are recognized by all sober-minded men as the basis and stamina of all true moral reformation, are to be explained and enforced, and their influence in promoting happiness, respectability and prosperity in this life and in preparing us for the future, is to be clearly exhibited.
In illustrating these truths, much depends on a seasonable reference to those things within the knowledge or present consciousness of the convicts. Incidents of daily observation—the familiar phenomena of nature, their own history in its social and moral relations, (with which the teacher is supposed to have made himself acquainted) will furnish topics appropriate in character and abundant in variety.
VI. It is very important that a moral instructor should possess the faculty of casual teaching.—It is an easy thing to occupy ten or fifteen minutes in talking with a convict, but if he would leave something behind him for the man to ponder and reflect on when the cell-door closes again, the visitor or instructor must weigh well what he says, and seize the opportunity to drop a casual word of admonition, or encouragement, or intimidation, as the condition and habits of each individual may warrant.
These casual suggestions often have far more weight than a studied sermon, or an elaborate and earnest exhortation. The methods of exerting an influence over others, and especially over thoughtless and perverse persons, would be much more appropriate and effective were they governed less by the teacher’s own state of mind, and more by the state of the mind which he wishes to change. Moral instructors of all grades are oftentimes in the dark respecting the mental condition and habits of their catechumens; and prison chaplains or instructors not unfrequently err in occupying so much of their interviews in expostulation, reproof and entreaty, as to leave no proper opportunity to hear, much less to draw out, an expression of the convict’s own feelings. In such a case their labors, however well meant, lose much of their value, and are sometimes worse than wasted.