BY COLEMAN E. BISHOP.

Extremes of life meet in a great city. “Man, the pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,” here swings between the utmost extremes of squalor and splendor, misery and enjoyment, sin and virtue. That conflict between good and evil—old as the human soul, its arena—is waged nowhere as fiercely as here, where life is intense and assailable souls are legion. You have to go but a little below the surface of city life to find a worse than Dante’s “Inferno;” and if that were the whole story, if there were no compensating charities, one would feel it a mercy to call down on the city the desolation, and the peace of Sodom.

But, thank God! there are those redeeming, reforming influences to give one new hope for civilization, new faith in humanity, or new faith in divine grace. Its missions and charities are the sunny side of New York. There are over one hundred and thirty established missions in the city, with a million and a half of dollars permanently invested, beside the other millions required to support them; and the eleemosynary and relief institutions of New York outshine the charities of all other cities, proportioned to numbers. Some liberal, devout souls seem to be looking after every conceivable phase of suffering and sin, and if the devil seems generally to be getting the advantage, let us believe that it is because his antagonists are not more numerous, rather than because he is any smarter or attends more strictly to business. Indeed, the ingenuity of some of the foes of sin, might put to confusion the proverbial originality of the great adversary. Of these exceptional efforts, perhaps there is none more unique than the work of the late Jerry McAuley, nor one that has wrought so great results with so little human aid; nor one to which the Christian believer can point as a testimony of divine agency with greater confidence.

Yet, a thoughtful study of the man and his work will reveal the rationale of it, and help us to understand why it took hold of a certain class in the way it did; that is, why he proved so exact a means to that exact end. The characteristics and training that made Jerry McAuley a successful criminal made him, when his nature and purpose had been transformed, a successful missionary. The son of a counterfeiter, he was educated in the worst streets and dens, graduated a tippler and petty thief in his boyhood, and took his degrees of gambler, drunkard, burglar and wharf rat; and at the age of nineteen was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Short and inglorious career of sin! To be followed by a long and glorious one of righteousness, and crowned at last with a triumphant death in faith! Here for seven years he hardened under perfunctory gospel ministrations and prison discipline, until at the right time Orville Gardner, known as “Awful Gardner, the Reformed Prize-fighter,” found Jerry and led him to that change which he always called his “transformation.” He was pardoned out, only to meet the killing, chilling reception that society gives to one who has passed the bars. Now followed seven years of struggles for an honest life. Only his soul and its Maker know what these were. At one time he relapsed into his old ways, but he was sought and reclaimed by agents of the Howard (“Five Points”) Mission. Strange, is it not, that good people are so much more alert to recall the fallen than to aid the struggling and keep the rescued secure? Why is it that interest in the unfortunate is deferred till interest seems useless?

Jerry now conceived the plan of a mission to people of his own old life, men and women tempted in all points like unto himself. He applied for advice and help to one or two clergymen and some wealthy church members, only to meet with mortifying coldness or refusal. We can readily understand this caution, considering McAuley’s antecedents and qualifications. He could hardly read and write his own name. Churches are so fiercely criticised that they have to be very chary about espousing unpromising enterprises. It was a natural caution if not a Christian charity; worldly if not spiritual wisdom. Besides, are there not still things that He hides from the wise and prudent, and reveals unto babes? At length, McAuley found men able and willing to help, and with their aid he opened his Water Street Mission, in 1872. This situation is one of the worst in the lower part of the city, in the “Bloody Eighth Ward,” the haunt of river thieves, sailors and abandoned women of the lowest degree. It was a “rum start,” indeed, to the denizens of Water Street when one of their leaders was graduated from prison to prayer meeting; and by scores they “came to scoff, and remained to pray.” This mission was a success from the start, and to-day remains in full tide of beneficent operation.

Two years ago Jerry was able to carry out his long-entertained desire to “do something for up-town sinners” by the establishment of the “Cremorne Mission.” It was a more daring undertaking because it had to do with more respectable sinners. He said it was a mistake to speak of those in the gutter as “hard cases;” their pride and reliance are gone, and they are not likely to be affronted or resistant when told they need a Savior; the prosperous and successful are the hard hearted; as you ascend the scale in means, intelligence and pretension, the harder the sinner becomes.

On West Thirty-Second Street, just off Third Avenue, was the infamous Cremorne Gardens, one of the most dangerous because not one of the lowest resorts of abandoned men and women. In this vicinity are many houses of ill repute of the higher rank; gamblers and sporting men have their “runways” in that part of the city. Jerry “carried the war into Africa” by leasing a building next the “Cremorne Garden,” so that in all respects the sad satire of DeFoe was and is reversed,

The passenger by the elevated railroad, or one of the several street car lines that converge at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, may see any evening a brilliant prismatic sign of “Cremorne Garden,” and seemingly just above it this more brilliant legend:

Jerry McAuley’s Cremorne Mission.

He will reach the Mission first, as he approaches this strange conjunction of stars; Jerry said he wanted the Lord to have the first chance at a sinner when he could.

The doors are open night and day, and some one is always there to welcome the visitor. A “protracted meeting” is held here all the year, and all the years, around. Going in, you stand in a long, narrow hall, with high ceilings modestly decorated; an aisle down the middle flanked by rows of oaken settees terminates at a low platform on which are chairs, a cheap desk, and a grand piano. The place seats five or six hundred. The hall is brilliant with electric lights, and the walls are illustrious with such Scripture quotations as, in the words of one of the converts, have been found most apt to “fetch ’em”—i. e., sinners. By the platform are conspicuous notices that speeches are limited to one minute each, a rule that is easily enforced in the case of the converts, because they have only facts to tell, and do not seem to be in love with that sweetest music on earth, the sound of their own voices. “One minute each,” Jerry would say: “Don’t be too long; cut off both ends and give us the middle; you need not get mad, as some people have done, if I ring this bell.” “All right,” replied one easy speaker; “If I get long-winded pull me down by my coat tails;” whereat all laughed heartily, as they frequently do.

Jerry McAuley’s method, first and last, was unique, but simple and very effective. Testimonies are the great reliance. They teach salvation by object lessons, prove the truth of conversion by concrete examples. There is no argument, no exhortation, no didactics, no theological disquisition. What need of these in the presence of these living examples? A man stands up and says: “For twenty years I was a common drunkard and thief. Five years ago I found Christ here. I have not touched a drop nor stolen a thing since.” McAuley was won by proof. He said: “It was a testimony that brought me. I was ‘sent up’ for fifteen years and six months; I listened to preaching there for over seven years, but I was still unmoved. Then a man came along who gave his experience. He had been a wicked man. That man told just my history; but he was saved, and since there was hope for a desperate man like him, I knew there was hope for me. And there was! Now you have heard the biggest debtor to grace that is in the room, let the next heaviest debtor follow me.” Others were won by the undeniable transformation of Jerry. These things were irresistible. Men describe the effect on themselves of these living witnesses:

These effects are driven home and clinched by direct personal efforts with penitents, by attentions that follow them to their homes or shops, or into evil haunts, by relief and creature comforts—in a word, by an interest vigilant, ceaseless, and tender as divine love, because inspired by it.

As the method is peculiar, the atmosphere of the meeting is. One familiar with ordinary devotional meetings, and, more, with revival efforts, can not fail to notice here the contrast. Speaking is uniformly in an ordinary tone, and in a conversational, matter-of-fact manner—an effect that is heightened by the use of phrases common in the resorts where some of the converts learned their vernacular. And prayer is specially subdued and low toned—the more impressive and reverential on account of it.

Then, one feels the momentum of the exercises and the tone of cheerfulness and joy that prevail. There is none of that exhortation to “improve the precious time;” none of that dismal bewailing of spiritual barrenness and besetting doubts, fears and temptations, which sometimes make devotional exercises mechanical and dreary, and furnish stumbling-blocks to young believers. These converts do not dwell much on their enjoyment of religion; albeit, they do one and all give thanks without ceasing for their deliverance. One notes, too, the absence of cant, of quotations and set phrases; everything is original. There is little exhortation of others. In short, like Bartimeas, they know “Whereas I was blind, now I see;” and unlike the blind man, they know who worked the miracle.

It was the founder and leader of the two missions who gave all this tone to their services. He was of a medium height and slender, with a heavy, wiry moustache, keen eyes, a nervous temperament, energetic, quick-witted, sympathetic; one readily caught good feeling and confraternity from his presence. He would flash out at a hymn, a text, or a testimony, with a bit of experience. Before two sentences had passed his lips he probably would leap down from his place on the platform, saying, humorously: “I can’t talk up on that stage,” and go down the aisle as if to hold pleasant converse with his audience. It was a strange melange of earnestness, experience, humility and wit, with not the least attempt at eloquence, and apparently no study of effects. He describes one case of conversion:

The missions are supported entirely by voluntary contributions left in the boxes by the door. Sometimes these run low. One night Jerry asked all who were glad to be there to hold up their hands. All hands up. “Now,” said he, “when you take your hands down put them way down—down into your pockets, and fetch something out to put in the boxes by the door.” He said, that to run a mission successfully required “grace, grit and greenbacks.” I fancy considerable of his influence was due to his knowledge of the secret hearts, the personal experiences of his auditors; he was like a priest at confessional, when out of meeting. There are no verbatim reports of his talks extant, and if there were they would give the reader no proper idea of the man, because the grotesqueness of his language would probably be the most striking feature of them. He must have been heard to be understood, and even then I think he could not have been understood save by those whose experience and modes of life gave them the touchstone.

Sister Maggie is a typical convert. At one of the Cremorne missions a Sunday-school worker from the East Side told of his class of fifteen street boys and girls. “I asked them,” he said, “how many of them drank beer, and all promptly put up their hands. I asked how many thought it a bad practice, and only four or five responded. I then told them of the evils that drink led to, and cited them numerous examples within their knowledge, and finally asked how many of them would resolve never to drink any more beer. About half of them kept their hands down, and in a way that showed they meant business.”

This discouraging incident brought to her feet, on the platform, a tall, thick-set, strong-featured woman. She spoke with a strident, energetic voice, a Bowery accent, and a manner to which all thought of shrinking or embarrassment was a stranger. It was Sister Maggie. She said, as nearly as I recall the words: “This teaching children beer-drinking is the beginning of all the deviltry. I was passing a dive yesterday and I saw a little kid come out with a pail of beer that she had been sent for, and no sooner was she outside the door than the pail went to her head. That’s the way I used to do, and learned to drink and steal at the same time. But God can help us to reclaim even beings so badly educated. He helped me, and there can’t be a worse case on the East Side. There is not a dive over there that I haven’t been drunk in. Brother S. knows how often I have drank with him at old C.’s dead-house (rum-shop). Sixteen years ago I was a leper, a confirmed sot. If you had seen me you would not have believed that I could have been saved. Christians said I was too far gone; they said there was not enough woman left in me to be saved. I had had the jim-jams twicet. [Laughter.] The first time I had ’em I thought my back hair was full of mice—oh, that was awful! [More laughter.] I was just getting over the tremens when I first come in here. I was a walking rag-shop, and if you’d a seen me you’d give me plenty of room on the walk. I staggered in and sat down on the very backest seat. Now they let me sit up here on the platform. What d’ye think of that? God helped me, and he has helped me now for sixteen years, and I am going through. I am happy. I have friends and good clothes, and more than all, I have a good home, and that is what I never knew before.”

At the mention of the word “home,” all the woman’s instinct asserted itself, and for the first time her voice softened, and her manner melted; she sobbed, and sat down.

I can give no complete idea of the effect of this, because the reader can know nothing of the surroundings, the antecedents of the speaker and of many of her listeners, and the keen rapport that ties them together. These worshipers are a class and an organization by themselves; they have no church affiliations, and their worship is sui generis; many of them were outcasts of society in former years, they stand alone since their reformation, and they are drawn close together in their isolation. True, there are many among them who were always respectable members of society; many who since their conversion here have joined churches; there are richly dressed and cultured-looking people scattered in these audiences; but the fact remains that the genius and distinctive personnel of the meetings are of the order of which Jerry McAuley and “Sister Maggie” and their ministrations are representatives.

I know of no religious exercises better calculated to inspire the true religious feelings of faith, charity, humility, gratitude, and rejoicing—the distinguishing marks of the original Christian following. But they differ from the noisy demonstrations which sometimes are taken for “primitive Christianity,” as they do from the cold and conventional worship which advertises itself in brownstone structures and double-barred mahogany pews. If one wants to get a breath of vigorous faith and wholesome humility, he should attend the Sunday evening services at one of the McAuley Missions.

Jerry McAuley died suddenly, but not unexpectedly, last September. His funeral, held at the great Broadway Tabernacle, was one of the largest ever seen in this city, and was attended by hundreds of abandoned characters who had been reclaimed through his instrumentality, and who were probably never inside of a church before, and may never be again. Women with painted faces, but with tears in their eyes and bits of crape fastened at their throats or arms, stood with downcast heads beside other women who, under other circumstances, would have shunned them. Thus did all classes testify to the power of simple faith and devotion in a poor, uncultured outcast. Over the platform in his chapels are his last, characteristic words:

“The workman dies, but the work goes on.” There is no calculating the power and extent of the influences this humble worker has set in motion. Beside the hundreds of living examples of his labor here, the seed has scattered to the four winds of heaven, and sprung up in various forms to bless the world—in other cities and other lands. The Missions publish Jerry McAuley’s Newspaper, which, extensively circulated, especially in prisons and “the slums” of cities, carries the glad tidings of the testimonies to do a silent and unknown work. An affecting feature of the private work of these converts is their efforts to hunt out and reclaim missing boys and girls. Letters are received from agonized parents, from distant points as well as the city, imploring the help of missionaries to find these estrays; and their efforts are often successful.

I close with one example of this radiating, ramifying influence: Michael Dunn was an English thief by inheritance, for his parents were thieves, and as he expresses it, “he had thieving on the brain.” He had spent the greater part of thirty-five years in different prisons, and continued the same life after coming to this country. One evening an unconverted man sent him into the McAuley Mission as a joke, but it proved to Dunn a blessing, for he found a Savior, and the desire for stealing was all cast out. He was moved to undertake that most important work, the provision of a home for refuge and work for his brother ex-convicts. After many trials and difficulties he finally established the Home of Industry, No. 40 Houston Street, New York, where many lost men who were a terror to society, have been made honest Christian citizens, and are working to save others. Nor did the work stop here. In the autumn of 1883, Dunn was called to San Francisco, California, to open a similar Home in that city, where his labors are as successful as they were in New York.