SHE was one whom many dreaded, and from whom all shrank. She had put in her twice seven years of penal servitude, and it was pretty well known that she had deserved each sentence. An “old jail bird,” some called her; no one would trust her, but yet she trusted her neighbors.
She kept a little shop, down a few steps, in a poor street in a northern city; and when a woman was badly off she could get bread there, and the half-starved children of the neighborhood often got an apple or a broken biscuit, and always a kind word, when they dared to go to her shop.
Girls, who had been in prison, found a friendship worth seeking in the ex-convict when their time was out; but some of the neighbors wondered if it were real kindness that the woman showed to them, or if she were still connected with thieves.
One night a man was murdered, and a message had to be carried to the wife of the imprisoned murderer. She was one of the first to offer to go, for the poor woman was weakly just then, and all had grave fears for her. When the trial came on, and the murderer was condemned, this outcast was there to comfort the unhappy wife. She nursed the woman’s babe for three months, and when it died, her tears fell thick and fast, and she was chief mourner at the funeral.
“Surely, wretched and outcast as she is, this woman is not to be dreaded, and feared, and shrunk from?” so thought a Christian, one night, as she passed the old convict’s door, on her way to a preaching. The good Lord put it into her heart to knock, and ask if she would not go with her to the service. The request was doubtless unexpected, but not unwelcome, for the old convict said, “Yes, I’ll go,” and she went, holding the arm and guiding the almost blind old woman who had invited her.
When they reached the room, where the service was held, they were late, and a hymn was being sung―
“We know there’s a bright and a glorious home,
Away in the heavens high,
Where all the redeemed shall with Jesus dwell―
But will you be there and I?”
Years and years had passed since the old convict had given up all thoughts of ever being in the glorious home; it was no place for such as she had been. Jail birds, she fancied, could expect nothing but another long imprisonment― how long she knew not. When she had heard her first sentence, she tad swooned away―her second sentence had made her shriek with horror―and sometimes he fear of hearing a sentence to everlasting punishment made her blood run cold. But what could she do now? her life had been lived, and such a life! She would not wish her greatest enemy to live through what she had experienced!
The chorus of the hymn, with its oft repeated question, “Will you be there?” got a firm hold of the unmusical ear, and the question reached a heart long dead to such thoughts.
A gospel address followed, and the oh convict went home with one thought filling her heart— the great possibility of even such an one as she was being among Christ’s redeemed, and sharing that home in glory. She knew all avoided and hated her; but now, could it be possible that God loves her―that Jesus had died for her?
Days and nights of mingled hopes and fears followed. She could not tell anyone what was passing in her mind: she hesitated to tell to anyone what her life had been. To whom could she go―she who had never found a friend on earth to sympathize with her? She felt increasingly that she was shut up to God, but she dared not approach Him. The sense of her guilt increased, as she thought of His holiness and righteousness; glimpses of His love came now and they as she remembered the meeting, and as she thought on the cross of Christ.
At last her burden became too heavy, and, with a broken heart, she threw herself, with all her sin at the feet of the Lord Jesus, to find, to her surprise, that He was both able and willing to save and bless her.
Full of joy and thankfulness, she felt she could not keep silent: she had found life and peace in Jesus, and tell it to someone she must. She again sought the room, where she had first heard of the love of Christ, and, taking the hands of the preacher, she told out what the Lord had done for her, and, referring to herself and her past life, she said “He took me from a fearful pit.”
Years have passed, and in the good, gentle old Christian, ready for any act of kindness and love, one has almost ceased to see, even for a moment, the old convict; nor in the companion who sits beside her, saved mainly by her instrumentality, does one see the murderer’s wife; for
“From every station of life they come,
To raise the anthem high,
Of ‘Worthy the Lamb that once was slain!’
But will you be there and I?”
J. S.