Reform for Individual and State

The Boston Industrial Temporary Home—An answer to prayer—Wendell Phillips and the drunkard— Crossett of North China—Advocacy of prohibition— Cooperation with Joseph Cook in reform work—The Prohibition party— Woman's cause HOW to discriminate between the worthy and the unworthy — between the man who is trying and the man who is lying — is the eternal crux in the problem of charity. The Moody meetings had brought to Dr. Gordon's attention, as never before, the possibilities, the encouragements, and the dangers inhering in work among drunkards. The futility of preaching to those whose stomachs are faint and empty became speedily evident. The need, too, of a temporary refuge for converted men, who without such a place would be likely to drift back into old haunts, forced itself on him. The Industrial Temporary Home, an institution very like the Salvation Army " shelters " of a later day, was started, therefore, for the immediate relief of those out of work, and as a means of determining the value and reality of professions made by men of this class. The practical importance of the enterprise was clear from the first. From the first, too, its peculiar difficulties were apparent. Embarrassing financial problems met the committee in charge at every turn. The various superintendents and matrons, who succeeded one another with ominous rapidity, proved collectively incompetent. Trustees became discouraged, resignation followed resignation, financial back-

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ing was withdrawn; the craft was clearly water-logged and sinking.

Responsibility was shifted, finally, entirely upon Dr. Gordon's shoulders. For a term of years he carried almost alone the heavy weight of a work the only assured fruit of which was the annually recurring deficit. Burdened with this great care, he left the city one summer to take a brief vacation in

the hill-country. A sense of deep disheartenment pressed

heavily upon him. An undertaking promising, useful, necessary, was trembling on the edge of disruption. There was no human help in sight. He was driven, therefore, into the arms of God. Every morning during the whole summer he withdrew to a quiet place in the woods, a spot still, sun-dappled, and there laid before the Lord the discouragements and the needs of the work. Summer passed, and in early September he was back again in the city. Seated in his study a few days after his arrival, he was handed a note in unfamiliar writing, requesting an immediate interview. Replying to the summons and hunting up the address, he soon found himself in the chamber of an old man, in a quarter of the city long deserted by residents and given over now to the roar of traffic. The man was an entire stranger, a relic of a rapidly passing generation, inordinately fond of his properties, as was afterward learned. There he sat, dry, wizened, in skullcap, surrounded by a clutter of dust-covered documents and papers, a bottle of brandy at his left hand. His intentions were soon made known. He had learned during the summer of the Industrial Home, and had become convinced of the reasonableness and expediency of its method. He wished, therefore, to make provision for it in his will, and to get suggestions from Gordon looking toward the enlargement of the work and the placing of it upon a secure basis.

This day's interview was the first in a series of events which resulted in the complete solution of this problem of many

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weary years. The bequest when paid amounted to over

twenty thousand dollars. A strong cabinet was formed for

the more efficient care of the institution, composed of men able, generous, reliable— men who have stood by to the present day. As a result of further earnest prayer, a superintendent of exceptional ability and consecration, a converted horse-jockey, was brought unexpectedly to Dr. Gordon's notice, one who for many years has not only conducted the

Home with superior executive skill, but has also helped to

found homes of a like character in many of our Northern and Western cities. In a short time the institution was on a paying basis. At present nearly thirty-five thousand lodgings are provided annually, and about fifty thousand meals. Best of all, a successful rescue work is being carried on which has brought hundreds from the gutter into the church.

" It was the greatest lesson in faith I have ever had," said Gordon once, in recounting the experience, " From that day to this I have prayed with the greatest assurance of God's intervention in practical matters." From that day to his death, too, he labored for the Home, the last time that he was out before his final sickness being at its annual committee-meeting. His associates declared in resolutions after his death

" He was, indeed, the central figure [in the work], being in a sense its founder, and always its devoted friend, giving to it unceasingly his time, his thought, his effort, and his prayers.... His devotion to the work of saving men was always prominent and supreme. In this respect we gladly concede that in service and sacrifice he has outstripped us all."

The following letter gives us an intimation of his constant interest in the Home

"Dear Brother Roberts: I have only now found time to reply to your letter. I appreciate more and more your

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work. It is the work for reaching men. I am sure there is no occasion for you to be disturbed in any way. So far as I can judge, it is going on well and satisfactorily. It requires much patience at your end of the line, and it requires much at this end to keep up with the door-bell, and to hear all the calls for help— a perfect stream this morning, giving us hardly a half-hour's rest. But we must all keep the two bears well fed and under constant control, namely, 'bear and forbear.' Both of these are liable to get out of their cages, and nowhere is their good nature more taxed than at your Home and my home. May the God of peace keep our hearts and minds in perfect peace.

"Yours in Christ,

"A. J. Gordon."

In the early days of struggle and isolation, Gordon had been immensely encouraged by the sympathy which the first citizen of the commonwealth, Wendell Phillips, constantly showed to him in this undertaking. In some reminiscences of the great agitator, published shortly after his departure, he refers to this

" In temperance work I saw more of Wendell Phillips's heart than anywhere else. He struck hard blows against the drink iniquity. But here he was not merely an iconoclast, bringing down his hammer upon license laws, which, next to fugitive-slave laws, he hated most intensely; he was a healer as well as a smiter. He used to come into the Home for reforming inebriates, which we started at the time of the Moody and Sankey meetings, to inquire after the enterprise and give it his encouragement. He sometimes brought in poor, brokendown drunkards, to ask the help of our Christian workers on their behalf. His indignation against the rumseller, and the laws that sustained him, was matched only by his tender compassion toward the wretched victims of strong drink.

no ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON

Once, with one of our Christian women, the question came up as to the possibility of reclaiming the confirmed drunkard, when she, with all the ardor of her conviction, declared that there was certainly one way, viz., by the grace of God brought to bear in a renewed heart. And I cannot describe the sympathetic tenderness with which he assented to the remark, nor the spirit of humble self-distrust with which he alluded, in a single sentence, to his own experience."

Others would occasionally stray into the Home besides

outcasts. Some ten years ago a minute was forwarded to the State Department from the American consul in Shanghai, describing the life of a Mr. Crossett, an independent missionary in China, who worked throughout the province of Shantung, preaching, visiting prisons, nursing the sick, burying the dead. He was much of an ascetic, living chiefly on rice, millet, and water. The Chinese revered him, calling him the

Christian Buddha, and freely gave him food and lodging. A

httle notice of him was published in the " Watchword " at the time of his death:

" We were honored to know the man well. In the Industrial Home in Boston of which we are president— an institution to lodge and feed the homeless and stranger requiring work, with the saw and ax as compensation—we first found him. Being in the city as a stranger, he preferred to lodge in this place, working for his board, to asking hospitality. An educated man of keen, original mind, men called him very eccentric. He was so since he made Christ his center, and hence was thrown out of center with the customs and traditions of the world.

" Eccentricity is a relative term. The orthodoxy of one age often becomes the heterodoxy of another. The faith of primitive Christianity is at some points scouted as the fanaticism of latter-day Christianity. The first sign of alleged insanity which Mr. Crossett exhibited was in his laying hands

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on the sick for their recovery. He learned it of his Chinese converts, they having learned it from the New Testament.

He at first forbade them, but they challenged him by the

Word of God whether they were not enjoined to do so. He had to concede it; then he practised it, and was set down as

touched with insanity.... We had much sweet converse

and prayer with him. May he rest in peace."

It is a rare thing indeed for one who has wrought any length of time among the poor, and for the rescue of drunkards, to fail to develop convictions upon the duty of the State in regard to the saloon. Monumental insane asylums, everwidening potter's fields, and the vast, unending streams of miserable poverty— which, as investigators one and all, from Charles Booth to the humblest charity visitor, agree, flow from the doors of this institution as from a chief source quicken indignation and stimulate belief in a "root-and branch " policy. Gordon was no exception to this experience. " He was broad enough, " wrote Dr. O. P. Gifford of him, " to look beyond the individual to the State. Some men make bricks; others make buildings. Some can never see beyond the unit; others can think of the sum. Dr. Gordon tried to help men who were in need, but he also strove for the health of the State. He was always ready to cast his vote and to raise his voice for prohibition. The Good Samaritan in the parable received commendation because he helped the man who had fallen among thieves. Dr. Gordon deserves greater commendation; for, while he ministered to the unfortunate through the Home, he hindered the robber through the State. He was not foolish enough to spend his money on bandages and oil, paying part of the bills, meanwhile, by Hcensing the brigands. He combined sympathy for the wronged with sense for the thief. The Pharisees might use the price of Christ to buy a potter's field; but Dr. Gordon had no patience with men who would sell humanity

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and compromise with evil by taking money wherewith to buy burying-grounds. His great patience came nearest to exhaustion when he saw politicians putting the State in pawn for license fees, and professing Christians casting votes to strengthen the politicians, and sharing the spoils. ... In pulpit and platform he never flinched in his advocacy of total abstinence for the individual and prohibition for the State. Like the pillar of Israel's wanderings, he was light for those who sought liberty, but lightning for the Egyptians who followed to enslave."

No consideration of expediency ever affected him. The opportunism of the so-called high-license system he opposed on grounds of conscience with utmost vigor. " ' The moral law,' " he used to say, quoting Vinet, " ' is an arithmetic in which there are only even numbers, no fractions. In other words, there are no half-duties in God's requirements.' If we cannot enforce our view we can at least witness against any other which compromises with this disreputable iniquity. There is a power in steady, year-after-year protest which will make itself felt in the long run."

One can hardly deny now that his moral intuitions have been, in the light of the continuous and complete failure of half-measures, entirely 'justified. The saloon, with its Gargantua appetite, goes on swallowing everything we prize virtue, honor, wealth, integrity, political purity, the sanctities of the home. "The new barbarism," as they fitly call it in France, yearly extends its sway. Only one policy has in any degree driven it back— the policy of prohibitive extinction.

Every one familiar with the hfe of Boston knows how difficult it is for moral reform to get a foothold on its congealed and slippery respectability. The traditions of reform are upheld by ostracized men. Phillips in the last generation and Joseph Cook in our day have been social pariahs for the truth's sake, cast out in the one case by the Cotton Whigs,

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and in the other by a dull, rich, respectable bourgeoisie. "This Joseph," remarked Gordon once, referring to Mr. Cook, "like that other Joseph, whose branches ran over the wall, has been sorely shot at by the archers. But we rejoice that, like that same Joseph, his bow to-day abides in strength." Side by side, the two wrought, supporting not what was politic, but what was right. It is interesting to think of the old veteran of antislavery giving them his blessing as he himself left the stage.

" There is a grand movement in the way of temperance on foot," said Gordon one day, in a little speech at the Monday lectureship, " led by what Wendell Phillips used to call ' the Beacon Street reformers.' He sat yonder one morning, almost the last time I ever saw him, and after he heard what was said here, remarked to me as he went out, ' Well, I might as well retire; the temperance cause is in good hands; I think we can safely leave it there.' ... A certain class of reformers have a theory that the way to destroy low dives is by high license. These men say, ' Why cannot we unite, bring together all the temperance forces— the license men and the Prohibitionists, the high-license men and the low-license men?

Why cannot we all unite, and present a solid front?' Why

not? Because two men cannot pull in the same direction when one has his face toward the north and the other has his face toward the south. There is just the difference between license and prohibition. They pull in opposite directions, and there is no use to try to compromise or bridge over the difficulty. I remember that Frances Power Cobbe tells us that she heard two Irishmen talking in London, and that one of them said to a stranger, ' Can you tell me how far it is to Hampstead Heath? ' ' Ten miles,' was the reply. He turned to his friend and said, ' That makes it five miles apiece; we

can easily do that.' How far is it to the abolition of the

liquor traffic? The whole length of prohibition. We must go the whole distance, every one of us. It is no use to divide it up between high license and low license. We have got to go the whole way."

At every opportunity he bore testimony against the unrighteous traffic. "There is no matter nearer my heart," he wrote to a Kansas judge whom he was urging to take charge of certain resolutions on the subject at the annual denominational gathering, " than the prohibition of the liquor traffic. If you will come to Chicago and take the stroke-oar, I will pull behind you to the best of my ability." And at another meeting of the same character in Boston, when a humble brother with a sound conscience introduced out of due course a resolution protesting against the exportation of Medford rum to West Africa and was duly suppressed by the scrupulous parliamentarian in the chair, Gordon started to his feet with the exclamation, " Order or no order, we cannot as Christians afford to table that resolution!" The protest was carried with a cheer.

His political connections during the last decade of his life were determined by his convictions on this point. With Arnold, he had " an intense abhorrence of all party ties save that one tie which binds a man to the party of Christ against wickedness." Moral issues with him transcended all others. The defeat or victory of either of the dominant " realm-ruining parties " was, he felt, a matter of comparative unimportance. When the Prohibition party, therefore, was organized in 1884, he joined himself to it, assisted in the establishment of its organ, the New York " Voice," cont^"juted to its campaign funds, and spoke repeatedly at its public meetings. It was a period of heated controversy. The defection of a large contingent of voters from the Republican party resulted in its defeat for the first time in a quarter-century. Much petty persecution of Prohibitionists followed. Ministers who had not been cajoled by the " catnip-tea resolutions " of the

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politicians were crowded out of their churches. The leaders in the secession were hung or burned in effigy. Warmth of

opinion was engendered between friends who disagreed. We

get a suggestion of this in the following letter

" I was sorry after you left that I had my discussion on the issues of the day. It is a time of deep agitation, and there are great issues at stake. It will not be always easy to keep cordial feelings between friends who differ. I sympathize with your tender regard for the old party. As long as I read only the Boston 'Journal' I felt very much the same. But I have been reading widely since I came home and examining carefully, and I have perfect rest and peace in the position which I have taken. I believe that in the providence of God the time has come for the readjustment of parties. That readjustment may come through the setting aside of some things that are dear to us, but I pray God it may come.

" I have not the slightest desire to change you, for I know you are as set as I am in what you believe. But I want you to read all sides, that you may see your pastor is not utterly unreasonable and erratic. So will you kindly read some things which I may send you from time to time? You will find them interesting.

"To-day is the anniversary of our marriage. Wendell Phillips told me that had it not been for his wife, he might not have been an antislavery man. I think my wife's clear, strong convictions, coupled with her self-denying work for the wretched victims of drink, have done not a little to confirm my convictions.

" Yours cordially,

"A. J. Gordon."

Gordon's opinions on questions of moral and social reform always rang true like a bell without flaw, on whatever side

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they were struck. The extinction of the saloon, the relief of the unemployed, unrestrained freedom of speech, the emancipation of women, the protection of Chinese immigrants, the defense of the secular, State-controlled schools against ultramontanism— for all these things he spoke as only a man of

positive religious convictions can. He was, as he said of

another, a citizen "with iron in his blood and blood in his cheek, who could strike vigorously for the right and blush visibly for the wrong." ^* Scores of times did he confront legislative committees in the green room of the State capitol or in the chambers of the city council to plead for some just law or to protest against some iniquitous measure. His championship of woman's cause was constant and chivalric. Those who speak of

" Women sobbing out of sight Because men make the laws,"

run the risk, perhaps, of seeming strained in their opinions and even fanatical to people with quiet homes and a protected family life. It is the experiences in bare garrets, the pastoral contacts with unobserved though none the less sadly existent suffering among women, which teach wisdom on this point. That women, therefore, might have opportunity not merely to correct the laws which men make, but to pass others which they have not made and seem not to care to make— laws for the protection of girlhood, for the relief of women wageearners, for the defense of woman's kingdom, the home, against our licensed Kurds, the saloon-keepers— he advocated their complete enfranchisement and their entrance into every political and social privilege enjoyed by man.

* Memorial address, Hon. Richard Fletcher, Supreme Court of Massachusetts.