Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 249, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1913 — Needs of “First Offender.” [ARTICLE]

Needs of “First Offender.”

I have seen very many first offenders and talked to them before they got into the hands of pleaders and others, and my experience tells me that a man who has committed his first offense is very like a man who has caught his first attack of serious Illness. He is afraid not so much of the results as of the thing Itself. Sin has caught him and he is afraid of sin. He wants protection and help and cure. He does not want to hide anything; his first need is confession to some understanding ear. Many, many such confessions have I heard in the old days. That is the result of the first offense. —Free* the Atlantic. * (