People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 March 1893 — REFORMED LIVES. [ARTICLE]

REFORMED LIVES.

Instances of Criminals Who Have rut Aside Their Evil Ways. I wish I had space to tell of men and women whom 1 have known who have been moved in prison by the religious appeal. I was stopped on the street the other day by a woman whom I had known years ago, a notorious shoplifter, says a writer in the Congregationalist. She has for years been living, in a quiet, unostentatious way, a sincere religious life, begun in prison under the influence of the officer who had charge of her—an earnest Christian woman. I knew a young man who has for six years been out in the world, who came to his senses in prison. He had been well brought up m a Christian family. He committed a petty burglary, sold the stolen goods and sent the proceeds to his mother to help her in a time of great distress. She never knew the motive of his crime. He began Christian work almost as soon as he was discharged and has continued it constantly, working at his trade all day and giving his evenings to work among the fallen. In one of our prisons a man of mature age, committed for an offense which was the outcome of a violent temper and a cruel disposition, had, one night, a sort of vision which led to a change as remarkable in its way as that which came to St. Paul. Men laughed at it when he told the story, but years of consistent Christian life, in which he has won the respect of the entire community in which he lives, attest the completeness of the revolution.