Criminal Becomes Minister
Reading edition
[Courier-Journal]
"Do you know who I am?" once said a person in the jail here to the Rev. George L. Herr, prison evangelist. "I will tell you. I am the worst and most treacherous man in this prison." Then the Rev. Mr. Herr says he told him the story of his fearful crimes. "I have been in prison North, South, East and West, I have been in the dismal, solitary cell for one year, have been put in large tanks of ice water, have been punished over and over again, but it has always made me more of a demon. Would you like to know what the officer who last locked me up said about me?"
"'Take him and lock him up like a brute beast, for that is what he is.'"
Then he turned and said: "Do you think there is any hope for me?" "I was at once on ground where I could speak without hesitation," said Mr. Herr, "and I told him simply that if he was through with an evil life, if he was tired of wrong-doing and was determined to do right, there was a love that could forgive him, and a power that could help and keep him in the future. When at last we knelt together there I prayed that God, who could bring light into our darkness, might dispel the thick clouds that had shut in this soul from hope, and bring to him the revelation that would change his life. There were tears in our eyes as we parted, and, taking my hand in his he said: "I will try, Brother Herr."
"He did try, and, more than that he conquered. At first it was a stern battle of an awakened will and conscience fighting against desperate odds. The feeling that friends were watching and waiting anxiously for good reports proved an undoubted incentive. It was not long before he sought and found Christ as his Saviour, and he became an earnest Christian, and to-day is an ordained Methodist minister, at the head of a great rescue work in an Eastern city, and also chaplain of a model penal institution."
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life."—John 3:16.