CHAPTER V.

PENITENTIARY WORK.

ONE of the first, if not the first, of Mr. Carter's writings was his memoir of "John Armstrong, D.D.," at one time Bishop of Grahamstown. To this book Bishop Samuel Wilberforce contributed a preface, in which he refers to a special feature of Mr. Armstrong's labours, in the following eloquent language:

"He, above all, awakened through God's blessing those efforts on behalf of the most miserable class of outcast women, which have led to the exercise of so much of that skilful and affectionate care for such penitents, which surely ought especially to mark the followers of Him Who, in spite of the jeers of the Pharisee, suffered the woman who had been a sinner' to 'wash His feet with her tears, and to wipe them with the hairs of her head!""

It is impossible to read this memoir without seeing that Canon Carter and Bishop Armstrong were kindred spirits. The former, writing in 1857, says of penitentiary work, that he regarded it as "one of the greatest and most hopeful efforts of the century, and one calculated far more than can now be estimated to influence the penitential discipline and practical condition of the Church." What T. T. Carter says of J. Armstrong might well be transferred to himself. "The secret source of his untiring ardour in this cause was the exceeding warmth and depth of his love for any object that excited his compassion." Mr. Carter became a pioneer in penitentiary work; that is to say, effective penitentiary work. There had

THE CLEANSING OF THE CONSCIENCE.

76 been previous efforts, but these on the whole were weak and defective. These were well meant, but the cure seemed chiefly to be sought in the change of external surroundings-separation from the "occasions" of sin; not enough in the inward change of heart and cleansing of the conscience. Mr. Carter, with his quick insight, saw the impotency of such efforts. Dr. Liddon, too, at once grasped the difference. "The one," he said, "is weeding a garden with your hands, and leaving the roots in the soil; the other, extirpating them with the proper implements." The future Warden of the House of Mercy, Clewer, threw himself heart and soul into this cause, with a zeal and self-devotion which were requisite for overcoming various hindrances. There are never wanting those who attempt to throw cold water upon the flame of charity, especially if connected with personal outlay. It was urged that penitentiaries only increased the evil; that it was a question of supply and demand; and that by lessening the number of these wretched beings the gaps would be filled by the seduction of fresh and innocent souls. Again, the evil was pronounced incurable, and St. Paul's doctrine that "where sin abounded grace might much more abound denied or distrusted. In fact, the Penitentiary cause was represented as either hurtful or impotent, but the cause prospered. An appeal for funds appeared in March, 1849, and "in June the House of Mercy at Clewer was commenced," and other similar institutions were built, where penitents were received, and not only separated from their past evil life, but brought into a new and pure atmosphere, and gradually transformed by the operation of Divine Grace, and restored to communion with God.

In Canon Carter's great attraction towards Penitentiary work one grand feature of his character may be traced-his inexhaustible sympathy. This may be regarded on two sides-the Divine and the human. In the former, his devotion to Christ, as the Good Shepherd, prompted him to seek and save the lost; in the latter, his keen realization of human misery and helplessness. A perusal of two sermons preached

in 1856, and published by Masters, together with an appeal for the completion of the House of Mercy, would at once indicate this estimate of the character of the Founder of " Clewer." In the first discourse, upon the words, "He hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. v. 21), he touchingly describes our Blessed Lord's dealings with sinners. He loved to trace how human sin and infirmity were allowed to cast their shadows upon our Lord's parentage.

"When the first Evangelist traces the lineage of the Messiah, he is careful to note-as facts important to recall, though but for such a cause our better feelings ever seek to veil the dishonour of our parentage-the more than ordinary stains of sin that marked some members of the chosen family. Recording how 'Juda begat Pharez and Zara,' he states specially that it was of Thamar.' Recording how 'Salmon begat Boaz,' he adds of Rahab,' elsewhere known as 'the harlot.' And mentioning one of the choicest names of the sacred line, David the king,' he reminds us how he 'begat Solomon of her who had been the wife of Urias.""

And the preacher goes on to show how Christ submitted to circumcision-the "sinner's mark"-and how "His Blessed Mother was purified," as though she had contracted defilement from the bringing forth of the Sinless One! In the same way the "Temptation," the eating with publicans and sinners," the breathing the peace of His healing absolution" into the soul of the fallen woman, and rebuking her, not guiltless, accusers, show his love for the lost ones of His fold.

Then Mr. Carter's sympathy was excited by the circumstances of the poor and suffering outcast.

"It should, moreover," he says, "move us to think that all this misery may have arisen from causes to which the poor alone are subject. For their children suffer, in a manner unknown to others, from exposure, from too close contact in cottages, with insufficient space to separate the sexes and preserve the veil even of common decency; from too great

78

SYMPATHY FOR THE FALLEN.

familiarity in the times of labour, in the field, where all ages and both sexes mingle without restraint; or in the way homewards, unguarded amid the contaminations of the hamlet, or along the crowded street, etc."

At the close of the discourse he revealed his intense pity for the fallen woman, "often much more sinned against than sinning." Later in life, and from a larger experience, he was led to modify in a degree this estimate of relative guilt. A study of these two sermons, from the former of which we have made extracts, will clearly show the thoughts and feelings which lay at the root of that sympathy for the fallen which was ever a characteristic of the Warden of Clewer.

He felt the Church had failed to extend her ministry to those sinful and degraded beings, and that the world's estimate of the degradation was one-sided.

"Certainly the hard distinctions which the conventionalities of society have drawn can have no place here. As there can be no limit to the sympathy with which 'Christ's' Sacred Heart yearned towards the fallen, or to His power of restoring them, there can be no ground for excluding from the range of our compassion, or the possibilities of complete renovation, any even of the deadliest sins.

"Yet such exclusion has been made in the case which we are now especially considering; for though fallen woman has not sinned alone, how entirely in the world's eye has the undivided burden of guilt fallen upon her! While the partners of her sin pass in and out among us, unnoticed, save by the sleepless Eye of God, on her has lain the blight of a hopeless excommunication. Even the Church has failed in its love towards her. The ministerings of the Son of Man have through us been straitened in her case. This is said deliberately; for though some penitentiaries have long since been established amongst us, it has not been by the direct action of the Church, nor has the love and self-devotedness of the Gospel in their highest forms animated the work."

Canon Carter's name will ever be intimately connected with the rise and progress of penitentiary work in the English Church, and with the infusion of new life into it.

In the memoir of Bishop Armstrong (which was dedicated to "Robert Gray, Lord Bishop of Capetown, who planted the English Episcopate in South Africa "), Mr. Carter devotes more than fifty pages to the history of the rise and progress of the "Church Penitentiary Cause," and to the part which Bishop Armstrong took in it. This book was his earliest effort at portraiture, and it seems to have been written in accordance with those comments upon biography with which Bishop Samuel Wilberforce begins his preface to the memoir, and which we think well worth quoting. He says

Biography depends for its interest and usefulness upon that answering of heart to heart which makes one man, in so far as he is thoroughly human, an exponent to another of his own inward being. It is not, therefore, in depicting singularity of character, or in relating strange adventure, that the highest merit of biography consists. Such narratives as these can at best but move the mind to wonder, or excite it to a passing interest. But the revelation of the depths of the heart and spirit of another, even though the outward incidents of his life be in themselves ordinary and commonplace, may be full of the highest dramatic interest for one exercised by the same inward trials, and engaged in a like outward struggle."

The great bishop requires in the biographer, first, the capacity of understanding the character he is to draw; and secondly, truthfulness in his narrative; and in the subject, thoroughly human traits of character;" of course, in a spiritual biography, those "human traits of character," purified, illuminated, and transformed by the Spirit of God.

Mr. Armstrong had already observed, in a volume of sermons which were preached at Exeter, the shallowness of repentance, in the methods of recovery at that time adopted; when notorious sinners were subjected to no penitential discipline, in order to deepen their sorrow for sin, and to form humility by any course of humiliation, with the result that spiritual disease was not eradicated, and relapse was but a natural consequence of such laxness. Though without any experience of such necessities at the time, he saw, for such an