No. 316

"Coming back from Brooklyn one day, I met Paul Rivenbark, and buying him a drink we became friends, but one day he went away and later when I met him he invited me to go to church. . . . The only man I knew there was Frank Nogle, and he testified that the Lord Jesus had kept him since August. . . ."

Testimony of H. H. Robinson. "During the summer of 1920, I met a man on Park Row whom I had thought dead, because he was a wreck the last time I had seen him, but he was all dressed up and looked fine. ... I had met lots of Christians, socalled, and rather despised them . . . but I had to admit they had done something for this man. And what impressed me most, this man was waiting to tell some boy that was a drug addict that Jesus Christ would cure him. . . ."

Testimony of E. J. Garvey. Such items as these, related among the flowers, the thick food odors, the roar of voices and the tinkle of glass and silver at a charity luncheon at the Union League Club, Manhattan, produced a noticeable effect. The president, Banker Henry Fletcher, explained the purpose of the campaign--to raise $100,000 for the McAuley Water Street Mission. He talked about the Mission's history, activities. There was silence. Into this moment, ripe for emotional disturbance, John Markle threw his statement.

"I'll give it to you."

The president did not understand.

"You want to make the first contribution, Mr. Markle?"

He turned toward the place where the other man was sitting, short, white-haired, a, dealer in coal.

"I mean I'll give you the $100,000."

Protests, amazement, stammered eloquence. The president explained that the campaign was not altogether for money--the McAuley Mission also wanted 20,000 new friends. If Mr. Markle gave the whole amount there would be no excuse for going on. Mr. Markle shook his head. He would give $100,000--not a cent less. He told his own story, how he had been blind for a year in 1908, how Christ and a famous German surgeon had brought back his sight. "I don't want people to think I've got all the money in God's earth," he said. President Fletcher took the donation, with a proviso--$40,000 would go for endowment, $60,000 toward the new dormitory. Another $40,000 for the dormintory would come from friends old and new.

In 1864, one Jeremiah McAuley, son of an Irish counterfeiter, and a river thief and drunkard on his own initiative, received a pardon signed by Secretary of State [of New York] Chauncey M. Depew, after serving seven years of a fifteen-year sentence for highway robbery. Eight years later this McAuley founded a mission at No. 316 Water Street, Manhattan, where wharf life is drably vile. His slogan was "The Man No One Else Wants." Drunkards, drug addicts, broken down sports, panhandlers, sick street-creatures could get a bed, a wash, a meal. It was the first city rescue mission in New York, and remains the most famed.

Mr. McAuley had become a friend of Jesus. Pastors walked with him. They called him Jerry. The mission prospered, passed through the hands of various capable men, interested a few philanthropists. Behind his new and violent belief in God he had knowledge of the needs of broken men. It was a worldly knowledge. The men he helped recognized this and respected him. He was Jerry to all, a thin-nosed mustachioed Irishman. They accepted his homely religion with the meals he gave them and the jobs he got them. Few backslid.

A second, then a third mission house rose on the site of the old. One bum brings in another. Philanthropists tell their friends. When, in the late afternoon, a wastrel beats in to explain what he wants, an attendant takes him to the bathroom. Sometimes the attendant throws the man's clothes away. Sometimes they are just fumigated. He is washed and deloused. He goes upstairs and gets a free meal. In the evening there is a prayer-meeting. The redeemed get up and testify. Voices cry out "Amen, Amen"; the thin chords of a hymn rise in air that smells faintly of carbolic. Sometimes, redemption, repentance, sweep in rivers through the minds of the fallen. Good tidings . . . Jesus Christ the Lord will give an old rum-dum a place to sleep. Sinners will rise through faith, saved by Jesus Christ the Lord.