(A true copy of a convict’s diary, given by himself to one of Mrs. Meredith’s workers many years ago. Brown was a quiet little ticket-of-leave man, and a regular attendant at the Gospel Services in connection with the Prison Mission.)
August 3rd — Got aboard ship. The day hot, and the men meltin’ down to sore anger at havin’ to stand so long in the sun.
4th ―We are hauling up the anchor, and we don’t like it. I am mated with Philips, a man as has a bad name. He has been uncommon kind since we come on board, and has showed me a knife he has in secret.
5th — Dreadful sick.
6th — Don’t think of nothing.
7th ― I hate ‘em all.
8th — Got the bucket of water down on me in bed, and think it was Philips. Don’t say nothing.
9th ― He done it along of that knife.
10th ― That knife will ruin us.
11Th ― My mind’s made up. I’ll filch it from him.
12Th ― The weather is better.
13th — I am able to get about; so is Philips.
14th ― Paper to write letters, books to read, and needles and thread to stitch our clothes is served out.
15th ― Gambling is what we like.
16th ― Noise, swearin’, and fightin’, goes on here.
17th ― Superintendent has shut all up, and punished a many. I wish he’d kill us all, and put an end to us; we’re so wretched and miserable. There is not one as don’t hate the rest, and want to get rid of him and of everybody.
18th ― The world is bad on land; it’s worse on sea. You can’t get out of each other’s way in a ship.
19th ― Philips is forever talking of that knife. I wish I could lay my fingers on it.
20th ― There’s a many here as would like to make a slit in the ship’s timbers, and sink her, and go down to hell in her.
21St ― I am cut with Philip’s knife, he having a fight with me.
22nd ― Seeing the blood, I’m falsely accused of wounding myself.
23rd ― Superintendent examines into the thing. Philips is found out.
24th ― Philips in irons.
25th ― Improvement classes begin.
26th ― Men rioting because we don’t like lessons.
27th― All the teaching is how to make money and get rich.
28th ― I don’t believe as we ever can; for we won’t help each other to work, though we have done it to help one another to rob.
29th ― How can Phillips and me work together? Moreover, we’d cut each other’s throat.
30th ―Was at class. Schoolmaster forgot his book, and one of the men handed him a Bible. It was a hint. Old man took it and read off a chapter. It was cooling. No noise. We was frightened.
31St― A storm.
September 1St ― Everything is dashing about that ain’t tied. We’re in a dreadful state.
2nd ― Nothing but awful times.
3rd ― We’re going to be lost. Some likes it!
4th ― The only sound I heard all night was the schoolmaster’s chapter. All the blowing, and the tossing, and the roaring, and the wetting, and the misery, did not stun it out of my ears. I heard it over and over again, for it has got into my heart, and won’t go out. There it is, turn and twist as I will. I am just full of it, and no mistake. No one but me remembers it. I’ve asked a many as heard as well as me what it was about, and they don’t know. Surprising that I should think so much about it!
5th ― More than ever full of the schoolmaster’s chapter. I have now a Bible all to myself, and I must read it.
6th ― I fell asleep with the book on my knee, and when I woke I had dreamed that I was in Jerusalem, and had got somehow inside their great Temple there. Standing in a big open place, like a market square, I saw a great lot of cattle, bulls, goats, heifers, sheep, lambs, and doves, and pigeons. The horned animals stood calmly waiting round, but the lambs ran in and out of the group, and the birds flew about overhead. Presently they all fell into a still state, and I seemed to be like them, brought to a stand.
“What’s the matter?” I said to a person who was near me. “Matter enough,” he answered; “the time has come to kill all these beasts and birds. They are the sacrifices.” “Who is to do it?” I asked.
“You,” he solemnly replied.
At that moment the eyes of all the animals turned towards me, and with the most grievous looks they seemed to pity me.
“I―I could not kill one of them for my life,” I cried. “What have they done? No, no, I can’t touch ‘em, let alone that it would be cruel waste. Their blood would be nothing for me. It ain’t my sacrifice. The Schoolmaster’s chapter said, Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood, He has obtained eternal redemption for us. His blood must be shed for ME.”
My words were lost in the wonderful sound that came filling all the place. A breeze bore notes of music through the air. My ears drank it in, and my soul eagerly received its sweetness. The words were-very simple, but they opened heaven to my mind. They told me so much that I could not believe it. But I did indeed learn to know that it is true, and to be so glad I can hardly speak when I think of them. “It is finished,” is what they said. “Finished! What, all the blood of all these creatures spilled?”
“No, not a drop.”
“What then. Whose blood!”
A voice told me back again that it was the blood of Jesus, and Jesus only.
“What,” I cried again, “instead of these?”
“No, not instead of bulls nor lambs, but instead of sinners.”
“Instead of me? Gave Himself for me? I can’t believe it.”
“But you must believe it, for it is true; the Bible says it. The Schoolmaster’s chapter made it quite clear. Think of it; not with blood of others, but by the offering of Himself once in the place of all, He has saved us forever.”
“Saved! saved! Praise the Lord! Give God thanks! Saved! saved!” I kept crying out. Someone woke me. I looked at the sea; it was calm: at the sky; it was without clouds: and right before us was the land we were going to.
My shouting was not the only shouting in the ship. All was at it crying out ― “Land! hurray for the land.”
The only word I could say was― “Saved―saved forever!” Philips in his irons was near me. “Shut up,” he says; “it would have been better to have gone to the bottom than to land there in these fetters. Everyone of you will get a chain to your leg, and be fastened up like dogs.” “What matter, when you’re saved by the blood―when your soul’s saved? The body is the only thing they can chain. It is nothing. No man can touch the soul that’s saved. It is free forever. I’m saved. I never can be put into bondage again by Satan. I have got the door of heaven opened to me. I can’t be lost; Jesus died. He died instead of me. No, I can’t be put to death. He has done all for me. It is finished.”
“How do you know?” inquired some of them.
“I heard it in the Schoolmaster’s chapter. Oh, it is such good news! Saved!” I replied.
“We all heard the same thing read, and how does it happen you make so much out of it, and no one else had taken the same idea that you have about it?” asked someone.
“That I cannot tell. The one thing I do know―that before I heard that chapter, I did not care to live, and I hated every soul on board, and I did not desire to be in their company another minute. Now, I want every one to be as happy as I am; to be saved; to know that they have the blood shed for them. Dear Philips, I feel as if your knife was a blessed sign of the blood-shedding, without which no pardon could be. Can’t you see it.”
“That I can’t; but here it is, mate. It is safer in your hands than mine. I’m no way ‘tached to it. I brought it on board to take my own life: but you have put another idee into my head. I want to be saved, not to be lost. That night of the storm I was awfully frightened, and I made a vow I’d turn round as soon as ever we lands. But I need not wait for that. I’m ready to be turned now. A fresh start in a new life is a good thing. It will mend our ways and cure us.”
“Never, Philips. You and I would be as bad as ever over there as in England, if we are not saved—washed in the blood.”
The ship came into port, and all of us landed alive and well. Philips and me worked together many a day. I had that knife often in use, but never without remembering the “precious blood”; and dear Philips, he died rejoicing in the same. He came to see the “fountain” one day, all by himself, as he was a-thinking of the storm we had got through. Why was we spared? It ain’t hard to guess that: it was “mercy and free grace,” for we were a lot as should have gone to everlasting burning if we had had our rights. Surely it warn’t to send us into the fire by another road, that we were kept back that time? Certainly not. We were brought to land that we might be saved from that there ruin, and not pitched into it. I want to know now, why we should not be saved all out? There ain’t no reason. It is all as clear as day. We must believe that love, eternal love did it then. There was no merit; and it will do the rest for us. Salvation is ours!
I never shouted “saved!” so loud as Philips did when he found out the blessed truth. It was not long after he got that fine fortune’ that the Bible calls the “pearl of great price,” when he took sick. It was fever; and he ever raved about the storm, and the knife, and the ship, and the irons, and the prison, and the waves, and the sea, and the winds, and the billows. But, every now and then, he stopped and took his breath, and had his drink, and clear his throat, and cried out, “SAVED” and shouted “Jesus! Hallelujah! for He saved me and washed me in His blood!”
I knowed well as he was always hungering and thirsting after news of God and heaven, and Jesus, though he could not talk of them, the weeks he lay in that wild, queer sickness, in which he tossed, tumbled and screamed, and knocked about; so I read to him continually out of the Bible; and if he was not drawing water out of the wells of salvation, I was. It was a glorious time, but not a moment of it was like that minute when I saw it was come, and that he was gone up forever―away out of the fever and storm―and had got his rest in the calm land of peace forever, Saved! Saved! Washed and forgiven!
“Oh! the blood of Jesus!”