The Cecil Whig., 1877-12-15
For The Cecil Wing
BROADBRIM'S NEW YORK LETTER,

THE NEW ENANGEL1STS, JERRY NJ CAULEY
AND PETER DwYER; THE SPIRIT WORK
ING AMONG THE RIVER THIEVES; LIFE
IN THE sLUMs; FATHER M'NAMARA;
STOCKS; ON DTS, ETC.
Away down among the slums, where
children are brought up to swear and steal,
among the bucket shops and dance halls,
nights hideous with blasphemy and drunk
enness an evangelist labors who was
plucked as a brand from the burning. His
face is hard and bronzed, deep seams are
furrowed in it, scars are there that tells of
terrible battles in the past, and which have
left deep traces on his countenance never to
be etfaced till the grave shall cover it. The
face is the face of man fearfully, terribly
in earnest; one that, in his work of evan
gelization, seems at times to glow with the
courage of a warrior and the holy nspira-
tiOn of prophet. Never did | feel the
gospel power as felt it in the presence of
this humble follower of Christ, standing as
it were in the Valley of the Shadow of
Death. And there is another like him,
whose life is dedicated to the service of his
Master, and who labors without money and
without price, looking for his reward be-
yond the Jordan's stormy banks.
Peter Dwyer and Jerry McCauley are
not model evangeists according to the
standard of DR.. Hall of the Fifth Avenue
or DR.. Dix of Holy Trinity. Perhaps
pompous old Brown, the mammoth sexton
of Grace Church, might not be able to find
seat for these humble disciples within
his magnificent sanctuary, and yet when
the final count shall be made up, perhaps
these lowly ones may come for their reward,
bearing to the Savour's throne hundreds of
ransomed souls rescued like themselves
from the very jaws of hell.
Nowhere out of large city could you
find a religious assembly such as nightly
meets at Jerry McCauley's; none are here
to tell you how good they have been, and
what meritorious acts they have per-
formed, and how much the Lord is indebted
to them. All these people are sinners, and
they know it, the preacher himself was
once thief, he wore the striped suit of a
convict, the priest and Levite passed him
by when he was stricken and sore, but
in the hour of need God remembered him,
and there, within a prison CELL with a
striped suit of convict on his back, sur
rounded by the direst Influences that ever
hunted mortal to his ruin, the revelation
came to him, and he arose Christian man.
The thief and the drunkard asked for
forgiveness and was forgiven, and, on his
release from prison, he started out on the
work of evangelization. But the pathway
was crooked and the road was rough for
Jerry McCauley. The tempter ensnared
him. and he fell. No more pitiful story
was ever rehearsed then the struggles of
this rugged but humble disciple of Christ
in his search for religion and for God. The
church shrunk from him as from leper,
the moral taint that smirched him kept
Christian men and Christian women away
from him. And so, surrounded by all the
evil influence of poverty and vice and
crime, he fought the BATTLE alone and won.
1t was only the other day that | stood
beneath the magnificent dome of DR.. Halls
church, on the Fifth Avenue, the fashion
able boulevard of New York. All that
wealth and luxury could furnish was scat
tered about with lavish profusion.-
Beneath its magnificent roof a million and
half of dollars lie entombed, a costly
sacrifice even for such a temple. Sim
ners go there, but not to be saved. They
are gilded sinners, flom the Stock Ex-
change, the money markets and the banks,
where vice is plated with gold, and where
silk and velvet hide corruption and crime.
The air was loaded with perfume, rare
flowers in beautiful vases adorn the pulpit
and the altar, exquisite music rolls out
from the grand organ, touched by the
cunning of masters hand, sweet sounds
of blended harmony, from a quartette
whose pay m ight rival a kings ransom, re.
compense in measure the blase dilettanti
for being deprived of the delights of the
opera even on the Sabbath of the Lord.
To the uninitiated, religion seems dear
when the organist cost five thousand year,
and our soprano is booked for seven thou
sand and her carriage. Back | went to
Jerry McCauley's, the whole of Jerry's
little church did not cost as much as a sin
gle window in DR.. Hall's-the benches
were filled with hard looking men and
women who evidently stood in need of
Saviour and salvation. The mission house
stands on the spot where once stood John
Aliens dance house, be who was called in
his day the wickedest man in New York.
Here the father taught his little son to
blaspheme the name of God, and here har-
lots and thieves held high carnival, away
into the small hours of the morning.
After desperate struggle John Allen fell,
but the seed sown in the midst of corrup-
tion and sin was not all destroyed. Here
and there blade shot up green and strong,
speaking of hope and salvation. Jerry
McCauley appeared upon the scene, dis
ciple whose conversion was more of
miracle than Paul's, when stricken by the
spirit of God, on his way to Damascus.
Among the desperate river pirates, whose
names are terror on our river front, no man
was more feared than he. The boldest
criminal quailed in the presence of this des-
perate man, who seemed to know neither
pity nor fear, and who cared for neither God
nor man. AS have said, the revelation of
Christ crucifed for sinners, came to him in
a felons cell, and when he was released, he
began his holy mission. Men forsook him,
but God stood by him, and helped him again
and again when he fell. At last, his feet
were planted on the Rock Of Ages, and to-
day, in his little mission house, among thiev-
es and prostitutes, among sinners stepped
to the very lips in crime, he labors hopefully
on, waiting for his Masters summons.
In this city, the other day, a prominent re-
ligious denomination gave five hundred
thousand dollars to the work of evangelical
ton. China was remembered ; Hindostan
was not forgotten: France, Germany. and