156 Story of Sarah Martin. [CHAP. V. them out of idleness, and from preying on their own thoughts. Out of the earnings of the prisoners in this way, she formed a fund, which she applied to furnishing them with work on their discharge; thus enabling them again to begin the world honestly, and at the same time affording her, as she herself says, "the advantage of observing their conduct." By attending too exclusively to this prison-work, however, Sarah Martin's dressmaking business fell off; and the question arose with her, whether in order to recover her business she was to suspend her prison-work. But her decision had already been made. "I had counted the cost," she said, "and my mind was made up. If, whilst imparting truth to others, I became exposed to temporal want, the privations so momentary to an individual would not admit of comparison with following the Lord, in thus administering to others.” She now devoted six or seven hours every day to the prisoners, converting what would otherwise have been a scene of dissolute idleness into a hive of orderly industry. Newly-admitted prisoners were sometimes refractory, but her persistent gentleness eventually won their respect and co-operation. Men old in years and crime, pert London pickpockets, depraved boys and dissolute sailors, profligate women, smugglers, poachers, and the promiscuous horde of criminals which usually fill the gaol of a seaport and county town, all submitted to the benign influence of this good woman; and under her eyes they might be seen, for the first time in their lives, striving to hold a pen, or to master the characters in a penny primer. She entered into their confidences -watched, wept, prayed, and felt for all by turns. She strengthened their good resolutions, cheered the hopeless and despairing, and endeavoured to put all, and hold all, in the right road of amendment. CHAP. V.] Story of Sarah Martin. 157 For more than twenty years this good and truehearted woman pursued her noble course, with little encouragement, and not much help; almost her only means of subsistence consisting in an annual income of ten or twelve pounds left by her grandmother, eked out by her little earnings at dressmaking. During the last two years of her ministrations, the borough magistrates of Yarmouth, knowing that her self-imposed labours saved them the expense of a schoolmaster and chaplain (which they had become bound by law to appoint), made a proposal to her of an annual salary of £12 a year; but they did it in so indelicate a manner as greatly to wound her sensitive feelings. She shrank from becoming the salaried official of the corporation, and bartering for money those services which had throughout been labours of love. But the Gaol Committee coarsely informed her, "that if they permitted her to visit the prison she must submit to their terms, or be excluded." For two years, therefore, she received the salary of £12 a year-the acknowledgment of the Yarmouth corporation for her services as gaol chaplain and schoolmistress! She was now, however, becoming old and infirm, and the unhealthy atmosphere of the gaol did much towards finally disabling her. While she lay on her deathbed, she resumed the exercise of a talent she had occasionally practised before in her moments of leisure-the composition of sacred poetry. As works of art, they may not excite admiration; yet never were verses written truer in spirit, or fuller of Christian love. But her own life was a nobler poem than any she ever wrote-full of true courage, perseverance, charity, and wisdom. It was indeed a commertary upon her own words: "The high desire that others may be blest "Honour and profit do not always lie in the same sack."-George Herbert. "The government of one's self is the only true freedom for the individual."-Frederick Perthes. "It is in length of patience, and endurance, and forbearance, that so much of what is good in mankind and womankind is shown."-Arthur Helps "Temperance, proof Against all trials; industry severe And constant as the motion of the day; Stern self-denial round him spread, with shade That might be deemed forbidding, did not there All generous feelings flourish and rejoice; Forbearance, charity in deed and thought, And resolution competent to take Out of the bosom of simplicity All that her holy customs recommend."- Wordsworth. It SELF-CONTROL is only courage under another form. Self-control is at the root of all the virtues. Let a man give the reins to his impulses and passions, and from that moment he yields up his moral freedom. He is carried along the current of life, and becomes the slave of his strongest desire for the time being. To be morally free-to be more than an animalman must be able to resist instinctive impulse, and this can only be done by the exercise of self-control. Thus it is this power which constitutes the real distinction CHAP. VI.] The Value of Discipline. 159 between a physical and a moral life, and that forms the primary basis of individual character. In the Bible praise is given, not to the strong man who "taketh a city," but to the stronger man who "ruleth his own spirit." This stronger man is he who, by discipline, exercises a constant control over his thoughts, his speech, and his acts. Nine-tenths of the vicious desires that degrade society, and which, when indulged, swell into the crimes that disgrace it, would shrink into insignificance before the advance of valiant self-discipline, self-respect, and self-control. By the watchful exercise of these virtues, purity of heart and mind become habitual, and the character is built up in chastity, virtue, and temperance. The best support of character will always be found in habit, which, according as the will is directed rightly or wrongly, as the case may be, will prove either a benignant ruler or a cruel despot. We may be its willing subject on the one hand, or its servile slave on the other. It may help us on the road to good, or it may hurry us on the road to ruin. Habit is formed by careful training. And it is astonishing how much can be accomplished by systematic discipline and drill. See how, for instance, out of the most unpromising materials—such as roughs picked up in the streets, or raw unkempt country lads taken from the plough-steady discipline and drill will bring out the unsuspected qualities of courage, endurance, and self-sacrifice; and how, in the field of battle, or even on the more trying occasions of perils by sea-such as the burning of the Sarah Sands or the wreck of the Birkenhead-such men, carefully disciplined, will exhibit the unmistakable characteristics of true bravery and heroism! Nor is moral discipline and drill less influential in 160 Supremacy of Self-Control. [CHAP. VI. the formation of character. Without it, there will be no proper system and order in the regulation of the life. Upon it depends the cultivation of the sense of self-respect, the education of the habit of obedience, the development of the idea of duty. The most self-reliant, self-governing man is always under discipline: and the more perfect the discipline, the higher will be his moral condition. He has to drill his desires, and keep them in subjection to the higher powers of his nature. They must obey the word of command of the internal monitor, the conscience-otherwise they will be but the mere slaves of their inclinations, the sport of feeling and impulse. "In the supremacy of self-control," says Herbert Spencer, "consists one of the perfections of the ideal man. Not to be impulsive-not to be spurred hither and thither by each desire that in turn comes uppermost-but to be self-restrained, self-balanced, governed by the joint decision of the feelings in council assembled, before whom every action shall have been fully debated and calmly determined—that it is which education, moral education at least, strives to produce." The first seminary of moral discipline, and the best, as we have already shown, is the home; next comes the school, and after that the world, the great school of practical life. Each is preparatory to the other, and what the man or woman becomes, depends for the most part upon what has gone before. If they have enjoyed the advantage of neither the home nor the school, but have been allowed to grow up untrained, untaught, and undisciplined, then woe to themselves-woe to the society of which they form part! The best-regulated home is always that in which the 1 'Social Statics,' p. 185. |