Page 455 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

and all the week the thongs of the overseer cracked, and the
cat hissed and swung. Of what practical value was a piety
that preached but did not practise? It was admirable for the
‘religious instructor’ to tell a prisoner that he must not give
way to evil passions, but must bear his punishment with
meekness. It was only right that he should advise him to
‘put his trust in God”. But as a hardened prisoner, convicted
of getting drunk in an unlicensed house of entertainment,
had said, ‘God’s terrible far from Port Arthur.’
Rufus Dawes had smiled at the spectacle of priests ad-
monishing men, who knew what he knew and had seen
what he had seen, for the trivialities of lying and stealing.
He had believed all priests impostors or fools, all religion
a mockery and a lie. But now, finding how utterly his own
strength had failed him when tried by the rude test of phys-
ical pain, he began to think that this Religion which was
talked of so largely was not a mere bundle of legend and
formulae, but must have in it something vital and sustain-
ing. Broken in spirit and weakened in body, with faith in
his own will shaken, he longed for something to lean upon,
and turned—as all men turn when in such case—to the Un-
known. Had now there been at hand some Christian priest,
some Christian-spirited man even, no matter of what faith,
to pour into the ears of this poor wretch words of comfort
and grace; to rend away from him the garment of sullenness
and despair in which he had wrapped himself; to drag from
him a confession of his unworthiness, his obstinacy, and his
hasty judgment, and to cheer his fainting soul with prom-
ise of immortality and justice, he might have been saved

For the Term of His Natural Life