4 Sermon Illustrations on Restoration

Mr. Pillsbury, warden of the State Prison in Connecticut, once received into the prison a man of gigantic stature, whose crimes had for seventeen years made him the terror of the country. He told the criminal, when he came, he hoped he would not repeat the attempts to escape, which he had made elsewhere. "It will be best," said he, "that you and I should treat each other as well as we can. I will make you as comfortable as I possibly can, and I shall be anxious to be your friend; and I hope you will not get me into difficulty on your account. There is a cell intended for solitary confinement; but we have never used it, and I should be sorry ever to have to turn the key upon anybody in it. You may range the place as freely as I do: if you trust me, I will trust you." The man was sulky, and for six weeks showed only gradual symptoms of softening under the operation of Mr. Pillsbury's cheerful confidence. At length, information was brought of the man's intention to break the prison. The warden called him, and taxed him with it: the man preserved a gloomy silence. He was told it was now necessary for him to be locked in the solitary cell, and was desired to follow the warden, who went first, carrying a lamp in one hand, and a key in the other. In the narrowest part of the passage, Mr. Pillsbury, a small, light man, turned round, and looked in the face of the stout criminal. "Now," said he, "I ask whether you have treated me as I deserve? I have done every thing I could to make you happy. I have trusted you; but you have never given me the least confidence in return, and have even planned to get me into difficulty. Is this kind? And yet I cannot bear to lock you up. If I had the least sign that you cared for me"—The man burst into tears. "Sir," said he, "I have been a very demon these seventeen years; but you treat me like a man."—"Come let us go back," said the warden. The convict had free range of the prison as before; and from that hour he began to open his heart to the warden, and cheerfully fulfilled his whole term of imprisonment.

A gentleman residing in the vicinity of York once received an anonymous letter, appointing a meeting in the oat-market, when, as the letter stated, something would be communicated for his advantage. The gentleman kept the appointment, and was accosted by a respectable looking man, who proposed that they should go to an inn together. The gentleman consented; and having entered a private room, they both sat down at a table, when the stranger presented his new friend with sixty pounds, which he said was his property. The gentleman refused to take it without an explanation; but the stranger then presented him with sixty pounds more, and said that this was also due besides, as interest for the money, simple and compound, during the time he held his property. He afterwards gave the following explanation to the gentleman: "More than twenty years ago, you had an uncle, whose property you now possess: his age and infirmities rendered it expedient for him to have a housekeeper to manage his affairs. My sister was that housekeeper. Some time after his death she found sixty pounds folded up in one of her trunks, which she believed to have belonged to him at the time of his death. She sent for me, gave it into my hands, and requested that I would restore it to you, as the lawful heir of her master's property. This I promised to do, but being embarrassed in my circumstances at the time, I made use of it for my own purposes. I now make the proper restitution. I do it to the utmost, and with pleasure; and I do assure you that this transaction has taken a very heavy weight from my distressed mind." Various circumstances then occurred to the gentleman's mind, which left no doubt of the truth of the stranger's story.