A loving friend’s rebuke is a rebuke—­sinks into the heart and convinces the judgment; an enemy’s or stranger’s rebuke is invective and irritates—­not converts.  The great vice of the new prisons is general self-deception varied by downright calculating hypocrisy.  A shallow zealot like Mr. Lepel is sure to drive the prisoners into one or other of these.  It was Mr. Eden’s struggle to keep them out of it.  He froze cant in the bud.  Puritanical burglars tried Scriptural phrases on him as a matter of course, but they soon found it was the very worse lay they could get upon in ——­ Jail.  The notion that a man can jump from the depths of vice up to the climax of righteous habits, spiritual-mindedness, at one leap, shocked his sense and terrified him for the daring dogs that profess these saltatory powers and the geese that believe it.  He said to such:  “Let me see you crawl heavenward first, then walk heavenward; it will be time enough to soar when you have lived soberly, honestly, piously a year or two—­not here, where you are tied hands, feet and tongue, but free among the world’s temptations.”  He had no blind confidence in learned-by-heart texts.  “Many a scoundrel has a good memory,” said he.

Here he was quite opposed to his friend Lepel.  This gentleman attributed a sort of physical virtue to Holy Writ poured anyhow into a human vessel.  His plan of making a thief honest will appear incredible to a more enlightened age; yet it is widely accepted now and its advocates call Mr. Eden a dreamer.  It was this:  He came into a cell cold and stern and set the rogues a lot of texts.  Those that learned a great many he called good prisoners, and those that learned few—­black sheep; and the prisoners soon found out that their life, bitter as it was, would be bitterer if they did not look sharp and learn a good many texts.  So they learned lots—­and the slyest scoundrels learned the most.  “Why not?” said they, “in these cursed holes we have nothing better to do; and it is the only way to get the parson’s good word, and that is always worth having in jail.”

One rogue on getting out explained his knowledge of five hundred texts thus:  “What did it hurt me learning texts?  I’d just as lieve be learning texts as turning a crank, and as soon be d—­d as either.”

This fellow had been one of Mr. Lepel’s sucking saints—­a show prisoner.  The Bible and brute force—­how odd they sound together!  Yet such was the Lepel system, humbug apart.  Put a thief in a press between an Old Testament and a New Testament.  Turn the screw, crush the texts in, and the rogue’s vices out!  Conversion made easy!  What a wonder he opposes cunning cloaked with religion to brutality cloaked under religion.  Ay, brutality, and laziness, and selfishness, all these are the true foundation of that system.  Selfishness—­for such a man won’t do anything he does not like.  No!  “Why should I make myself ‘all things to all men’ to save a soul?  I will save them this one way or none—­this is my way and they shall all come to it,” says the reverend Procrustes, forgetting that if the heart is not won in vain is the will crushed; or perhaps not caring so that he gets his own way.