I saw a Jeff come into the Sunday school of my own church. He was a great lumbering chap of eighteen years of age, he was not quite clean, there was the odor of the unwashed about him. He immediately went to the class of about thirty young men of his own age. I was gratified to see that youth seek the society of the church people rather than the saloon, but he was not welcome with the young men. The teacher visited his home, there was no help to be expected from the home, so the teacher, or the class, whether by actual request or by treatment, caused Jeff to stay away. Now, in the great day of accounts, of whom will that soul be required? If the defective intellect, what there is of it, can be turned to believe God, the defective is prevented from becoming a criminal. We have them at the Gospel Mission. The very first thing is to have the physician talk to Jeff of the sacredness of his own body to absolutely prevent all secret habits which injure the body and brain, and the motive of self-restraint both for physical habits and for drink must be that these things offend a loving Saviour who walks with each one of us.
Each year I meet Dr. H. M. Freas, of Philadelphia, at Northfield. His work as a physician frequently takes him to the asylum for the insane. He feels most keenly that these institutions should be in the hands of Christian people only. Many a brilliant intellect could be restored to perfect sanity if the loving care of some saintly Protestant sisterhood or brotherhood were in charge to bring the human love, which even the sanest of us need, to bear on the tottering brain. These human deficients are found in the public schools; as soon as discovered they should be transferred to a religious school where they can be scientifically studied, what intellect they have developed, and the religious side of each one fostered. If then they are found permanently deficient, especially in the moral sense, or in physical self-control, then they should be segregated on farms for the sake of the race. People of deficient brains become fanatics; now, if these unbalanced people become filled with an enthusiasm of righteousness they absolutely do much good. They constitute three-fourths of the street preachers, and they reach many a soul who never enters a church. Religion prevents insanity. There is no doubt that fanaticism run riot leads to the asylum. We had one man who was insufficiently fed, badly clothed, who spent the entire night in prayer, two or three nights of the week. Of course, he was brought up in the insane asylum, but when he had food enough at the asylum where he was not permitted to pray aloud, he soon became normal, and was set free. It taught him a needed lesson.
