Out of the depths; the life-story of Henry F. Milans

Front matter

LIBRARY | OF ALBERT, ¢ FEHLOW

OWL OF THE DEPTHS

THE LIFE-STORY OF HENRY F. MILANS ~ geen 6 om - 7 ei

Foreword

By COMMANDER EVANGELINE C. BootH

“T learn the depth to which I have sunk, from the length of the chain let down to updraw me. I ascertain the mightiness of the ruin, by examining the machinery for restoration.”

—Henry MELVILLE.

ag moving story of a human life, in tragedy and in triumph, is presented, not because it will make a strong appeal to sentiment, and stir deep emotions, but because it is true.

The true scientist welcomes truth from every quarter. Here is the greatest truth of all: God saves man. Let scepticism itself read these pages and try to deny such evidence. No scepticism is possible except the scepticism of insincerity.

At Bellevue Hospital in New York, a man, a victim of drink, his body broken, his mind enfeebled, his character destroyed, his soul lost, by his last friend forsaken, humanly speaking without remedy, without hope, was declared publicly by the most authoritative physicians of the day to be a hopelessly incurable alcoholic, whose only prospect was an early death by drink. On this man medical science said its last word,

In the streets of New York, these mere ashes of a man were picked up by the Salvation Army. Our offcers may not be scientists, but, as proved in a multitude of cases, they wield a power which surpasses all science. They surrounded the man, body, mind and soul, with the Love of God. And the Love of God is Omnipotence.

Point blank, science was challenged by faith. Were the scientists right in saying that the man could not be saved, or was he to be saved despite this verdict?

6 FOREWORD

It was veritably a trial by fire. At the penitent form, there was a terrible struggle. But the sacrifice on Calvary of Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost, was the victory. The man—I knew him well— was released from his bondage, restored to his family, re-established in business, and became the saviour of countless others whose wrecked lives were as hopeless as his own.

We have only admiration for science. We fully recognize the wondrous discoveries and inventions of uplift and helpfulness that human knowledge and scientific research have given to the world. We praise God for them. But we do contend that the efficiency which comes of knowledge has not superseded the gospel which is all victorious in Divine Love.

The limit of men’s power is to breathe into our brain the message of their mind; this Christ breathes into our soul the essence of Himself. He passes like a flame through our nature and leaves us glowing with spiritual vitality. This we have proved in numerous cases, as in the story of this book. Religion awakens faculties long since dead; opens eyes to the beholding of things more wondrous than shining worlds can tell, or knowledge ever reveal. The lights of intellect, of learning, of science, fade out like feeble stars in the glory of this new light. It is in this gospel that we glory, for it is the power of God unto salvation.

The puny streams at which this man sought to slake the thirst of his parched soul were forgotten in the infinite sea of life all about him. Broken reeds, that left him bruised for the leaning, were discarded for that unshortened Hand that lifted him from the awful depth into which he had fallen, high above all sin and all sin’s sorrow.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE who recently asked the question of Henry F., Milans. :

“With all my soul, I’m one!”

That answer gave the title to this biography.

The virility of Christianity as a religion, surrounded and challenged by a score of other religions, stands or falls with its ability or inability to perform miracles in the lives of its adherents.

We go even further, and say that the miracle is one of the greatest and most convincing arguments which Christianity possesses. Statements of belief are not proofs; creeds cannot be brought in as evidence. Morality has certain powers, education can accomplish much; but the religion that wins must be more than a code of ethics, or an accumulation of creeds, or abstract statements.

The results of sin are everywhere apparent. Men and women whom we see every day confess that they are the victims of the enslaving power of evil habit, whose chains they cannot of themselves break. And before such a condition of things every human agency stands, admittedly helpless. A miracle is required. And human powers do no miracles.

Pseudo-scientists speak glibly of the “miracles of science’’ in trying to belittle the claims of Christianity. But these so-called miracles are simply discoveries—wonderful discoveries, it is true, but only discoveries nonetheless —that are found to be thoroughly in line with natural

D O you believe in miracles?” It was a sceptic

8 AUTHOR’S PREFACE laws. The real scientist never refers to his findings as “miracles.” For science does no miracle.

Horace warns the tragedian not to bring a god on the stage unless there is an entanglement worthy of a god. Sin has tangled, desperately tangled, the lives of men. Human powers have sought to straighten things out, but have succeeded only in adding to the confusion of knots. Here is a situation that calls for Divine interference.

We need a miracle!

And we need one today. It is not enough that Moses brought water from a rock, or that the sun stood still at Joshua’s command, or that the Red Sea divided, or that Elijah went to Heaven in a chariot of fire. Nor is it enough that Jesus made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, the graves to open, the Magdalene pure and the sinful to sin no more. For an up-to-date age we must have an up-to-date example of God’s power. We insist that His Power is unchanging. But is it? What proof have we to offer to our modern Thomases to whom eyesight and finger-touch are essential to belief ?

Is the day of miracles past? Must we be forever pointing to past ages for the evidence of our faith? Has Christianity grown impotent with age? In the long battle with sin has the religion of our fathers become tottering, senile, decrepit .. . an enfeebled and pitiful maladroit on the battlefield of life? Has Christianity, weighed in the balances of modernity, been found wanting?

Not a few would answer “yes” to those questions, and it would be the honest expression of their conviction.

In the minds of many thinking persons there is a residuum of prosaic matter-of-factness, of a need to touch and to see, which verbal proofs can never quite satisfy. In recognizing that, are we arriving at the cause of the unattractiveness of the Christian church today? Perhaps

AUTHOR’S PREFACE 9 in trying to be human enough, we have become insufficiently divine. A religion robbed of the supernatural element is an insipid thing. Spineless Christianity, untouched by any sign of divinity, will not attract many adherents.

Today must be the day of miracles!

General William Booth doubtless was wiser than many give him credit for in urging his officers to “Go for the worst!” The surest way to prove a religion’s efficacy is to try it on the impossibles, the incurables. If it works with them, it will work with any.

So, while clever and learned preachers ascend high pulpits to expound delightful aphorisms and frozen abstractions to empty pews, little groups of Salvationists stand on the street corners of the world and above the roar and rattle of traffic sing “There is Power, wonderworking Power, in the Blood” to sizable groups of hungry humanity. Their dependence is not on sheepskins or certificates. Their authority is the human miracle of redemption, once saved at the drum-head or altar-rail, and now standing forth to tell how it happened... his logic the compelling logic of a changed life.

That the day of miracles is not past, we offer as Twentieth Century evidence this biography of Henry F. Milans.

Biographies, as a rule, are stories of dignified achievement. If there have been faults and sins—and, be it said, it would be difficult to discover a life without these —they are carefully hidden behind a smoke screen of praise for worthy deeds. But in order to illustrate the depths to which God’s power will go, this story tells of sin’s ravages as well as of God’s renewings.

No attempt shall be made, however, to parade lurid details of underworld life, after the manner of “‘confession” stories, for the entertainment of the simply curious.

Ae) AUTHOR’S PREFACE

It is possible to make a story of this kind so vivid that it will defeat its own purposes. Distrust and loathing may be aroused rather than belief and faith.

The reader will readily understand what it means to the subject of this biography to have his life thus exploited. He is now a successful business man. He has hundreds of friends and business associates who have no idea that he has ever been other than heis now ... clean, respected, successful. His life before conversion may be extremely interesting to us, but to him it is something he would gladly forget. It is a dreadful nightmare which he consented to give out to the world solely because he believes it may help, bless, or strengthen someone.

We repeat, this is a story of a miracle. And sin is no miracle. There’s nothing remarkable about degradation, nothing captivating about filth. The re-birth and re-making of Henry F. Milans by a loving God is far more important than the depths to which he sank. ‘To the majority of persons there is much more attraction in love and sunshine and happiness and decency than there is in the moral blackness and hidden depravity to which men and women are capable of sinking. In salvation lies the miracle . . . and, we believe, the greater interest.

The author has tried to tell this great story in all its wonderful simplicity. In it is not a line of fiction. Though overcome at times with the irresistible romance of his subject, and pleading guilty to an oft-recurring temptation to surrender to extravagances of a troublesome imagination (it is human nature to want to help out the marvellous), the temptation to fictionize has been successfully overcome.

And, altogether apart from the way in which it is written—poor at best—we believe the reader will find this story even more interesting than fiction, The narrator of

AUTHOR’S PREFACE IL fiction would be clever indeed to conceive a plot whose situations possess more of romance, pathos and tragedy than does this story drawn from actual life.

The life of Henry F. Milans is a life of extremes, and in extremes is interest. We hear of few lives that have so compassed the dimensions of human experience as does this one.

Most lives, if traced with chalk on a chart, would describe, more or less, a straight line. With the exception of a steady progress upward or downward, the chalk would move mainly on the level. But this life’s line would start at the bottom of the chart, go up at rather a steep angle, hover there for a time, and then drop down—almost straight down to far below its starting point. Then it would rise again steadily, steadily, more slowly, but steadily and without variation, until it reached the top—and continue on and on, never again wavering for a fraction of an inch.

This story is not intended as a preachment; we tire of sermons. Nor is it set forth as the affirmative side of a debate, argument is often futile. It is first and last a testimony. And just as there is no sermon so virile, no argument so convincing as the living, pulsating embodiment of a thing, so we offer just the facts of the miracle itself.

Let it be remembered that Henry F. Milans is now a miracle of twenty years’ standing. His experience has stood the test of the years. He has outgrown the swaddling clothes of the novice and has passed through the adolescence of the probate. He has attained his Christian maturity.

He is of age. What better then, that his experience be allowed to speak for itself?

C. W. H.