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All Rights Reserved By HDM For This Digital Publication Copyright 1999 Holiness Data Ministry Duplication of this CD by any means is forbidden, and copies of individual files must be made in accordance with the restrictions stated in the B4Ucopy.txt file on this CD. * * * * * * * GOD AT THE SCRAP HEAPS By Henry F. Milans Published by The Salvation Army, Inc. Printed Book Copyright, 1945, By The Salvation Army, Inc. Printed in the United States of America The story of Henry F. Milans, O.F., has been told by Clarence Hall in "Out of the Depths". For reasons that must be obvious, fictitious names have been used in some instances in these stories. If any should prove to be that of another person, its selection is purely coincidental. This book is manufactured in accord with orders issued by the War Production Board for conserving paper and other material. * * * * * * * No Evidence of a Current Copyright for the Printed Book Found During searches performed upon the Library of Congress database on 09/09/98 did not reveal any evidence of a current copyright for this publication. * * * * * * * Digital Edition 04/28/99 By Holiness Data Ministry * * * * * * * CONTENTS Foreword by General George L. Carpenter The Author's Purpose The Theme 01 -- The Half Cannot Be Told 02 -- Hands Around the World 03 -- Prodigal and Elder Brother Saved 04 -- The Little Old Candy Man 05 -- Shouting the Truth 06 -- "Salvation Bill" 07 -- As a Little Child 08 -- A Profane Challenge 09 -- Surgery and Salvation 10 -- A Sinful Sister's Devotion 11 -- Out of the Prize Ring 12 -- The Greater Physician 13 -- Science Again Fails 14 -- Down in the Dust 15 -- God Arouses a City 16 -- God Surprised Them 17 -- In the Open-Air Ring 18 -- Lanny Johnson and His Bear 19 -- He Stood Afar Off 20 -- Fleeing to Jesus 21 -- Through a Stammering Tongue 22 -- Jesus Among the Moonshiners 23 -- Like for Like 24 -- Strange Penitent-forms 25 -- "Oh! I'm in Hell!" 26 -- God Came to the Lumber Piles 27 -- In a Hog-Wallow 28 -- Uniform Stays Killer's Hand 29 -- "Father of Waters" a Shrine 30 -- Up From the Depths 31 -- A Wasted Life Salvaged 32 -- From Jail to Jesus 33 -- Cured of Dope and Drink 34 -- Gratitude Won Him 35 -- Crooked Paths Straightened 36 -- Sober, Reliable, Happy 37 -- A Pathetic Experience 38 -- The Policeman Knew 39 -- The Romance of "Skid Row" 40 -- The General Sees the Bowery * * * * * * * FOREWORD "There is nothing I know of in science or medicine to account for what has happened in his life. It can only be the result of what you in The Salvation Army call a miracle." Such was the public testimony of a medical man who for twenty years had treated one of the characters referred to in this book. The author's story alone provides ample justification for the use of the title. His recovery from the human scrap heap of American life is one of the most wonderful moral and spiritual transformations I have encountered. Moreover, many of the score or more of miracles recorded here are, humanly speaking, the result of the author's personal endeavors among drink and drug addicts. Just as we have seen scrap materials turned into commodities essential to the work of the nation, here we see how human waste has been transformed into material of true worth to mankind. These records bear witness to the Salvationist's faith for the worst. We believe that God cares for the soul of every man, and that He works through loving hearts to restore hope in the desolate and the despairing. I welcome this grand testimony to the power of God operating through human instruments, and I am confident that it will quicken in many a stronger faith in the power of Christ who came "to seek and to save that which was lost." General George L. Carpenter London, England February 6, 1945 * * * * * * * THE AUTHOR'S PURPOSE While this book is necessarily built around activities peculiar to The Salvation Army, it is the sole aim of the writer to emphasize the power of God to transform sinful lives. To do this convincingly, I have sought out some of the so-called "worst sinners" who have come under my personal observation or influence in recent years. These are submitted in evidence to illumine the high point of our preaching: "He is able to save to the uttermost." Human degradation and moral filth are not attractive to look upon. Why take the cover off the cesspool and open it for clean people to look at? This is done because Christian people ought to know of these conditions, and be awakened to a realizing sense of the power of God's saving grace -- of which they may be strangely ignorant. It is a spiritual obligation of the Christian who claims to be a follower of the Christ to "know how the other half lives." It is an even more pressing obligation for the Christian to do something about it. That Christian must be callous indeed who cannot shudder to see other human beings, also made in the image of God, who were once fine and decent and self-respecting, become so filthy and broken that even their own people do not longer recognize them. It is a poor escape for us to set down these victims of habit as wholly lost and beyond any help. Every line in these pages disproves this. And we Christians claim to believe that nothing is too hard for God. The record tells us that Jesus chose the worst at Bethesda, in the leper caves, beside the roads, at the well, on the Damascus Road where He turned a murdering Pharisee into the greatest missionary Christianity has ever known. In this our day, from what society calls the scum of civilization, the renewing power of a forgiving God raises up men and women to stand again among those who do worthwhile things in the world. If the scales would only drop from our eyes, we could see all about us those whom God has salvaged from the scrap heaps of life, to once again demand respectful recognition from the world in which they live and move and have their proper place in constructive and uplifting influence. A short time ago I approached a wealthy man with the suggestion that a slum work, in which I am deeply interested, could do more effective work if we had a little more money. Scornfully, my friend said: "I wouldn't give a plugged nickel to help that scum down there. At your advanced age, you are throwing away on them the little vitality you have left." I refuse to believe that I am doing this. Last summer I found myself very deeply engrossed in the work of The Salvation Army's Detroit Bowery Corps. I lived on "Skid Row"; mingled with the outcasts by day; ate where they ate; pleaded with three hundred or more of them every night. Their hopelessness took a grip on my old heart and, as never before, I gave those men my very soul. Pretty well spent by eleven o'clock at night I went to my room, from the windows of which I had a good view of "The Devil's Highway." Then, too overwrought to sleep, I watched men and women, a few sober, most of them drunk -- all of them on the way to hell, sober if they had to be, but drunk as they possibly could be. At those windows I watched and prayed and wept, because all my efforts were defeated by the vile appetites that those poor souls could not master. I had once been like that, but Jesus saved me -- saved me to help them find Him, too. They are my sheep -- it is my task to return them to His fold, where they will find shelter, the oil of healing and the tender care of the Master Shepherd. I'm sure that if Jesus were here among men again He wouldn't say: "They got themselves into it." He'd shout: "Help Me get them out of it!" To this end, and to the glory of God, I pen these stories of vile men and women, reborn in Christ Jesus -- stories which are stranger than fiction because they are true and of God. Henry F. Milans * * * * * * * THE THEME Jesus said: ". A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance with riotous living. "And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. "And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee. And am not worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. "And he arose and came to his father.