The Titanic's Last Hero (4 page)

An eager student of the Bible, Harper devoured the sacred Book. He meditated upon it. He used any commentary that would throw light upon it or that would help him to draw light from it. He yielded himself to its sway. He expounded it. Few could make better use of it than he “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (II Timothy 3:16). Whatever form of doctrine was found in it, he adhered to. This he did tenaciously. He held fast to the instruction it gave him. He esteemed it as his life. Whatever doctrine was not found in the Holy Scriptures, it mattered not how fancifully put, nor by whomsoever it was proclaimed, it found no place with him. “Thus saith the Lord” was his standby.

He stood on the Rock of revelation. Men’s theories to him were sand. God’s Word was rock. He constantly proved its worth, and he was not ashamed to avow his faith in it. He often quoted texts in an impressive way, and men would remember the text he preached from even if they remembered nothing else.

A gentleman in business in Glasgow remembered seeing him get up in a hall in Kilbarchan around 1892, quoting I John 1:7. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” The words
all sin
were repeated by him three times over, each time with growing emphasis. “There’s something in that, lad,” the gentleman said to himself. Most assuredly there was, and in due season that “something” was seen.

EVERY STREET CORNER WAS HIS PULPIT

When God needs a man for his service, He knows where to look for him. He scans the field. He sees the need. He chooses the man. He called Elisha from the plow, Amos from the flock, Peter from his fishing boat on the shores of Galilee, and John Harper from the paper mill. When God puts a man into a berth, nobody can give him his “walking ticket.” Room will usually be made for him when the gift and calling of God are manifest, and if no room can be made for him in the church until he is proved and tested and his fitness seen, God will find for him a sphere of service in which to manifest the divine call.

In service for God, laborers are always needed, men who are willing to toil and suffer, to spend and be spent, to bear reproach and endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. John Harper was a laborer—a laborer together with God (I Corinthians 3:9), a man who put heart and soul and strength and mind into every bit of service that he rendered. At the outset of his career, he dreamed of no church pulpit. If he found an empty street corner while he was out and about, he made full use of it. All around the district where he lived, after receiving the special enduement of power from on high, he went preaching the story of redeeming grace. Bridge of Weir, Kilbarchan, Elderslie, Johnstone, Linwood, and elsewhere would find him at night after his day’s work was over, heralding forth with youthful hopefulness the story of God’s love to men. His heart was all aglow. He did one thing then, and he did it to the end—he labored to bring men from sin to God.

This is work that must go on: “The story must be told.” Wanderers from God must be followed, warned, pleaded with, and prevailed upon to break with sin and follow Christ. If one of God’s servants is taken away, somebody ought to be ready at the divine call to step in and fill the gap. Not necessarily to serve in the same sphere, but to keep alive the same testimony. The number of witnesses must not be thinned down. The world needs the gospel today as much as ever. The heart of God beats as warmly as ever. The blood of Jesus is as efficacious as ever. The Spirit of God is as much present as ever, yet—alas!—it may be that He is so deeply grieved that His power is less in evidence than it would be. There must be work while it is day. This is the day of salvation. The night cometh when no man can work.

“IT IS A GREAT THING TO BE SENT FROM GOD”

After five or six years of earnest, consistent gospel service, toiling in the mill during the day and in the rural district at night, pleading with men to prepare to meet their God, the Reverend E.A. Carter of the Baptist Pioneer Mission in London “discovered” the young village preacher and set him free to devote his whole time and energy to the work so dear to his heart. Under the auspices of the Mission, a Baptist cause was begun in Govan, one of Glasgow’s neighboring burghs, where there was plenty of elbow room for aggressive work.

For some time mission services were carried on, and then a church was formed. The opening service was conducted by Pastor J.B. Frame, and the next day a sermon was preached by Principal MacGregor of Dunoon Baptist College on the words, “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” The text may have provoked a smile, but it was very suitable for the occasion. In that hall there was present a man who beyond all doubt, as after results proved, was sent of God, and his name was John. It is a great thing to be sent from God. The credentials he had with him were the signs that God had already wrought by him. He had no others. But these were sufficient to encourage the belief that God had sent him.

Though young in years, he already had a creditable record behind him. The seal of God had been set on his service in the scattered districts where he had witnessed a good confession, and now in the midst of a teeming population, it was believed he would be more useful than ever. These hopes were not belied. When God sends a man, He supplies all needed grace. No good thing does He withhold from them who walk uprightly in the path of service to which He calls them. Men sent from God with a gospel message are made the custodians of a power that converts sinners from the error of their ways.

However, if men run before God sends them, such results will not appear. In Jeremiah’s day, God made complaint through him of those who spoke “a vision out of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:16). Of them he said, “I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear My words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings” (Jeremiah 23:21-22). This is a description of un-sent men. Their message is from their own heart. It is not from God. They stand not in God’s counsel. They turn none of the people from evil ways and evil doings.

A God-sent man will speak forth the word of God. Not a vision of his own heart will he declare. The result will be that men will turn from their evil ways and bow in penitence and adoration at the feet of Him, the once-crucified but now-gloried Savior. Under John Harper, men turned from their evil ways and evil doings. They forsook uncleanness and followed after holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.

It may have seemed a matter of small moment in the eyes of some, the setting apart of that young man for gospel ministry that day. But hundreds upon hundreds have reason to bless God that ever they saw his face or heard his voice. For about eighteen months he toiled incessantly in Govan, plodding, praying, preaching, pleading, touching the hearts and lives of some with his earnest appeals, and gathering about him a small company of men and women who saw in him the marks of a God-sent man.

“PREACHING FOR ALL HE WAS WORTH”

In the early days of his work in Govan, one of the members of an evangelistic band was sent as a deputy from the city to speak at a mission service in Govan. When he got to Govan Cross, he saw a young man standing there “preaching for all he was worth.”

“Who is that?” he asked of a man who was with him.

“That is the Baptist Mission preacher” was the answer.

The impression made that night and deepened afterwards by further acquaintance with the young man who was preaching for all he was worth, as he has expressed it, led him into fellowship in the church when it was formed and made him ever afterwards one of Mr. Harper’s staunchest friends.

After a year and a half of service in Govan, a move was made to Gordon Halls, Paisley Road. Here on September 5, 1897, a church was formed of twenty-five members, some of whom had come with him from Govan. The church was named Paisley Road Baptist Church, a name it bore for many years. (Eventually, after Harper lost his life in the Atlantic, it was renamed the Harper Memorial Church.)

Men and women of all ages gathered round the young preacher, and with him as leader, work was carried on in no formal manner. At all the inside meetings, increasing effort was made to win men to Christ. Outside, meetings were held on street corners, at the gates of public works at the meal hours, and wherever a hearing could be obtained. The net was cast on every side. The zeal and enthusiasm of the workers seemed boundless. Souls were won, the cause prospered, the membership was increased. The faith which worketh by love and is radiant with hopefulness animated the workers and led them on from victory to victory over the forces of unbelief.

After four years in the Gordon Halls, a site was secured in Plantation district, and an iron building capable of seating five or six hundred people was put up. To it as a center the work was transferred, and within its walls marvelous things were seen of God’s saving power. A continuous stream of pardoning mercy poured itself through the services, and after a while the building had to be enlarged to make room for the increasing demands of the work. It is situated in the midst of a teeming working-class population. No one, no matter how closely associated with the work which was carried on, could ever know anything fully of the amount of good that was accomplished by Mr. Harper’s ministry.

“Yon Man, Mr. Harper, Was Preaching at the Street Corner, and I Trusted the Lord”

The superintendent of a large evangelistic hall in Glasgow was visiting an old man in High Street, fully two miles away from Paisley Road Church. The old man, who was in his eightieth year, was asked if he was trusting Jesus. At once he answered in the affirmative. On being asked how long it had been since he trusted the Savior, he said, “Nine years.”

“What age were you, then?”

“Just turned seventy.”

“And how did it come about?”

“Well, I was passing Plantation, and yon man, Mr. Harper, was preaching at the street corner, and I trusted the Lord there and then.”

In and around the district in which the church was situated, there were many, many homes that were blessed, brightened, and beautified by the preaching of the Lord’s servant, whose sad end so many mourned. The church that was formed with twenty-five members had a membership of nearly five hundred when, after thirteen years of service, John Harper left in September 1910 to take up the duties of the pastorate in Walworth Road Church in London. The farewell meeting was a most memorable one. The iron building, seating about nine hundred, was quite inadequate to take in all who desired to attend, and the use of a large U.F. Church in the neighborhood was kindly granted for the occasion. It was crowded to excess.

A CONSUMING EARNESTNESS

Harper was always an earnest preacher. Never a trifler. Never a mere retailer of addresses. He was ever a man who had his gaze fixed on the need of precious souls. During the later years of his ministry in Glasgow, his preaching seemed to take on a higher note. There was a consuming earnestness that grew with the passing years. His preaching power on occasion was something extraordinary. This was not merely when appealing to the unsaved to be reconciled to God, but also when exhorting the children of God to higher things. Without a doubt, as those who knew him well can testify, the passionate, vehement longing that found expression in his public utterances had its well-spring in the seasons of prolonged supplication to which he gave himself. He was preeminently a man of prayer. Barely one month before his end, when in Glasgow on a visit, he spent half an hour with several people over a cup of tea, and the last word they remembered him saying was that the need of today was a deeper prayer life.

His brief ministry at Walworth Road was significantly blessed of God. Progress was made. The church membership increased. Everything looked hopeful. New ties of interest were formed. New friendships were made. Then came the invitation to conduct special services in Moody Church in Chicago during the past winter. References to that notable work appear in the later pages of this volume.

When he returned to London in January, it was not thought that he would agree to pay a return visit quite so soon as he arranged to do. But he was going off “early in April,” he said a fortnight before he sailed.

“Why are you going back so early? Surely not again to conduct special services?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I am going to conduct the regular services in the Moody Church and speak at conferences and other gatherings elsewhere.”

Full of hope, he set out on the ill-fated steamer and met his demise on the way. But, is that what we should say? Should we not rather say that he met his Lord on the way?

On that fateful Sunday night, just an hour or two before the
Titanic
struck the iceberg, Harper looked at the sky. Seeing a glint of red in the west, said, “It will be beautiful in the morning.” Yes, so it would, but the beauty that would break on him was not that which he alluded to when he spoke these words. The beauty of the Savior would fill his vision.