THE SABBATH-DAY.

THE
SABBATH-DAY. I.T-5 The most godly occupant of a workshop will be the least surprised to hear us say, Next to the Bible, prize the Sabbath-day, and let no man rob you of its sacred rest. You will thus find it a tower of strength to the soul.

While we look around us, we everywhere see the blessed results of the Sabbath rest when properly employed, the woeful consequences of its sacred hours encroached on, whether by the drudgery of toil or the debasement of licentiousness. See that home where domestic comfort dwells, where well-ordered decorum reigns, and where the parent and the child have alike their part assigned to them from day to day. Be sure that the Sabbath is there observed; the very peace which prevails around you in that abode, is a portion of the Sabbath itself spread over the week.15

But see that other home where squalid wretchedness, perhaps unholy riot, reigns. See children neglected, see character lost, see poverty bringing woe in its train—a woe which is gradually rising like an ingulfingT-6 tide upon the inmates, till at last they are steeped to the lip in misery. See a wife worse than widowed amid the brutalities of that home; or, more degrading still, see her uniting with her guilty partner in godless revelry, till, like the meeting of fires, the two together waste and consume every vestige of what is pure, and lovely, and of good report. Now, while you gaze upon that scene, be sure that the sacred hours of the Sabbath are disallowedT-7 there; they are squandered in licentiousness, and perverted into the means of ruin. In brief, the Sabbath is there trodden under foot. The ungodliness of the week grows deeper and darker on the Lord’s own day, because the abuse of the best things turns them into the worst; and accumulated crime, like a swollen river, sweeps the inmates at last, some to prison, some to an hospital, some to exile, some to death.

GALILEO’S FIRMNESS.

And these, and a thousand similar cases, warn us in the workshop to prize the day of rest. It frees the sons and daughters of toil for a little from the burdens of earth. It braces their mind for the struggle with sin throughout the week. It enables them to clothe themselves with the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left. It affords an opportunity for anchoring the soul to the Rock of Ages. If employed as it ought to be, that day, which is not ours, but the Lord’s, who claims a seventh portion of our time as peculiarly his own, will arm the mind for meekly but resolutely putting away at once the wiles and the assaults of the godless. “I know in whom I have believed,” may be the reply of the godly artizan to all the gainsayers; and he may thus proceed upon his way as a believer, as unmoved either by the scorn or the assault of the infidel or the licentious, GALILEO’S
FIRMNESS. as Galileo was unshaken amid all the persecutions of popery, when he told the world the true theory of the skies. In a word, with the Bible open before us, and the mind of God for our standard there, he is at once the strongest and the happiest Christian who has best learned to practise what John taught by his example, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.”

THE CHURCH OF THE OUTCAST.

Now, we put that counsel first, because unless it be religiously acted on, all else will be vain. At the same time, we are now in circumstances for putting this matter to a practical proof upon a large scale. THE
CHURCH
OF THE
OUTCAST. In various cities of the empire, there are churches formed well-nigh exclusively of those who, a few years ago, had no man who cared for their souls, and who had not learned to care for themselves. They were therefore, familiar with sin. It was their sport, or rather their daily work, to do mischief. Some of them were at once corrupt and corrupting. But out of these very souls there have been formed the goodly spectacle of earnest worshippers, counted by hundreds, and characterized by all the aspects of devoutness.

And, what is it that has achieved these results? How does it happen that instead of the thorn the fir-tree has come up; instead of the brier, the myrtle? and how does the desert blossom as the rose? Who will hesitate to reply, that had it not been for the Sabbath, with all that is blessed and all that is hallowing in its exercises, such effects could never have been produced? From day to day, nay, from hour to hour, pains and prayer were needed. From hour to hour, the men of faith who put their hands to that work, had to depend on the blessing which comes from God only. But these blessings came in rich abundance on the Lord’s own day; and now it can be said of this man and that man, formerly an outcast from the decencies of life, that he is born of the Spirit, clothed and in his right mind, by the Spirit’s blessing on his truth proclaimed. In the light of eternity, such men are ennobled.

TRUE NOBILITY.

Now, what raised them from their degradation, is yet more able to keep us from falling; and sure we are, that were there but one man in a workshop who knew how to prize and profit by the Lord’s day, he could, single-handed, keep his ground at once against taunts, against malice, and against all persecution. TRUE
NOBILITY. On that day our God leads us, if we will let him, into his pavilion; He teaches us where to hide from “the strife of tongues,” and it is thus that true nobility is imparted even to him

II. Where it is our daily business to earn our bread by the sweat of our brows in the workshop, it should be one of our first and most resolute endeavours, to make sure that the truth which Jesus brought from heaven to earth is deeply planted in our hearts and souls.—There are tender plants which thrive and bloom, or bear luxuriant fruit, if sheltered well, but which wither and die if exposed to the biting blast for a night; and there is a parallel to that in religion. In kindly or in genial exposures it may thrive, and put forth its blossoms or bear fruit; but in many a workshop it is exposed to the rudest blasts that blow.

INFIDELITY—

INFIDELITY— One would try to crush it; he hates it because it will not let him sin. Like that profligate man who wished Keith’s Evidences from Prophecy destroyed, “because they were so convincing;” many cry, Away with the Word of God, for the same reason that the Jews cried, Away, away with the Son of God—because it rebukes their iniquity.

ITS ROOT.

And another wishes the Word of God put down, because he remembers its effects upon his soul in earlier years, when a godly parent tried to impress it on the conscience and the heart. He has now cast these instructions behind his back. He has learned to sin with a high hand; and as the sight or the sounds of the truth re-awaken his old concern, he is eager to drive it from his presence. The very sight is a sting to his conscience. A single clause may be like a death-knell, and that man hates it with a perfect hatred. ITS
ROOT. That is the root of much of the infidelity which is now so rife—not the want of proof, but the evil heart of unbelief; not mere ignorance, but the preference of sin to holiness.

Or a third among our fellow-workmen may be one who has known some signal hypocrite. That pretender sought, perhaps, to promote some sinister object by a religious profession. Perhaps he prayed; perhaps he was a reprover of other men’s sins; perhaps he was an eager advocate for sound doctrine, and would endure no departure from it—yet, after all, he may be unmasked as a mere pretender. It may be discovered at length that he was all the while living in sin, concealed, but long continued, such as to indicate that his religion was a pretence, and his strictness that of a Pharisee. Now, having discovered the hollowness of that man’s pretensions, some gladly rush to the conclusion that all religion is a pretence; they greedily grasp at the conviction, because it favours their own licentiousness, that “there is none righteous, no, not one.” Religion in every form is therefore regarded as an offence, or discarded as an imposture.

Or, in the workshop beside us, we may find some other man who affects to be scientific. He knows a little of Geology, and is able to overthrow Moses and the Bible. He is acquainted with the secrets of Chronology, and thinks that there are far older histories—older by many thousands of years—than the records of Scripture pretend to be. Or that man has heard a little of Ethnography, and because he is ignorant, he thinks it can be proved that all the dwellers on the earth did not spring from Adam and Eve. Or perhaps his learning takes the direction of tracing the Vestiges of Creation, and he concludes that man can create—generally, that creatures can make each other, and that God is therefore unnecessary. These, and similar pretensions of science, falsely so called, may have taken hold of some minds around us, and amid the multitude of such assailants, who are bold, as streams are brawling, in proportion to their shallowness, it may not be always easy to be steadfast and unmoveable.

But to render us unmoveable—to arm us against such assailants—nothing will suffice, till Christ dwell in our hearts by faith; till his truth be our property; till the Saviour be a Saviour, and pardon a pardon, to us. A religion which has merely been handed down to us by our fathers, will not stand the rude shock of such assaults as have been named. We need to be rooted and grounded in the truth. We require a better and a deeper teaching than man’s. It must be a fixed conviction in our soul, that religion does not consist in observing mere forms or seasons, however devoutly. Christ must dwell in the heart, just as the blood must be in the body, and circulate there as a vitalizing power.

THE PANOPLY.

On this subject we cannot be too urgent. THE
PANOPLY. While there is absolutely no panoply but truth, our convictions need to be reinforced by the feeling, that it is not toil that degrades man; it is not hard labour that ranks him among the lower orders; it is sin. Adam, in innocence, had to work, and that did not degrade him. But he sinned, and that laid him in the miry clay. Paul the apostle had to work, and felt no dishonour in it. The only dishonour which he knew, was rebellion against God; and if we would resist the temptations which assail us from without or from within, we need to make sure that we are on the Lord’s side; that his truth is in our hearts; that it keeps watch in our souls, ready to sound an alarm, and summon us to action against every enemy. Without that, surrounded as we are in the workshop with clouds of enemies, we shall be like the willow wand before the blast, and driven of the wind and tossed; but with the grace of God in the soul, we may be strong in the Lord and the power of his might; we may beat back our assailants—some have won them to their cause. No power but truth, we repeat, will ever make us steadfast. Some invest our “cottage homes” with the attractions of poetry, and tell that

But it is not poetic embellishments—it is nothing factitious in man’s lot—it is the simple truth of God uniting to Christ, that elevates or ennobles the soul.

BAPTISMAL SUPERSTITION.

There are some dark-souled tribes in Africa, whose whole religion consists in charms and incantations. By means which we need not tarry to describe, they try to ward off what they reckon evil, or to obtain what they reckon good. Now, strange as it may appear, that folly is native to the mind of man. The very same tendency which makes a degraded savage trust to a charm, makes some who are not savages trust to rites, and ceremonies, and forms. One man concludes that he and his children are born again, or made the children of God, BAPTISMAL
SUPERSTITION. by the mere fact that they were baptized—that is, by a ceremony. Another thinks that his soul is right, because he worships among Christians. A third concludes that all is well, because the sacrament of the Supper has been administered to him; that rite is to many a soul what the extreme unction of popery is—a charm, an incantation, and nothing more. Now, while that is the only form of religion in man’s soul, he will prove the ready victim of the snares and entanglements of the workshop. If the truth of God be not rooted in the heart, no man can stand. We repeat it, and repeat it—there is only one power that can either make us steadfast or keep us so—the grace of God in truth; and the man who confides in aught else for conquest, is already tottering to his fall.

OUR ALLIES.

OUR
ALLIES. Observe, however, we disown no right ally in this holy warfare. All knowledge that deserves the name—science as far as it can be acquired—should be acquired by every occupant of the workshop, and some memorable examples of success in its culture could be named. These, and all that can either strengthen or expand the mind, should be cultivated to the uttermost of our power; but with all these, the mind may become an easy prey to baseless delusions, unless the wisdom which comes from above be our guide. While we hold our convictions firmly, we must hold them as God’s truth, and in God’s strength, or they will soon be wrung from our grasp. To be self-reliant is in some respects a duty which we owe to ourselves; but yet to trust to our own resources, our own wisdom or strength, is the high way to shame and confusion at the last. We are prepared to resist and to triumph only when we have on the whole armour of God. If we try to realize a Saviour’s love, we have a sure defence; but whatever would withdraw us from that holy influence, whether it be the deceitful heart within, or an ensnaring world without, is just like the smoke from the abyss—it is loaded with darkness and death to the soul.

HUMAN DEVICES.

HUMAN
DEVICES. There is a canoe floating lazily on the waters of the St. Lawrence. All is bright on either side; and forests which nothing but the wild beast or the tempest has disturbed for centuries, wave in the plenitude of summer richness. In that canoe there is a boatman asleep, and the gentle gliding of his little craft is fitted rather to rock than to rouse him. Gradually, however, the river flows more rapidly. The boat, with its sleeping cargo, feels the suction, and now rushes with increasing velocity along. Its agitation at length rouses the sleeper, but it is too late. His skiff feels the resistless power of the current; and, amid wild gesticulations, he plunges into an abyss where his very fragments are destroyed. And similar results are seen in the moral world, when men permit themselves to be drawn within the suction of that current which is sweeping so many down to ruin for ever.

SECULARISM.

Were it needful further to enforce this subject, we might refer to the ever-varying forms of delusion which heady and selfish men often obtrude on the notice of their fellow-workmen. Even in the course of a single generation we may count scheme after scheme—Utopian reforms—charters—new distributions of property or power—all designed to enlist men’s sympathies in favour of some dream-like project, only to plunge its abettors into a deeper abyss than before. SECULARISM. The most recent of these assumes the name of Secularism. It has for its object the abolition of Christianity, and all that relates to the soul. One of its leading maxims is, “The precedence of the duties of this life over those pertaining to another world;” and, by the advocacy of such opinions, the system and its supporters adapt themselves to all that is low and grovelling in the fallen soul. They beguile the unwary, and make an easy conquest of those who have no religion but that of their country or their fathers. Or another dogma of the system is, that “the atonement of Christ is unsatisfactory as a scheme, and immoral as an example;” and by such tenets men would tear up the foundation on which the hopes of mortality repose: they proudly but blindly sport with their own ruin, and glory in lowering themselves to the level of the beasts which perish.

THE HEAVENLY ANTIDOTE.

Now, against such satanic schemes, there is no safeguard but one—the truth as it is in Jesus, planted in the heart by his Spirit, and tended there by his grace. Our religion, or what we call religion, will perish like flax before the flame, when such deceivers assail, unless we have felt the truth in its power, and know, in spite of all opposition, that it can guide, can purify, can bless the soul. What more congenial to man than to be told that he need not care much about his soul? What can throw open the door for indulgence so widely as to be assured that we need not prepare for hereafter—that earth is all? What can more perfectly pamper the selfishness of man than to be told that “spiritual dependence may lead to material destruction?” Hence the danger of such bold blasphemies. They find an ally, and often a ready welcome, in the heart of man; THE
HEAVENLY
ANTIDOTE. and hence also the necessity of getting hold and keeping hold of the heavenly antidote to all such delusions. That antidote is the truth—the truth of God felt in the heart, and guiding the life; and with that in our possession, we repeat in our possession, we may humbly take up the great Reformer’s eulogy, and say, “I will not fear the face of man.” God and man, this world and the next, are alike provided for in the Word; and when we learn to welcome all God’s revelation, we shall be guided into every good and holy way.

THE COWARDICE OF SIN.

III. A third counsel for our guidance in the workshop is, briefly—Be consistent. Never forget that the man who tries to be a Christian to-day, and complies with the enticements of sinners to-morrow, is one who is easily despised. The ungodly are lynx-eyed to mark his inconsistency, and prompt enough to pour contempt upon him. A single rash act, a single rash word, may inflict a wound upon the soul, or a blemish upon the character, from which it will not easily recover; nay, like a moral palsy, it may strike us with weakness and timidity for life. If we would be Christians at all, we must be Christians always. Then by the grace of God we are safe, and it would be pleasant to tell of some who have thus resisted the tide of iniquity which broke against them in the workshop, or silenced the abundance of abuse.—THE
COWARDICE
OF SIN.The sinner is, by a necessary law, a coward. He fears God, though he will not own it; he fears conscience, and tries to trample it out as a dangerous spark; he fears perdition, though he seems to be stout against it; and, moreover, he fears a humble, living, consistent Christian, though he pretends only to despise him. The sinner, we repeat, is a coward, by a necessary law. Terror is part of the wages of sin; and though sinners in crowds be courageous, alone they are timid and discomposed. They shrink from the glance of a good man’s eye; in their secret heart they fear him with a fear which in some cases passes into love.

A MORAL PESTILENCE.

Now, the knowledge of that should make the believer bold and firm. By consistency he will subdue—he may be the means of winning some from the error of their ways. He will generally find some Aquila with whom to associate as he works. His God will raise up some like-minded companion with whom he can take sweet counsel; and if that believer will seek to keep alive in his memory, in the workshop and everywhere, the conviction, that there is only one really formidable thing in all God’s world, that is sin, he will be made more than a conqueror. Swayed by that deep conviction, the occupant of the workshop may often be vexed, as Lot was in Sodom; but, appealing to the Wonderful, the Counsellor, strength will be supplied according to his day, while conscience is kept unsullied and at peace. The squalid victim of sin will be a beacon. A MORAL
PESTILENCE. The bold blasphemer will be an object of utmost pity. The Secularist, and all who give earth precedence to heaven, or man to God, or sin to holiness, will be shunned as a moral pestilence; and the felt necessity of being much at the fountain, amid all these sources of contamination, may turn the workshop into a Bethel. We could tell of more than one instance in which that has been the case.

ANALOGIES.

IV. As it is not our object to enter into details, but mainly to submit such general suggestions as Christian wisdom may enable men to apply as occasion requires, we need scarcely say—At once, and resolutely, put away all the sinful compliances which may be common in the business which you pursue. There are usages, there are expressions, there are pretexts in many departments which pure principle would at once put down, and let the workman of integrity disown such things. The commonness of a sin only makes it worse; and instead of pleading that as a reason for compliance, it is, in truth, a reason for our instant recoil. And never take up the words which are common on the lips of some, that they may cover their iniquity, although the veil be thin: “An honest man cannot live now—that is, we must employ finesse, or fraud, in order to obtain a livelihood, or clear our way through the world.” Such a statement is a slander against the truth; it is dishonouring to the God of truth, and the very reverse of it is true. ANALOGIES. But write it deep upon the conscience, that “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and strife,” and be assured that godliness has the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come. Be poor, but be not unprincipled. Sit down to very humble fare, rather than harbour an angry conscience. When sinners entice you, do not consent, whatever be the bribe. Holding fast your integrity, in the strength of your God, he will redeem his promise, “Bread shall be provided, and water made sure,” and “Better is the little that a good man hath, than the riches of many wicked.”

Would you struggle for your life were you suddenly to fall into a stream or the sea? You would: then will you calmly sink to rise no more for ever, as regards the soul? Would you repel the attack of a robber were he to invade the midnight silence of your home? You would: then with equal earnestness, but in almighty strength, repel the invader—the man that would be the assassin of your soul. Would you refuse to let the oppressor plant his foot on the happy island of your home? You would hasten, I believe, to sweep him from our borders. Then, with equal heroism, defend the freedom which the Son of God bestows—freedom from the bondage of sin, from its pollution and its curse.

TOKENS FOR GOOD.

Nor should it be forgotten for the encouragement of the sons of toil, that there is in our day a gradual approximation of the classes of society. TOKENS
FOR
GOOD. The spreading of education, and the attempts of one class to benefit another, are bringing men more closely together, to link them, as we have seen, in more brotherly concord. There may still be the scowl of defiance from the lawless, and plots on the part of the disaffected, while on the other hand, there are still some remains of a class fast verging to extinction, who would doom the people to hopeless ignorance and toil. But these are nearly obsolete notions, and men are more cordially walking together now, like those who are agreed. In the brief space of a quarter of a century, the hopes of philanthropists once deemed Utopian, have been turned into realities; and while the doctrine of Christ is thus adorned, men’s sorrows are soothed, their souls are blessed.

Many other counsels might be added to those now advanced. We might say—In the workshop avoid all high debate. It never leads to edification; it often occasions the loss both of our temper and our cause. “Be always ready to give to every one that asks it, a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” Be as ready to protest against all that is hostile to the soul and the happiness of man. But contention about religion is often its death; and we would rather say, Hold in your mouth as with a bridle when the wicked are before you. Let the life argue for the Saviour and his cause, far more than the lip. In that way, men will be compelled to take knowledge of you that you have been with Jesus. The life of a Christian is always the most conclusive argument and the most solemn appeal. “Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands,” and let the contentious bite and devour, without retaliation from you.

We might farther say—Be diligent. Above all, be diligent for Christ. It is thus that his people learn to put on armour of proof against all temptation. They redeem the time. They try to do all in the name of Christ, and he becomes like walls and bulwarks round about them. If you will learn to be a “miser of moments,” you may grow rich for eternity.

THE TEMPTER A REPTILE.

THE TEMPTER
A REPTILE. Or we might say—When temptations come, remember that ere the first tempter succeeded, he had to become a reptile; and he that would tempt you is by that act a degraded being. He is to be shunned as an offence; as debased himself, and therefore anxious to debase. Such men may sell their souls for woe, but surely “in vain is the snare set in the sight of any bird—” will you follow the example of a self-destroyer?

Or we might add—Be not deceived by any of the pretexts which cunning men adopt to beguile and ensnare. On the one hand, they flatter the working classes, as if all were idle except the inmates of the workshop; but you know that it is not so. What Paul said to the Colossians concerning his own doings, is true of many still: “I toil, agonizing,” he said, “with the energy of Christ.” On the other hand, men speak of the lower orders as if you who toil were they. But the really low are the men who live in idleness and sin. It is not toil, it is guilt that lowers or degrades us; and that conviction should be rooted in all our minds.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

But enough. Let the men of handicraft and hard labour cling close to the Bible, for it alone can ennoble and purify. Before its light, let all grow pale; before its wisdom, let all appear foolish.—ILLUSTRATIONS. As we approach the mighty Alps, other objects begin to seem small or diminutive; and after our eyes have been familiarized with those majestic masses, what formerly appeared grand seems now reduced to littleness.—Let it be so in the moral world. Before the majestic truth of God, let every human being do obeisance, like the sheaves of his brothers to the sheaf of Joseph; and when we are like-minded with our God, we shall be strong in his strength, and happy with his peace. We cannot be always in his house—our daily toils forbid it; but we should be always in his Spirit; and that is light, that is strength, that is a passport for man to glory.

Upon a subject so full of interest as the moral condition and prospects of those who spend their days in workshops, we should not perhaps be contented with merely announcing general rules, however sound or scriptural they may be. It is commonly supposed that the humble men who are so employed are cut off from the nobler outlets for philanthropy, or from those higher walks in which some move and do great deeds before the world’s view. But no mistake can be more unfounded. The mighty Maker of heaven and earth has debarred no man from doing good, if man himself be inclined; and some of the noblest benefactors of our land or race, have been found among the very classes too commonly supposed to be doomed only to toil. We waive all reference to those who, by their inventions, even while engaged in manual labour, have extended the resources of our empire, and added to the riches of our globe. We pass by those who have risen from among the sons of handicraft to take rank among our lawgivers, our nobles, and other signalized men. We point to only two examples not less illustrious as benefactors than they were humble in their sphere.

HARLAN PAGE.

HARLAN
PAGE. Harlan Page was born at Coventry, in Connecticut, in the year 1791, and was taught by his father the trade of a house-joiner. He received a good common education. For twenty years and more he lived without much concern regarding his soul, but in the year 1813, “the one thing needful” really became an object of earnest pursuit. Such was his anxiety and distress on account of sin, that he had frequently to retire from his work to pray. On journeys he often felt constrained to withdraw to some thicket for a similar purpose; and on one occasion, after he had begun to teach a school, his sense of his lost condition as a sinner became so intense, that he felt that he could not again leave the throne of grace till the controversy with his Maker was closed. There, in the darkness of midnight, and under the guidance, none can doubt, of the Holy Spirit, he consecrated himself to the Redeemer, not merely in the confidence of pardon and acceptance, but with the determination to live and labour to promote His glory in the salvation of the perishing. “When I first obtained hope,” he said on his dying bed, “I felt that I must labour for souls. I prayed, year after year, that God would make me the means of saving some.”

“BEHOLD HE PRAYETH.”

“BEHOLD HE
PRAYETH.” And his prayer was signally answered. Never did Page lose an opportunity of holding up the lamp to souls. By letters, by conversation, by tracts, by prayers, by appeals and warnings, as well as by a holy and an earnest example, did he try to reclaim the wandering or edify the believer. In factories, in schools, and elsewhere, did this mechanic labour, and only the mighty power of grace can explain how one so humble could achieve so much: his life is a speaking comment on the words, “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.” “Our faith in eternal realities is weak,” he cried, “and our sense of duty faint, while we neglect the salvation of our fellow-beings. Let us awake to duty, and while we have a tongue or pen, devote them to the service of the Most High, not in our own strength, but with strong faith and confidence in him.”

LOVE TO SOULS.

LOVE TO
SOULS. Now, the record of this man’s life shows that no day was allowed to pass without something done for the good of others’ souls. What Page mainly aimed at was the conversion of the unconverted; and the extent to which he was honoured may be viewed as at once an encouragement and a reproof. His own soul was all aglow when he heard of one after another brought to the Saviour. While he wept over men’s impenitence, he exulted when he heard they had welcomed the call. He tried to win the young and warn the old, and his pleadings with sinners were sometimes most pathetic. “Shall neither man nor God,” he said to one, “hear from your lips, ‘O my sins, my sins, I fear they will ruin my soul for ever?’ Shall no prayer, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner,’ break from your heart?” “You are now in an awful crisis,” he said to another. “Your eternal all may depend on the course you take. The Lord has taught you by his Spirit that you are a wretched, perishing sinner. You feel that you have no preparation for heaven, and see nothing before you but eternal woe. O, my friend, there is a refuge. The Lord Jesus invites, in melting strains, ‘Look to me, and live; come unto me, and find rest!’ O go to Him now, as you value your precious, your immortal soul.”

A SPIRITUAL HARVEST.

At other times Page was brief and sententious, but solemn. Seeing four youths, for example, on one occasion employed in some thoughtless course, he accosted them, and drove this laconic warning like a nail into their conscience, “Prepare to meet thy God!”—and it was blessed. In a word, he sowed beside all waters, and the increase was proportioned to his faith. All this took place amid bodily weakness and daily toil, insomuch that his ailments obliged him at last to seek a change of occupation, and he for some time taught a school during the winter seasons. One hundred and ninety-five pupils passed through the hands of Page in that character. A
SPIRITUAL
HARVEST. The history of seventy of them is unknown; but of the remaining one hundred and twenty-five, eighty-four are thought to have given evidence of conversion, and six became preachers of the gospel. In another place, fifty-eight were supposed to have been brought to Christ by his instrumentality. Such was the blessing which made him and others rich and added no sorrow.

Nor need we wonder. So intense was the ardour of Page in dealing with souls, that he has been known even in sleep to suppose that he was expostulating with them, and to awake in tears of earnestness and pain. Knowing that every child of the fallen Adam must either be born again, or never see God, he made that the burden of all his endeavours, his prayers, his struggles, and tears. To labour for that became a portion of his very being; and he died as he had lived, beckoning all around him to follow him to be for ever with the Lord.

Here, then, is a man in humble life, without any adventitious aid, without any learning, for many years the occupant of a workshop, yet living, labouring, dying to win souls to Christ. He was, indeed, a sweet savour of Christ wherever he went; and should not the example of Harlan Page summon many in his own sphere to go and do likewise? Does it not prove, that if we have the grace of God in our heart, it is not rank, or wealth, or learning, or power, but a willing mind, and consecration to Christ, his cause and glory, that are required to accomplish great things? Let our artizans imbibe the spirit of Page, and then they may be honoured as he was; it may be inscribed upon their tombstones as it was upon his, “He ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.”

JOHN POUNDS.

JOHN
POUNDS. John Pounds was another benefactor to society who deserves to be held in perpetual remembrance. He was born at Portsmouth in the year 1766. By the fracture of a limb, he was forced to change his employment as a shipwright for that of a shoemaker, or rather shoe-mender, for he never rose to the rank of a maker, and as the occupant of a “weather-boarded tenement” in his native town, John divided his time between his awls and deeds of active benevolence. A cripple himself by his accident, he had also the charge of a decrepit nephew; and the boy for some time divided the attention of Pounds with a number of tame birds which he kept from affection or for amusement. By exercising his ingenuity and benevolence at once, he succeeded in restoring some degree of soundness to his nephew: he then undertook to teach him to read; and that led him to seek some companion for his ward and pupil, under the wise impression that the one would stimulate the other, and the progress of both be promoted. His pupils gradually increased in number: his love of teaching grew upon him, and the work soon knew no limits but those of John’s very humble abode. It was about six feet wide by eighteen in length; and in that apartment did Pounds, surrounded by his scholars, ply his double avocation of cobler and schoolmaster. The progress of the scholars was as diverse as the employments of the master; but he bore all with gladness. He had his eye upon each outcast in the group, and by his expertness he showed that he was a born teacher—his gift lay in training.

A LOWLY PHILANTHROPIST.

As Pounds rose in popularity, the applications for admission to his seminary increased; and with a remarkable but wise instinct, he selected “the little blackguards” in preference to others, that he might enjoy the pleasure of breaking them in like the wild ass’s colt. Some he would allure to his school by such poor bribes as he could command; and though his labours were unrequited, though he had not the means of purchasing school-books, but taught the alphabet from handbills and fragments of old volumes, yet some hundreds of persons owed all the learning they ever acquired to this facetious, devoted, and humble philanthropist. A LOWLY
PHILANTHROPIST. He helped to keep down the calendar of crime, and sent not a few into life possessed of acquirements sufficient to impart respectability in their sphere, who, had it not been for John Pounds, the founder of Ragged Schools, might have become the pests or the plunderers of society.

MAN’S RUIN AND RISE.

Such, then, is another instance of philanthropy, in one of the humblest of mankind. After this, why wait for some costly apparatus for doing good? Why delay the attempt to make the world better, however humble our sphere may be, when we see one so lowly, yet so honoured—so poor, yet making so many others rich? Nay, with the grace of God in the heart, and love to souls as its invariable attendant, be it the felt duty, the privilege, the resolute vow of all, even in the workshop, to seek to convert some sinner from the error of his ways, and thereby hide a multitude of sins.—As one wanders over the Seven Hills of Rome, he may often pick up a marble fragment of a frieze, a portion of a capital, a volute, or a triglyph, telling of the grandeur which once was there, when the palace of the CÆsars crowned more than one of the hills, and the “Golden House” of Nero formed the glory of the whole. MAN’S RUIN
AND RISE. And, in like manner, amid the ruins and the debris of our fallen nature, we sometimes find what reminds us of its primal glory, and of the depth to which it has fallen; and yet assuring us, that fallen though it be, it may not have fallen for ever. Benefactors to humanity, like Harlan Page and John Pounds, occupy that rank among men.

SERVING THE LORD.

SERVING
THE LORD. There is no weariness to him who works for Christ: he is willing to spend and be spent. No sullen drudgery is his, as if work were only a doom—nay, rather cheerful work from a glad, emancipated spirit, and joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That sweetens toil; that braces the arm; that nerves man’s spirit for all that can ever come; and even his daily work, as a husbandman, or an artizan, is thus spiritualized into a service to his God.