James Harvey 1816-1883 Part 3 (Last)

London Baptist

By that time there was also a Devon born missioner at Heath Street, William Rickard, who started the work in nearby Childs Hill. Constituted as a church in 1877, they had put up a building in 1870. Harvey laid the foundation stone on July 28, 1870.

At the end of 1865 Spurgeon and Brock formed the London Baptist Association. Unsurprisingly, Harvey was first treasurer, and continued until 1881. In 1870, he offered to help defray the debts of many chapels. If they paid one third by the end of 1871 he would give 10% of the remainder. He ended up parting with £500.

Another cause Harvey helped was Shoreditch Tabernacle, where William Cuff (1841-1926) ministered, developed in the 1880s. The meeting on December 1, 1876, held in Harvey's Hampstead drawing room, where it became clear that the new building could be financed was one of great joy to Cuff and his deacon.

Harvey felt a duty, as noted, to give an example but tried to conceal much of his giving. In 1867 his good friend Spurgeon wrote seeking a contribution to the recently begun Stockwell Orphanage. Harvey anonymously gave £600 for the second house, called The Merchant's House in his honour.

A letter of July 16, 1867, acknowledges the gift. “You find it more easy to perform noble actions than I do to thank you for them”. A similar sum was given for the girls' orphanage 13 years later.

Spurgeon wrote in a brief obituary in the Sword and Trowel for April 1883

He was for many years one of the most liberal helpers of the work which the Lord has entrusted to us: and we hear that he has left a legacy of £500 to the Orphanage. We may not mention many of the things which were done of him in secret; but we may say that he was the donor of the house on the boys’ side of the Orphanage, which is known as "the Merchant’s House". This he gave without a request or even a hint from us.

Another example of his kindness through Spurgeon came in the Summer of 1876 when he sent £100 to pass on anonymously to ministers in need of a summer holiday. Spurgeon wrote back, passing on letters thanking him and acknowledging where the thanks should go.

In 1882 a gift for the Baptist work in East India Dock also produced a very thankful letter.

Harvey was also a great supporter of the Baptist Missionary Society. In 1881 he called on supporters to make 1882 a year of Jubilee, urging each one to see himself as “the steward not the irresponsible owner of the manifold gifts of God”.

Nothing by halves

It was only a short way into 1893 that, on February 9, after two days' illness, Harvey rather suddenly died at home. He was 66.

With a favourite turn of phrase, Alfred wrote “Never was there a man more naturally modest and unpretentious than he. His unassuming geniality and consideration for others was the same in whatever company he was ....”.

He was a man of buoyant spirits. The Freeman (February 16, 1883) observed how he “had a rare confidence in his own powers ...” taking up various pursuits, “singing ... preaching to the poor ...” and apologetics, and mastering them. He was a “keen sportsman” and “a jocund traveller”; “I cannot conceive of Mr Harvey doing anything by halves”. He was paradoxically “devoid of personal ambition, and yet ... ambitious”. He sought “no satisfaction save success” and never rested on his laurels.

Glover writes of Harvey’s promptitude in discernment and resource, his kindness and “the influence of his Christian manhood.” “He was above all things devout, and rich in the reserves of conviction and experience ...” exhibiting “the kind of piety of a former generation; that name namely built on the Fear of God.”

Spurgeon commended Brock's words, in what he called an admirable sermon,

While in good health he was exemplary for punctuality at the service of God; and on very rare occasions was he absent from his place. ‘I am come,’ he said to me, the very Thursday evening before his fatal illness, when I expressed surprise at seeing him, ‘because I am able to go to business, and I do not think I ought to be absent from the church meeting.’

Spurgeon added

Our personal loss is very heavy, and, hence, we can the more tenderly sympathise with the esteemed mourners who have lost father and brother. We shall not soon look upon his like again. Are there not other merchants who love our Lord, and will be baptised for the dead, filling up the vacancies caused by these many deaths, and taking thought that the cause of Christ shall know no lack?

Lessons

This brief life of Harvey reminds us of the centrality of conversion. Doctrine in the head, accurate or inaccurate, cannot be enough. We are also reminded of the importance of generosity and the dread of wealth that marked him. There is also the importance of evangelism and seeking to win people on their own territory. Finally, there is the importance of a catholic spirit which is most commendable but that can, without care, lead us astray.

The article appeared in Reformation Today 

James Harvey 1816-1883 Part 2

Employer

It is hard at this distance in time to imagine life for an employee in nineteenth century London. Harvey was keen to improve their lot. As soon as he became head of the firm he invited his sister Rachel to come and help him both at home and bringing changes to the work place. She was responsible for things such as introducing tablecloths and, with Harvey, a library and newspapers and other amenities. He also encouraged monthly discussion classes.

From 1842 he was involved in the early closing movement. The pattern when he first became head was for business to end at 9 pm (winter 8.30 pm). He got that down in his area first to 8 pm (winter 7 pm) then, in 1855, unilaterally, to 7 pm all year round, closing on Saturdays at 5 pm. He made a number of speeches in favour of such moves.

He also worked with the evangelical organisation the YMCA, begun in London by George Williams (1821-1905) in 1844.

On August 12, 1851, Harvey's diary reveals that he made a long considered resolve to make it a point to speak to young employees words of Christian caution and advice as appropriate.

The dread of wealth

The dread of wealth is a chapter heading in the memoir. The phrase is no exaggeration. Harvey was always successful in business (unlike Peto, who suffered bankruptcy). Nevertheless, his son comments that “in spite of his success, there was never in the City of London, a man who set his mind on money making less than he.” Proverbs 28:20 was a watchword, “A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent”. He hated all sharp practice in business.

Addressing the YMCA at Aldersgate Street on February 28, 1878, having spoken of getting on in business, he said “Be careful, however, for what purpose you wish to get on.” Live according to your means. He quoted Proverbs 16:8 “Pride goeth before destruction ...” and urged fair play.

It was not simply that he feared money but, more positively, he also had a strong sense of stewardship. On May 26, 1853, he made the remarkable resolution about his income alluded to earlier - not to spend more than a third on himself and family, not to save more than a third and to give a third to religious and charitable purposes. He also resolved, perhaps unrealistically, never to be worth more than £20,000. He renewed these vows from time to time. The continual growth of his business made it impossible to remain worth no more than £20,000. It caused him some consternation but he sought to keep to the resolution as best he could and even carried it over into the terms of his will. His son remarks that this lifestyle made people think he was richer than he was. In truth, he was simply very generous.

Bowers picks up on something interesting about the “self-made merchant of stern cast and great generosity” that is in the biography. “He maintained that much of his giving should be anonymous, but some public to show Christian duty and as a stimulus for others” (Sense and Sensitivity)

Deacon, husband

In 1850 Harvey joined the Bloomsbury church and was soon made one of five deacons, alongside Peto and future brother-in-law, James Benham (1820-1885). He was very involved in evangelism in the nearby slums, an important part of the church's work.

In 1852 he wrote

I desire a wife, if it will help me to serve God better, to discharge my private and official duties more efficiently, and by these means to honour my Lord and Saviour; and not else. Do I believe that a Christian woman like-minded with myself would thus help me, and I help her? I do.

Ever a practical man, by November 1853 he had married Jane Benham (1828-1855), daughter of John Lee Benham (1785-1864), a Wigmore Street businessman – Ironmongers, bath makers, stove, grate and kitchen range manufacturers and hot water engineers. Jane, like Harvey, was the youngest of seven. The Benhams were a prominent family in the church (See Bowers, The Benhams of Bloomsbury, BQ).

The son describes his mother as a woman of judgement like the father. Though they were very practical about the arrangement, the son insists, “Never did man and woman love one another in holier and more devoted love than they.”

Father, widower

Their time together at 22 Bloomsbury Square was tragically brief. On August 17, 1855, their only son was born and by August 27 Mrs Harvey was dead. Two years later Harvey wrote of his continuing faith despite the severe blow. His sister Rachel had been helping an invalid since the marriage. He died around the same time and so she came to look after Harvey again, becoming what Alfred touchingly calls his “almost mother”.

Civic life

In 1853 Harvey became a Liveryman of the City Company of Lorimers. He soon gained the freedom of the City then became a Common Councilman. He retired in 1861 but not before he had made a resolute and successful attack, including the launch of legal proceedings, on abuses of poor law administration going on in his Farringdon Without ward.

He was Chairman of the Board of Guardians for many years. In this connection a dinner was given in his honour in August, 1859. In this capacity he was involved in the erection of a new West London workhouse, necessitated by the building of Holborn Viaduct (1865-69) sweeping business premises, including his own, from the area. He moved to Gresham Street in late 1865.

Even in the last 20 years of his life in Hampstead he was involved in civic life. His love of strict justice and individual liberty was reflected in his efforts to get the law on oaths changed. The new law allowed witnesses to simply affirm rather than go on oath, something atheists preferred.

Apologist

Harvey, it seems, always loved reading and was very interested in Christian evidences or Apologetics as it is now called. He regularly read The Reasoner, “a journal of free thought and positive philosophy” sending in letters signed “Inquirer”.

On October 21, 1855, he went to the Scientific and Literary Institution at 23 John Street, Fitzroy Square near Tottenham Court Road, a free thinker gathering place, to hear Robert Cooper (1789-1868) “a distinguished advocate of secularism”. Author of an 1852 booklet ridiculing death-bed repentances and editor of the secularist London Investigator Cooper spoke on Miracles. “The time is approaching, gradually indeed but surely,” he claimed “when this delusion - this imposition upon the understanding of mankind - will be consigned, as it deserves, to public contempt”. Harvey entered into debate with him and felt able to trouble him with at least one argument.

On March 30, 1856, Harvey had opportunity to reply to Cooper at the same venue. He begins by identifying with his audience, a first rule of rhetoric, saying he too is a free thinker, one with a good working class background. He is not an enemy, as he seeks just what they seek – the truth and the good of the people. He went on to speak of the reasonableness of the evidence for the truth of Christianity and what it is mankind wants, arguing that miracles are possible and the apostles reliable, before coming to what is really wrong with this world and how it can be rectified.

Having been able to say something worthwhile, he nevertheless resolved to give more time to reading and study in this area.

On January 11, 1857, he spoke at John Street again, this time in reply to a lecture by freethinker, atheist and editor of The Reasoner, George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906) against Christianity as a system of morality. Holyoake called Christianity indefinite, inadequate and inoperable; Harvey said it was definite, adequate and operative.

In September, 1862 Harvey was asked to umpire a six night debate between a Rev W Barker and notorious freethinker and radical, later MP and President of the National Secular Society, Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) who until 1868 billed himself as “Iconoclast”. The first two evenings both sides had a chairman but Harvey's impartiality “gave so much satisfaction” according to a biographer of Bradlaugh, “that the last four meetings were left entirely under his charge”. Attendance at a school room on City Road on some nights was so great that people were turned away and averaged 1200, around a thousand hearing all the debate. People came from far and near. A book of over 200 pages was later produced, Bradlaugh's biographer says, containing “much that is interesting and much that is dull, a little that is witty, and more that is weak”. These debates were popular at the time.

Catholic and evangelical

Glover speaks of Harvey's “faithfulness to conscience, the Love of Christ, the scrupulous Honour, the carefulness to know the exact truth of God on all points of our Creed and Duty”. At the end of his memoir, however, the son speaks of his father's catholicity. Harvey was an evangelical first. “Baptist though I am,” he wrote “yet I have ever objected to work especially as a Baptist; I prefer to do so on the much broader basis of a disciple and servant of Christ.” Typical of him was how on holiday in Southwold he saw a need and immediately sent 10 guineas to the vicar to help.

He was happy to read Anglican Thomas Griffith (1798-1883). When his Fundamentals or bases of belief concerning man, God and the correlation of God and men came out in 1871 Harvey wrote offering to finance a wide distribution of the book. Griffith sadly was a universalist, which suggests that Harvey's broadness sometimes led him astray. This perhaps lays behind Spurgeon's later remark

He was a man of mark: independent, yet ready to learn; lenient towards doubt, but himself a firm believer. His views of truth were his own, and would not be parallel in all points with those of anybody else; but we always felt at one with him, and even where we judged him to be mistaken we were glad to love him just as he was.

Hampstead

Harvey spent his latter years just outside London, in Hampstead. It was thought that better air would help his sickly new born baby. This led eventually to a permanent move to Hampstead in 1861. They began on Haverstock Hill, moved up it once, then took up residence in newly built Mount Grove on the Greenhill Estate in 1870.

Baptist James Castleden (1778-1854) had laboured in Hampstead until his death but the only nonconformist chapel at that time appears to have been a high one in both senses - high in its Calvinism, high in its location - atop Holly Bush Hill. Harvey resolved, partly as thanks to God for his son's refound health, to build a new chapel but the people of the area were poor and there was no place for it anyway.

It was another four years before they obtained land - a former fruit and vegetable garden. A committee was formed to plan a building but it was too expensive and the committee was dissolved. However, at long last, on June 4, 1860, Harvey signed a contract to build a chapel and other buildings at a cost of £4,800. It was not built at his sole cost, others gave; but he was a generous contributor. The Heath Street building opened in July, 1861. The Freeman called it “a neat, light and elegant structure presenting the same architectural ensemble as Bloomsbury Chapel” with a schoolroom below. Its frontage is more ornamented than Bloomsbury.

Harvey became a member and deacon and a generous provider. They called William Brock Junior (1836-1919), Dr Brock's son, as first pastor. Once again the intention was that the membership would be “open to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in truth and sincerity” with true believers being baptised by immersion.

Services were held in Heath Street in 1864 to celebrate the clearing of the debt on it with an afternoon sermon by the Methodist W M Punshon (1824-1881). In the evening Dr Brock spoke and Harvey, presiding over the meeting, revealed that the entire cost of chapel and school-room (upwards of £6,300) had now been covered.

In 1871 Harvey's son, Alfred, then just 16, made known his desire to be a gospel minister. Harvey Senior wrote that he had long “hoped for it and prayed for it and have expected it” yet he says it “... seems almost to take me by surprise ...”. He had pursued the policy of never hinting at the matter to him. Harvey Junior went on to be a vicar in Shirehampton, Bristol.

The article appeared in Reformation Today

James Harvey 1816-1883 Part 1

By Frank Holl Photo credit: Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives

A previous article noted our ignorance of 19th century Reformed Baptists apart from Spurgeon and, thanks to Iain Murray, Archibald Brown. Having drawn attention to Samuel Morton Peto (1809-1889), we turn now to another Bloomsbury deacon, businessman James Harvey.

Biography

In 1900 a brief memoir From Suffolk Lad to London Merchant appeared. By Harvey's son Alfred James (b 1855), it is the main source for knowledge about him. A loving memoir not a critical biography, it includes the intriguing fact that while still relatively young he resolved not to spend more than one third of his income on himself and his family, not to save more than another third and to give another third of his income to religious and charitable purposes.

Suffolk lad

Harvey was born in Badingham, near Framlingham, Suffolk, then a village of 1800, now more like 500. Born May 16, 1816, he was the second son and youngest of seven. His farmer parents were good living people, if nothing more, who called him "Little Jems". Educated first in the village “Dame school”, a private elementary school, he went on to Heveningham, then Framlingham.

If the family were a good influence, parish rector Clement Chevallier (1765-1830) was not, having no interest in the way of truth. A new and better man came later but Harvey was ready to leave for London by then. His one positive experience of something better came, aged around 10 or 12, when a woman Methodist preacher preached on the village green, probably a Primitive Methodist, a nineteenth century movement seeking to regain the fervour of Wesley's day.

London merchant

On November 2, 1832, Harvey travelled to London by stagecoach to began work in a warehouse at the bottom of the old Holborn Hill (where Holborn Viaduct now stands). His High Calvinist employer Henry Bardwell (d 1845) dealt in woollen and cotton (Manchester) goods wholesale and retail. James started as a Junior assistant at £12 per annum, that soon rising to £20 then £32 then £40. He sent money home to pay off his outstanding school fees and help his parents.

By 1837 he was a Junior partner and when Bardwell died in 1845, joint head of the company alongside contemporary, Joseph Bartram (b 1815). By this time he had saved £2,500. Bardwell left him another £1,000.

Harvey's son comments that the secret of his father's success was twofold. First, he loved hard work. He had good health and never took long holidays. He was not obsessed with money. He was able to relax too enjoying "books of gristle" and foreign travel. He loved work for its own sake but was also driven by a strong sense of duty.

There was also the high principles of conduct that he espoused even before conversion. "Patient continuance in well doing" (Romans 2:7) was a motto text he often quoted. Early on, in a message called What traits of character are most desirable in a business man? he spoke of a proper degree of self-respect (business is not all about profit and loss. Even tradesmen are capable of higher feeling); honesty (the golden law must be recognised and is important); persevering industry; clearness of purpose ("virtue and industry shall never go unrewarded" is one of God's laws). Here was an upright, churchgoer. However, as we shall see, he had more to learn and experience.

James Wells

With no fixed convictions of his own, Harvey joined Bardwell at what was known, from 1838, as Borough Road Tabernacle and, after its first enlargement in 1850, Surrey Tabernacle, Southwark. He sat under the ministry of the leading London Strict Baptist, James Wells (1803-1872).

Hampshire born Wells grew up a godless man but, following an illness in his early twenties, he came under deep conviction and was converted through the witness of Hyper-Calvinists. He became a gifted preacher and had a large and loyal congregation, second only in size to that of his much younger neighbour, C H Spurgeon.

Wells (pseudonym Job) tangled with Spurgeon in the pages of the Earthen Vessel in 1854 and 1855. Spurgeon sometimes called him “King James”. The press called him “Wheelbarrow Wells” or the “Borough Gunner”.

Hyper-Calvinists say gospel invitations are not to be given to all without exception. Only the elect should be addressed. They say the warrant a sinner has to come to Christ is found in his own experience of conviction and assurance and human inability means a man cannot be urged to come immediately to Christ. They also deny God's universal love.

Most dislike being termed hyper, though Wells did not mind. Unlike others, he distanced himself from Calvin and would always mention election and reprobation, often attacking “duty faith” as they call it. Ian Shaw says (High Calvinists in action, 248)

Wells contended that although it was the duty of man to believe the Bible, to repent of his sins, and appear before the bar of God to give an account of his sin, he “dare not say it is the duty of any man upon the surface of the globe to believe to the saving of his soul”. He declared, in 1859: “I will have no fellowship, no personal friendship, with any duty-faith minister; I have no personal antipathy towards him, but I will have no personal friendship with him, because it leads to truth's compromise.”

He had a strong experiential emphasis. “Religion without experience is no religion at all”. A born controversialist, he weighed into controversies over Rahab’s lie, backsliding and against the Son's eternal generation.

Harvey sat under Wells 15 years. He was convinced of election and reprobation and tried to convince others but did not think he himself was elect. He was “unhappy and a stranger to the peace of God that passeth understanding”. Many others appeared to do so but Harvey did not find Wells' ministry helpful. Wells once wrote “I would rather keep a child of God out for seven years than let one hypocrite in, and so deceive the souls of men”. Perhaps that did not help.

On Harvey's piety, Richard Glover, in the memoir, calls it “meditative, intellectual, well-informed” and suggests he perhaps “owed more than he knew” to Wells' “exaggerated Calvinism”. “The gentler gospel which he reached by fighting” says Glover “he held with fuller conviction and deeper sense of its meaning ... the Fear of God was there, and that high Fear ennobled, restrained and strengthened him.”

Bloomsbury Chapel

On December 5, 1848, “the first Baptist chapel to stand proudly on a London street, visibly an ‘ecclesiastical edifice’” not hidden in a back alley, was built. Bloomsbury Chapel, situated strategically between fashionable Bloomsbury Square and the then slums of St Giles, is still there, though the impressive spires of its twin towers were removed in 1951 for safety reasons.

The chapel was built by Peto and the first pastor was William Brock (1807-1885) who, from a standing start, gathered a church of 52 members by July 1849. The church was so constituted that though “recognising no other Baptism but the immersion of professed believers” it would nevertheless “welcome to its fellowship all followers of Christ”.

Faith Bowers (Sense and Sensitivity of Dissent, Baptist Quarterly) wrote that “the term Baptist was deliberately avoided in the title. The Trust Deeds spoke of 'A Christian Church knowing only the Baptism of Believers'.” Brock could write in 1863, “No term of communion has been insisted on but personal religion ... Membership with Christ has been the only prerequisite for membership with our church”.

Born in Devon, of good nonconformist stock, Brock, a watchmaker, trained for the Baptist ministry at Stepney College. He succeeded Strict Baptist Joseph Kinghorn (1766-1832) in St Mary's, Norwich, controversially taking the church in an open communion direction. E C Dargan called him “an admirable pastor and a strong though not brilliant preacher”. Bowers says he was “unconventional, unaffected and warm-hearted, and ... always concerned to relate religion to everyday life”. Active in public affairs, especially the slavery question, he originally moved to London because of ill health but remained at Bloomsbury until 1872.

Harvey had been unimpressed when he heard Brock in Norwich in the late 1830s but he decided to attend the new church for six months, to “give the minister and the doctrines which should be preached a fair trial”. “The first month had not passed away” he came to write “before I found what I had long been seeking in vain. I was able to rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He began to keep a diary, one of its first entries being made at 7 am on Saturday, December 30, 1848. He wrote:

This has been the most remarkable night of my existence, and the most precious. Not one wink of sleep have I had during the whole time, from 11 o'clock last night till 7 this morning. Last night, as has been my custom recently, I noted down the most important circumstances which occupied my mind during the day; and having had many very important and apparently difficult matters to arrange when I arose in the morning, which during the day were arranged in a way and manner much more satisfactory than my partner and I had been able to conceive of, I felt impelled to record my gratitude to God for so marked (as it appeared to my mind to be) a manifestation of His over-ruling all things to accomplish in the end His own purposes.

On retiring to rest I committed myself to God in prayer, with more freedom of speech than usual; and in pleading for the pardon of sins, and realising the bare possibility of their being forgiven and blotted out for Christ's sake, I felt overwhelmed and could not say another word. In bed, I desired the Lord to have mercy upon me and accept of my imperfect gratitude for His abundant mercies and from that time till 4 am my mind was occupied on matters of business with which I had been concerned during the day, and as I appeared to be at an end of my musings, knowing that today is our stock-taking, and that I shall be engaged in the warehouse till 12 o'clock at night, I again tried to go to sleep, and breathed a desire (which, if it be the Lord's will, may He grant) that He might enable me to be a benefit amongst those under our own roof both for their temporal and spiritual welfare. When in a moment I was arrested by an idea, and these words were fixed in my mind 'Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.' As a father! - 'as a father pitieth his children.' Never did I realise the pity and mercy of God in such a sweet and endearing light. I could but repeat, 'As a father pitieth'. Seest thou a father embracing his son? Seest thou a father whose son is in trouble, whose son is in danger? Seest thou a father bestowing his riches and honour on his son in all the love of his heart? So, even 'the Lord pitieth them that fear Him'. A man may pity a faithful dog, a favourite horse; but as a father pitieth his children.' While lost in admiration in the thought, came one more precious still. 'Because you are children, God hath sent His Spirit into your heart Crying, Abba, Father.' 'God my Father' in this sense, and with these endearing words, can it be to me? When, lo! 'If children, then heirs, heirs to God and joint heirs with Christ.' This was too much for my heart; my only language was, Oh, for faith to believe!' - and I could not possibly restrain my tears. I could only cry, 'Lord, help! Can it be my portion?' And I continued with this threefold text in my mind adoring its beauty though its blessedness seemed far too great for me; when again: 'Can a woman forget bet sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the fruit of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee.' I laid thus for some minutes, for my heart was full to overflowing, and enquired 'What does this mean?' Then came as an answer: 'The love of God shed abroad in the heart.' Then followed: 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' The words 'everlasting life' seemed fixed in my ears. There came as a climax: 'I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.' I could hardly repeat the words. Then came back the thought, 'As a father pitieth,' but I could not repeat the words;' God, my father, who hast loved me with such a love,' I could not say them for several times trying. The thought returned: 'The love of God shed abroad in the heart,' and 'God manifesting Himself to me as He doth not unto the world.' I remembered that I had pleaded with Him for this, and it appeared as an answer to prayer. I then enquired, and do so now I am writing, What is all this that is done ? Is it not to prepare one for some coming trial or difficulty? And my answer from my heart was Come sickness, poverty, peril or death, I can meet them all with the love of God shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Ghost. I resolved to write it all down, if God enabled me, as soon as I arose ... If this which I am writing ever be read by any other being, I pray that he may experience the blessedness which I this morning, from the hours of four till seven o'clock, have been made to feel.

The article appeared in Refomation Today