there and then surrendered to Christ.
—Anon.
CHAPTER 16
A MESSAGE FROM JOHN HARPER
Delivered in 1911 at the
Moody Church in Chicago
VISION, COMPASSION, INTERCESSION—THESE ARE three great links in the golden chain of redemptive service. How clearly you can see them in the saving ministry and life service of our Lord Jesus Himself. He saw the multitudes as sheep without a shepherd—scattered, torn, bruised, and bleeding—and if that was the vision before His eyes when He looked on a multitude from the quiet religious villages of Galilee, where the people were moral in their habits of life and not sunken with drink and manifold vice, what would be the vision before Him if He looked today on Chicago?
With that vision, His heart was moved with compassion, agitated with deep feeling—agonized within Him would be a better word. He had compassion on them, taking their pain and sorrow up into His own heart of love, and with that love-swept spirit He turns to His disciples and says, “Pray ye.” On every possible occasion, He slips off Himself to the lonely mountainside to spend the night or early morning hours in prayer.
Beloved, how few of us have the Master’s vision, and hence, how few of us have the compassion-filled heart, the consequent ministry of intercession! If any one conviction has laid hold of my spirit more than another, and has held it in a grasp as solemn as eternity for some years past, it is that the overwhelming need of the church and the doomed world is intercessors—not so much preachers, however great that need is—but men of the mountain solitude and midnight watch, who know how to stand between God and men, in fasting and prayer, who will not leave the throne of grace until from His presence will go forth times of refreshing and salvation that will make His name a praise in the earth.
Then will preachers with the tongues of fire and workers mantled with His power be given to the church, and the whole awakened, Spirit-filled church will become the instrument of our glorified Lord in awakening a godless world to the conviction of sin and sense of need of the atoning blood and to the fear of coming wrath.
A very little while and He will come, and the door will be shut, and the door of Christendom sealed. Only a brief season can remain for us all. But what may not be done in these quickly passing days! What seasons of prayer and intercession may we not have! What sacrifices for Him may we not make! What power from the throne may we not receive! What scenes of blessing may we not witness in the gathering out of the last members of the body of Christ from this doomed and darkening world, while upon it the night shadows of coming judgment are falling fast!
Beyond this little while there will be the glory of His presence, the glad reunion with the loved, the thrilling “well done” of the Master at His judgment seat—the entering in, to go out no more forever.
But there will be no more opportunity of praying lost souls to His feet and winning them to His heart forever.
CHAPTER 17
BEAUTIFUL IN THE MORNING
The night before the Titanic sank, Mr. Harper was seen earnestly seeking to lead a young man to Christ. Afterwards, when on deck, seeing a glint of red in the west, he said, “It will be beautiful in the morning.”
Oh, fair must it be in the morning,
When the sunset enkindles the west,
And the clouds, in their golden adorning,
Creep quietly down to their rest!
Rest we, like them, in the hope that a dawn
Calm and resplendent comes marching on.
Ah, drear is the tale of the morning,
And awesome the wail in the tide,
When the hand of the Ice-King, unwarning,
Tears open the vessel’s side,
And into the depths of the ruthless deep
Thrusts multitudes fast in their final sleep.
Yet fair must it be in the morning,
If fair did the sun go down.
God’s heroes, the death-trammels spurning,
Press up to the victor’s crown.
Where then is thy victory, vaunting grave,
When ours is the
—Anon.
CHAPTER 16
A MESSAGE FROM JOHN HARPER
Delivered in 1911 at the
Moody Church in Chicago
VISION, COMPASSION, INTERCESSION—THESE ARE three great links in the golden chain of redemptive service. How clearly you can see them in the saving ministry and life service of our Lord Jesus Himself. He saw the multitudes as sheep without a shepherd—scattered, torn, bruised, and bleeding—and if that was the vision before His eyes when He looked on a multitude from the quiet religious villages of Galilee, where the people were moral in their habits of life and not sunken with drink and manifold vice, what would be the vision before Him if He looked today on Chicago?
With that vision, His heart was moved with compassion, agitated with deep feeling—agonized within Him would be a better word. He had compassion on them, taking their pain and sorrow up into His own heart of love, and with that love-swept spirit He turns to His disciples and says, “Pray ye.” On every possible occasion, He slips off Himself to the lonely mountainside to spend the night or early morning hours in prayer.
Beloved, how few of us have the Master’s vision, and hence, how few of us have the compassion-filled heart, the consequent ministry of intercession! If any one conviction has laid hold of my spirit more than another, and has held it in a grasp as solemn as eternity for some years past, it is that the overwhelming need of the church and the doomed world is intercessors—not so much preachers, however great that need is—but men of the mountain solitude and midnight watch, who know how to stand between God and men, in fasting and prayer, who will not leave the throne of grace until from His presence will go forth times of refreshing and salvation that will make His name a praise in the earth.
Then will preachers with the tongues of fire and workers mantled with His power be given to the church, and the whole awakened, Spirit-filled church will become the instrument of our glorified Lord in awakening a godless world to the conviction of sin and sense of need of the atoning blood and to the fear of coming wrath.
A very little while and He will come, and the door will be shut, and the door of Christendom sealed. Only a brief season can remain for us all. But what may not be done in these quickly passing days! What seasons of prayer and intercession may we not have! What sacrifices for Him may we not make! What power from the throne may we not receive! What scenes of blessing may we not witness in the gathering out of the last members of the body of Christ from this doomed and darkening world, while upon it the night shadows of coming judgment are falling fast!
Beyond this little while there will be the glory of His presence, the glad reunion with the loved, the thrilling “well done” of the Master at His judgment seat—the entering in, to go out no more forever.
But there will be no more opportunity of praying lost souls to His feet and winning them to His heart forever.
CHAPTER 17
BEAUTIFUL IN THE MORNING
The night before the Titanic sank, Mr. Harper was seen earnestly seeking to lead a young man to Christ. Afterwards, when on deck, seeing a glint of red in the west, he said, “It will be beautiful in the morning.”
Oh, fair must it be in the morning,
When the sunset enkindles the west,
And the clouds, in their golden adorning,
Creep quietly down to their rest!
Rest we, like them, in the hope that a dawn
Calm and resplendent comes marching on.
Ah, drear is the tale of the morning,
And awesome the wail in the tide,
When the hand of the Ice-King, unwarning,
Tears open the vessel’s side,
And into the depths of the ruthless deep
Thrusts multitudes fast in their final sleep.
Yet fair must it be in the morning,
If fair did the sun go down.
God’s heroes, the death-trammels spurning,
Press up to the victor’s crown.
Where then is thy victory, vaunting grave,
When ours is the
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