A Lamp to the Path / Or, The Word of God in the Heart, the Home, the Workshop and the Market-Place

by W. K. Tweedie

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.