Harold St. John - Chapter 3 - A Workman Approved Unto God

MR. ST. JOHN,” said a lady, coming up to him at the close of a meeting, “I would give the world to know the Bible as you do.”

“Madam,” replied the young preacher with a courteous little bow, “that is exactly what it costs.”

The world had nothing to say to Harold St. John in those days of young intensity, and he seems to have mistrusted even its most innocent recreations; he does record a visit to the Zoo, but he seems to have gone with a spirit fore-armed against any slackening!
“Went to the Zoo. Saw much of God’s handiwork. Greatly enjoyed it all but tried to practise perambulatory prayer. It helps to keep the windows of the soul closed to all around.”

He had not yet learned to link life’s recreations with the God Who gives us all things richly to enjoy. The banks were still deep and narrow, and natural pleasure at that point seemed a form of temptation.

“A light heart hinders my gravity. How I long to walk with Him. A sleepy, poor reading, a great romp with the children. Perhaps this hinders. I am a lonely man.”

He seemed at this point to condemn secular reading, but it was a constant struggle to keep away from it. “Praise and blame are outside my path. It is Christ I must walk with. My snares are reading and foolish talk. I am called to walk with God. I feel I am playing with divine things. I need to keep balanced as to life’s sorrows.”

“My body is Christ’s home—a solemn, thrilling sentence. It made me clean something unsuitable off the bookshelf and sent me to my knees. Shall I not give Him the last keys of the house?”

He was setting up a rigid scaffolding for his future life, and he never for himself forsook that early austerity and self-discipline. He strug-gled to acquire it, and as a young man he was intensely conscious of the struggle; but later it became habitual and the whole edifice so suffused with the light of love and joy that the scaffolding became invisible. In fact it is difficult to recognize in the ascetic young man the father who later on marched into a café accompanied by a hungry schoolgirl daughter he was meeting and, carried away by the delight of the reunion, astonished the waitress by asking for “the largest and best ice-cream you have in the shop.” Right to the end, beneath his large-hearted generosity and general enjoyment of life, there beat the heart of a Nazarite.

In 1906 he wrote: “My birthday today—what a 10 years! I clearly see my greatest snare—personal luxury. Not excess, but luxury. Paul kept the rein upon himself and so conquered and became God’s man. God presses this on me. Ease and comfort is drifting work, and I must not go downstream.”

Looking back over a lifetime of rigid self-discipline he sounded out a clarion call in some of his last lectures on 1 Corinthians 9. “Now to make quite sure of this business,” says Paul, “I am going to do two things. First, I’m going to be a racer, with his eyes on the tape, and every bodily desire and form of freedom that might make it hard to win the race is going to be surrendered. And, secondly, like a boxer standing in the ring, with every muscle ready to rain his blows on the other man, I take this body, the vessel in which I am prepared to serve Christ, and beat it black and blue to keep it ready.

“In these days of self-indulgence and easy living and high standards of comfort, do you suppose there are no Christians entrapped and weakened by the appetites such as eating and drinking and similar things? Are there none who put family and wife and child before the interests of the Lord Jesus? Are there none cursed with covetousness, and to whom the lure of gold may become a permanent, evil thing? I keep under my body, lest having preached to others I myself might be a castaway.”

The use of his holidays seems to have worried him. They were usually spent on the Continent, giving away tracts or visiting meetings. He looked forward to them with trepidation, his pleasure clouded by the fear of wasting time or relaxing.

“My continental trip will want much grace and much prayer. Evil waxes powerful, but God!—how rich to know His love—how it fences me round.”

Though recreation and travel proved powerless to satisfy that burning young heart, he had his own joy. Often at this time it was eclipsed by the sense of his own unworthiness and the thirst of his aspirations. But it was a joy so real and deep that he was sometimes almost overwhelmed by it. And all his life it made him in some ways a completely self-contained man, apparently quite independent of his circumstances.

“Work daily gives more joy. Oh, what a Master is Christ! How is it all don’t love Him?”

“The final use of redemption is the reputation of God. God has made me a happy man. I worship Him for it.”

“Studied the Word. Perhaps the best two evenings I have ever spent—almost too much joy in the Lord. Simply fagged out, but happy with the sense of His love. I can count on Christ every step of the way.”

“I was never freer or happier in my life. I can at least feed His sheep in perplexing days. Nowhere is rest but in Him and His love and His service. Wonderful meeting on Samson’s death.”

“These are my sweetest times. The Word tastes marvelously fresh and glows in my heart. Fine time in train over God’s silent love. Nearly broke down at the table, overwhelmed with Christ’s love.”

More and more the study and the ministry of the Word were becoming the passion of his life. Young as he was he was beginning to be talked about as a Bible teacher of no ordinary merit, and he was taking part in the weekly meetings for employees, held in the big London stores such as Whiteley’s and Shoolbred’s, and assisting Lord Radstock in his well known drawing-room meetings. In spite of a 9-hour working day he seldom had an evening free from preaching engagements, sometimes in London, sometimes much further afield.

A lady in Sheffield has recalled some of these weekend visits, when Harold St. John would board the afternoon train and arrive in time for the Saturday evening meeting.

“Weekend after weekend for months on end and at other times, Mr. St. John sacrificed much for Sheffield. It was in the days before tape recorders or general knowledge of shorthand, but a group of us used to take notes, and by comparing them we could practically reconstruct the lectures. These notebooks are still consulted, and perhaps the greatest part of his life work has been to give a love of Bible study and the thirst to learn Greek to hundreds and hundreds of young people to whom he has been a father in Christ. Mr. St. John would take a train from London and go direct to the prayer meeting which preceded the address on a Saturday evening. On one occasion we feared he had missed the train, but a search found him in the downstairs schoolroom, stretched out on a table in agonizing prayer. After speaking on Saturday evening, Sunday morning, Sunday School, an Open Air Meeting at 3:15 and a Gospel Meeting, as well as leading eager discussions around dinner and tea table, he would catch the midnight train to London and sleep in the station waiting-room until time to go back to the Bank on Monday morning.”

His Bible notes must have covered thousands of loose sheets which he kept in perfect order. He would work through a book at a time, giving a series of lectures on it at different meetings. The study was pure sweetness to his eager intellect and hungry heart, but he agonized over his lectures. He criticized his own style ruthlessly, subjected himself to a searing self-examination. He judged himself before God and was never for one moment carried away or deceived by the applause or approval of his audience.

“Packed meeting. Arrived home 7:00 a.m. I fear I haven’t enough sense of the holiness of the Lord’s presence and am not sensitive to spiritual direction. I need to help souls, not merely preach.”

“A full day, but lack the fullness of the Spirit, and confess it as sin. I have tried to display too much. My object must be Christ alone, not a fine sermon. Cheap to a degree.”

“Poor word given in haste at the Morning Meeting. It never pays to be in a hurry in His presence. If others play Jack-in-the-Box—don’t you! Lack of prayer prevents power. When shall I learn this lesson? The work of prayer grows on me—Oh to practise it.”

“Old sermons won’t do. I must work out fresh outlines. There is plenty in the Word, but my mind is a perfect jungle, ignorant, superficial. Not so many as before—my style drives the young away. Too demanding and above their heads. I need to be more simply presenting Christ.”

“A bad day. Packed overflow meeting but all flat. I can’t lecture on the Lord’s coming, I don’t live it enough. I was wrong in soul, away and out of touch. Got home heartily humiliated, though everybody else delighted with the meeting.”

“One and a half hours after-meeting to a crowd of young men. I drove them all away, because I could not hold them. O faithless servant, but what a Master!”

“A dispiriting lecture to a handful of resigned looking people. London is a freezing place spiritually.”

But although he was quick to recognize his faults and deplore the difficulty he found in the need of keeping his soaring thoughts within the boundaries of the average intellect, he could not fail to see that God was blessing, and he occasionally notes this with a sort of surprised humility. “If I was a man of greater grace and zeal, this would be my life’s work—holy, living preaching. What a broken reed I am, yet souls seem to heed. Spiritual power increases and I think souls are getting blessed.”

“Lectured six or seven times. Preached the best sermon I ever preached. Certainly it was not by human power.”

“Taking stock shows weakened spiritual fiber and retrogression as my two besetting sins. This is to myself, but how fair and near Christ has been, and how wonderful. He used my ineffective ministry. Only a great artist could work with such a broken, worthless tool, and yet achieve. Grace, grace unto the headstone. I long to meet my Lord.”

There are glimpses, too, in this diary of the seriousness of his preparation. His preaching was not due to any facile oratory or intellectual grasp. It was the result of communion with God and careful self-preparation.

“Has Christ a branch in me through which He can express Himself?” he once asked, and he realized increasingly that blessing depended on abiding in Christ and the spiritual warfare of prayer against the powers of darkness.

“A sleepless night, but I got my sermon on the floor between three and four in the morning. Preaching is a happy labour, but I must give blood every time. A fearful month’s work lies ahead and I must pray a great deal. I am clumsy, unaccustomed to His easy yoke. Jacob’s lesson must still be mine—he prevailed. Will He give me what I want—power with the angel?”

He knew that depression and discouragement could be crippling, and he was constantly on the guard against them.

“God has called me to admire the love of Christ. I am kept from grovelling by that. I may not despair of even a cinder heap of life. The tendency to depression must be resisted. These are testing days and Christ is more than life; He never disappoints the heart, and I am linked to a risen Man.”

He knew, too, the need of keeping himself and disciplining himself for the ministry, an instrument ready and fit for the Master’s use.

“How close we need to keep to God for such a holy ministry, and how soon the bloom wears off. Remember you’re a polished shaft, but a breath can spoil the polish. Holy growth is subject to fixed laws, and I must obey them—much prayer, true Bible study, full self-control, tight rein on thoughts. These are God’s ways for me.”

“Christ calls loudly for devotedness, and I must awake and put on my beautiful garments and work, for the night is coming. My life seems bounded by four verbs—am, ought, will, can. Am I wasting my life in half devotion and half worldliness? I long to be out and out for Christ. Asa did well in his youth but wasted later years. Am I like that?”

The Clarendon Room assembly has been described as follows: “The assembly at Clarendon Room, Notting Hill, London, where Harold St. John had his first spiritual home, had a distinctive atmosphere. Associated with it at various times were such notable people as the elderly Countess of whom he spoke in one of his addresses towards the end of his life, Colonel Wellesley, a close relative of the Iron Duke, and Mr. James F. Hamilton, a most dignified and gracious personage, who was Secretary of Coutts Bank from 1906 until his death in 1915. Mrs. St. John writes that, as she looks back, she feels that the writer of the Epistle of James would have approved of the spirit there. There was, for instance, no familiarity between the people who represented different classes of the society of those days, but there was an absolute oneness in Christ and brotherly love.

“Harold’s mother ran the women’s meeting, helped by her elder daughter, Ella. All the family had Sunday School classes at various times. A boy once asked Evelyn, the youngest brother, ‘Are you the St. John of the Bible?’ . . . ‘Oh, I always thought you were.’ Classes were held for boys in the evenings by Harold’s sister Ella, where she taught them handicrafts. She was a saintly woman. There would be a pew full of deaf and dumb people at the Sunday morning gathering, and old Mrs. Schofield translated for them—a great attraction to the youngsters present at the meeting. Harold used to translate for them when Mrs. Schofield was absent; his brother Arthur could do this too.

“During the winter weather there were monthly Bible readings, when an address would be given followed by questions. The place would then be full, people coming from other parts of London, and tea would be provided. Mr. W. J. Lowe very often gave the monthly addresses. He was a great friend of Mr. Swain and often stayed with him during Mrs. St. John’s childhood. He was a very lovable, gentle man, with a delightful twinkle in his eye, and a very real scholar. He would frequently minister in French among the ‘Darbyists’ on the Continent and was deeply loved in Switzerland. He seemed, to young Ella Swain, to bear a resemblance to Elisha.

“Harold used to have Bible studies for young men, not at the meeting but in his mother’s home. Everyone went to the weekly prayer meeting and Bible reading at Clarendon Room. There were open-air meetings, and lodging houses were visited and tracts distributed. The situation of the hall was just in the right district, on one side, for Sunday School work and women’s meeting work, and the Sunday School flourished.”

Harold gained much by the company, advice and criticism of older, more mature Christians, one or two of whom he counted his fathers in Christ. Yet he held firmly to his own individuality and refused to copy the style of those he considered his superiors in the ministry. Speaking of two of his greatest friends he wrote:

“I may and do heartily admire them and thank God who has carried both so far beyond me. But I must learn to speak only what I have really enjoyed with God. He denies no creative faculty.”

Yet there were also discouragements, and the year 1909 was one of conflicting opinions and real disagreements among those he most respected; something which caused him much unhappiness. He brought his perplexities to the light of God’s Word and took his stand once for all on the side of tolerance, personal humility and broad charity in so far as they were compatible with basic doctrinal truth.

And as the stormy year drew to a close, he could look back from a vantage point of peace. “Christ and I have been through this year together,” he wrote. “Thank God no cloud rests upon my title to enjoy a Father’s love.”