“Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” 2Timothy 1:6-9
GOD AT WORK! In one man. (picture # 55 on stick 45) In 1917 during WW1, a young man named William Herbert Harris, was in a labor camp in Northern Ontario with quite a number of other young Christian men. These young believers were there because their consciences would not allow them to kill another person for any reason, so they served their country in other ways. W.H. Harris preferred to be called Herb, so he was known for almost all of his life as Herb Harris. It was during the time he was at that labor camp he had some serious dealing with his Lord.
Herb was born in 1895 into a family of three boys and three girls. His father was a bridge keeper who opened and closed a bridge for river traffic between Orillia, Ontario and nearby Atherley. His parents were Christians and made sure their children heard the Gospel regularly.
It was during a series of Gospel meetings at Orillia, that Herb was saved at the age of seventeen. The real awakening of his soul was one night after a meeting, when his Sunday School teacher asked him, “Herb, when are you going to be saved?” He had implied in the Sunday School class that he was, and he thought he had fooled people into believing he was born-again, but she saw right through that bluff. She plainly said, “Herb, you are not saved!” It was shortly after that, the Lord saved him.
In the labor camp after a hard day’s work, most of the young men went to the bunkhouse to lie down on the bunk to rest, read and talk. One of those men told me at Herb’s funeral, that Herb would usually disappear after supper. “At first, I didn’t think anything about it, but after it went on every night for quite a while, I decided one night to follow him and see what he was doing. He would go about a quarter of a mile from the camp, and there behind a big stump, he would lie down on the ground on his face and pray. I moved away and never said a thing about it to him or anyone else. I knew that was holy ground.”
Whatever happened there between him and his Lord, when WW1 was over, the heart of Herb Harris was in the Gospel. It was obvious the Lord wanted him to preach the Gospel. The Spirit of God opened the way for him to go with an older preacher, J.C. Beatty, to Montreal, where he had his first series of Gospel meetings at the Gospel Hall. Invitations came to him to preach in other places, and the Lord blessed His word in saving many souls. Over the next thirty years, he had many preaching partners in many series of Gospel meetings in Toronto, ON; Vancouver, BC; Arlington and Seattle, WA; and a number of different places in California. He preached in Texas, Ohio, and the Prairie and Maritime Provinces of Canada. Herb never married, so he lived out of his suitcase and his ca, and stayed with hospitable believers wherever he had meetings.
His preaching was with great passion and entreaty, and those who listened to him preach the Gospel were impressed with the urgency of the message by the urgency of the messenger. Many of the Gospel series he took part in with other brothers continued for six weeks and longer. He was known to use “startling statements,” and illustrations very effectively to get his points across to the listeners. Much of his preaching was given to warnings, and the consequences of sin, but he would end with a sincere and earnest entreaty to come to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. One of his favorite closing hymns was, “Come every soul by sin oppressed, there’s mercy with the Lord.” He sometimes would lead the singing of the chorus, “Only trust Him, only trust Him,” several times at the end of the hymn. Hundreds of souls were saved all across North America through the preaching of Mr. Herb Harris.
His brother, Russell Harris, also a preacher of the Gospel, went to Prince Edward Island, and after visiting and having meetings there, saw an opportunity for more souls to be saved there and he needed help. He got his brother, Herb, and Mr. A.W. Joyce to go to that island and God was at work there too. Souls were saved and assembly testimonies were established on PEI.
He was in his early fifties preaching on Prince Edward Island during WW2 when a blood clot formed in his leg. He was bedridden in the hospital in Charlottetown with his leg immobile for quite a while. It was there lying on his back and looking at a map in the paper, that he focused on Newfoundland, a part of the UK just off the east coast of Canada. It was a very important location because it was the last stop airplanes had before they crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Great Britain. Gander and Goose Bay became very important to the war effort because of the airbases built there. There was a key harbor in St. John’s that was very sheltered and the next stop east from there was Europe. The USA built airbases and navy bases in different places in Newfoundland and Labrador. Many ships were sunk around the shores of Newfoundland by submarines during WW2.
The work of the Gospel was always on Herb Harris’ mind and in his heart, and he wondered if there had ever been any brothers from Gospel Hall assemblies who had worked in the Gospel there. It was not part of Canada at that time, so not too much information had been gathered about that island and the Labrador coast. People had left the island to go to work in the USA and Canada, but they didn’t go back very often in those days.
Mr. Harris didn’t have much to call his own except a car, a suitcase with his clothes, his Bible which he carried in a Bible bag, and a sheaf of notes that he pinned in his Bible with a straight pin to keep them in place when he preached. His Bibles wore out because the pin holes at the bottom of the pages were so full of holes that the lower part of the pages fell off. He also carried a typewriter because his handwriting was so firm it made holes in the paper when he tried to write letters by hand. He always wanted typewriter ribbons that had both black and red ink. At the end of almost every letter he wrote when reporting of some success in the work of the Lord, he would write in red capital letters, “TO GOD BE ALLTHE GLORY!!!”
Herb used to read books about Gospel preaching. George Whitefield, Charles Finney, C.H. Spurgeon, David Brainard, and Puritan preachers were familiar to him. He would read the same books over and over again. He used to say to those of us who worked with him, “I don’t want to be a petty teacher. I just want to preach the Gospel.” One brother wrote a letter to him, “To the brother whose praise is in the Gospel.” He would quite often quote to us if we had been too wordy or got sidetracked in our preaching, “Charles Spurgeon said to his students, ‘Paul said, this one thing I do, not these many things I dabble in.’ So, young man, just go out and stick with the Gospel.”
Mr. Harris never hesitated to preach the same message over and over again. He said one time that he heard a man say, “You never get the full impact of a message until you have preached it thirty times!” He told us, “If souls are brought to Christ when you preach on a certain subject, use it as often as you can as long as it has been born again.” It is God who uses His word in His own way and time. He can give light to a dark soul with one short phrase or illustration. “Teaching moments” are important in Gospel preaching and teaching.