The Life of Harlan Page. By William A. Hallock [pp. 233-243]

The Place of the Laity.
profession, and we should see a more powerful religious influence exerted on the mass, than if each were the pastor of
a congregation. We may here adopt the language of Mr.
Abbott, which occurs to us at the moment. "Suppose," he
says in one of his celebrated works, "suppose every Christian were to come up at once to his duty as a follower of
Christ, renounce the world entirely, search his heart, and culltivate, by every means in his power, his own spiritual progress, and then devote himself to the work of doing good in
the narrow sphere of his own personal influence. There
would be no splendid conquests achieved by any one; but by
the united efforts of all, the work would go on with universal
and almost inconceivable power. No one who knows the
effect of holiness, when it appears in living and acting reality,
in arresting the attention and alarming the conscience, and
in winning those who witness it, to penitence and faith, can
doubt, that each individual who should thus live might hope
to be the means of bringing one, two, three, or four, every
year, to the service of his Master: and to double or treble or
quadruple the church in a year, would be progress which
would soon change the face of things in such a world as this.
This is the way undoubtedly, that the principles of the gospel are ultimately to spread in the world; through the influence of the lives and efforts of private Christians. I speak
of course, now, of those countries where Christianity has
nominal possession. Private Christians look far too much
away from themselves, to ministers and missionaries and
bibles and tracts, and imagine that their business is merely to
sustain the efforts made through these means. The far more
valuable and powerful influences which might be brought to
bear upon a world lying in sin, from the light of religion in
the hearts and lives of the great mnass of believers, is lost
sight of and forgotten."
A recent exemplification of the power of such an influence
has been given in the history of Mr. Harlan Page. A carpenter by trade, of common education and no remarkable
natural talents, he did not excuse himself on these accounts
from personal and constant labours to do good. By direct
conversation, or letters, or tracts, he strove to gain access to
every impenitent person whom he encountered. The example of his holy and devoted life made way for the exercise of
his influence wherever he was known. His letters were
"powerful," but their power was only that which any plain
and honest heart could indite that felt the same devotedness.
1836.]
235