Harold St John (1876-1957) was converted to Christ at 18. Employed in a Bank, he spent much of his spare time and his holidays preaching the gospel and working among the street people of London:
“When I was quite young, I used to go down to the slums of London. I would go into a common lodging house on a Sunday night dressed in a frock coat and a silk top hat and I would stand there with a Testament in my hand and preach and preach, and be very much surprised that the people did not listen to me. I was enormously impressed at their iniquity! Here was a young man in a frock coat and a silk top hat, and they didn’t even listen to him! Then I discovered the reason why they would not listen. I got hold of the oldest suit I could borrow and in the pocket of that suit I placed the sum of four pence. In the evening I went, with the ragtag and bobtail of the district, to that lodging house where two or three hundred men were to sleep for the night. I sat where they sat, and the fleas that bit them bit me; the same crawly things that crawled on them crawled on me. I spent some nights in that dreadful chamber silently listening to their needs and woes. Then at six o’clock one morning, when they were getting their breakfast, I arose and began to speak to them. Now I found there was not the slightest difficulty in obtaining their attention. I understood how the seas of life were buffeting them, and they were perfectly willing to listen to a man who had sat where they sat. The greatest day in our history was the day when it came to the heart of God to draw closer to us than He had ever done before, after forty centuries of dwelling in cloud and thick darkness. But He did not send His Son to start preaching some code: when our Lord went into the business of redemption, for thirty years He never said a word of public ministry. For thirty years He sat where men sat and listened to their thoughts and experiences. For thirty years He knew hunger, weariness, poverty, and the cares of that little home. Then He began to speak, and the world has been listening ever since.”
Though a “proper Englishman” Harold St John had no airs and graces when it came to working among the poor or preaching on the street. Percy Rouff said, “St. John, with his powerful voice and fluent tongue, drew and held the crowds with his graphic word pictures and his youthful, ruddy appearance. Either alone or with one other, he would go to Hyde Park [London] and preach to the crowds.”
A famous story is told of a time when Harold St. John stood in the private chapel of Keble College, Oxford, viewing a copy of Holman Hunt’s painting The Light of the World, A guide explained to the group of tourists before him, St John included, that “The original of this picture was sold for £5,000.” Quick as a flash, St. John said: “Ladies and gentleman, may I add that the true original of this picture was sold for thirty pieces of silver.”
In 1913, St John resigned from the Bank to preach the gospel full time. His manager asked, “How will you live, and who will provide for your expenses, since you are not going out under any recognised missionary society?” St John answered, “I’m going out to do God’s work. God is sending me, and God will provide.”
In July of 1914, he married Ella Swain. In the autumn of the same year they sailed to South America where they served the Lord in Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and British Guiana. His labours extended to many other countries around the world, working with many other preachers such as E.H. Broadbent, Harold P. Barker, C. F. Hogg and W. W. Fereday.
A tall man with white hair and kindly radiant face, Harold St John impacted large numbers of people for Christ and the gospel. He was a nighty teacher of the Word of God and left behind a number of writings for the benefit of Bible students. In this sermon, he works his way through the “seven scenes of judgment” in Matthew chapter 7 and impresses the import of the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount upon his hearers.
