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answer.
    The impression made that night and deepened afterwards by further acquaintance with the young man who was preaching for all he was worth, as he has expressed it, led him into fellowship in the church when it was formed and made him ever afterwards one of Mr. Harper’s staunchest friends.
    After a year and a half of service in Govan, a move was made to Gordon Halls, Paisley Road. Here on September 5, 1897, a church was formed of twenty-five members, some of whom had come with him from Govan. The church was named Paisley Road Baptist Church, a name it bore for many years. (Eventually, after Harper lost his life in the Atlantic, it was renamed the Harper Memorial Church.)
    Men and women of all ages gathered round the young preacher, and with him as leader, work was carried on in no formal manner. At all the inside meetings, increasing effort was made to win men to Christ. Outside, meetings were held on street corners, at the gates of public works at the meal hours, and wherever a hearing could be obtained. The net was cast on every side. The zeal and enthusiasm of the workers seemed boundless. Souls were won, the cause prospered, the membership was increased. The faith which worketh by love and is radiant with hopefulness animated the workers and led them on from victory to victory over the forces of unbelief.
    After four years in the Gordon Halls, a site was secured in Plantation district, and an iron building capable of seating five or six hundred people was put up. To it as a center the work was transferred, and within its walls marvelous things were seen of God’s saving power. A continuous stream of pardoning mercy poured itself through the services, and after a while the building had to be enlarged to make room for the increasing demands of the work. It is situated in the midst of a teeming working-class population. No one, no matter how closely associated with the work which was carried on, could ever know anything fully of the amount of good that was accomplished by Mr. Harper’s ministry.
    “Yon Man, Mr. Harper, Was Preaching at the Street Corner, and I Trusted the Lord”
    The superintendent of a large evangelistic hall in Glasgow was visiting an old man in High Street, fully two miles away from Paisley Road Church. The old man, who was in his eightieth year, was asked if he was trusting Jesus. At once he answered in the affirmative. On being asked how long it had been since he trusted the Savior, he said, “Nine years.”
    “What age were you, then?”
    “Just turned seventy.”
    “And how did it come about?”
    “Well, I was passing Plantation, and yon man, Mr. Harper, was preaching at the street corner, and I trusted the Lord there and then.”
    In and around the district in which the church was situated, there were many, many homes that were blessed, brightened, and beautified by the preaching of the Lord’s servant, whose sad end so many mourned. The church that was formed with twenty-five members had a membership of nearly five hundred when, after thirteen years of service, John Harper left in September 1910 to take up the duties of the pastorate in Walworth Road Church in London. The farewell meeting was a most memorable one. The iron building, seating about nine hundred, was quite inadequate to take in all who desired to attend, and the use of a large U.F. Church in the neighborhood was kindly granted for the occasion. It was crowded to excess.
     
    A CONSUMING EARNESTNESS
    Harper was always an earnest preacher. Never a trifler. Never a mere retailer of addresses. He was ever a man who had his gaze fixed on the need of precious souls. During the later years of his ministry in Glasgow, his preaching seemed to take on a higher note. There was a consuming earnestness that grew with the passing years. His preaching power on occasion was something extraordinary. This was not merely when appealing to the unsaved to be reconciled to God, but also when exhorting the children of God to higher things.