Harold Samuel Laird was born on August 8, 1891, in New Castle, Pennsylvania. His father was a faithful Presbyterian pastor who raised him in the nurture of the Lord. Harold Laird was converted at a young age and walked closely with his Lord ever afterward. Upon graduation from Lafayette College and Princeton Theological Seminary he was ordained to the Gospel Ministry and held six successful pastorates.

Harold Laird was an outstanding preacher of the Gospel, a caring pastor, a contender for the faith, and one who was vitally interested in world missions. He had a leading role in the events which led to the formation of one source of the PCA. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of Westminster Theological Seminary, the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, and Faith Theological Seminary. He was willing to suffer for his convictions even to the point of being suspended from the ministry of the PCUSA and being removed as pastor of one of the most prestigous churches of Wilmington, Delaware. Wheaton College honored him with a Doctor of Divinity degree and he was elected as Moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod. He also served on the Board of the Quarryville Presbyterian Home.

Dr. Laird was a man who walked with God. All who heard him pray came into the presence of God. His life verse was Matthew 6:33 and his godly spirit evidenced that he practiced it. He was completely content in the providence of God in his life. Harold Laird ran his race well and entered into glory on August 25, 1987.

THE PROMISE OF
SUPERNATURAL GUIDANCE

by Rev. Harold S. Laird, D.D.

[The Independent Board Bulletin 7.3 (March 1941): 3-4.]

“1 will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: 1 will guide thee with mine eye.” (Psalm 32:8.)

The thirty-second Psalm describes two methods of supernatural guidance. Both methods, of course, are employed only on behalf of those who are ordained of God unto eternal life.

The first is that employed with those of His children who have a desire to know and to do His will. To them, and to them alone God speaks when He says, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.” The second method is that used with those who are self-willed, stubborn, and wayward. It is of this group that He speaks when He says, “Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.” Thus God does guide many, in order that, in spite of their self-willed waywardness, they may at last be brought unto Himself.

It is, of course, the first of these two methods that we have in mind when we speak of “the promise of supernatural guidance.” Happy is the man or woman who has the assurance of this guidance, rather than the other.

It is the PATH OF PEACE. We can not guide ourselves, nor can we trust others to guide us, though they be the wisest and the best. Jeremiah testified to this when he wrote, “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23). But when we put ourselves under the care and leading of the Lord, we know that all is well, and great peace is ours. The Apostle testifies to this in Philippians 4:6-7.

It is also the PATH OF COURAGE. What courage it gives us to know that God guides us, that He leads and goes before! “He knoweth the way that I take. . . .” This was the secret of Joshua’s courage. Again and again God bade Joshua, “Be of good courage,” simply on the ground of His promised guidance.

It is also the PATH of HOPE. God purposes that our hope for the future should be the result largely of our experience of His guidance in the past. How we ought to trust Him to fulfill in us all His purpose as we reflect upon the supernatural manner in which He has directed our steps in the days that are past.

There was a good deal of serious scholarship which arose from among the early leaders of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the Bible Presbyterian Synod. And of the many who accomplished so much in their study and defense of the Scriptures, the Rev. Dr. R. Laird Harris was easily among the most notable of these scholars.

Robert Laird Harris was born on 10 March 1911 in Brownsburg, Pennsylvania. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Delaware in 1931, a Th.B. from Westminster Theological Seminary in 1935 and a Th.M. from Westminster in 1937. He was licensed in 1935 by the New Castle Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (PCUSA), and ordained in June 1936 in the Presbyterian Church of America [the original name of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC)] at that denomination’s first General Assembly.

He left the OPC late in 1937 to join the newly formed Bible Presbyterian Church. Harris then received an A.M. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941, and was later part-time instructor in Hebrew there from 1946 to 1947. He obtained his Ph.D. from Dropsie in 1947. Biblical exegesis was Dr. Harris’s field and he taught this for twenty years at Faith Theological Seminary, first as instructor (1937 – 1943), then as assistant professor (1943 – 1947) and finally as professor (1947 – 1956).

Dr. Harris served as moderator of the Bible Presbyterian Synod in 1956, the year in which the denomination divided. Harris defended the validity of church-controlled agencies against those who insisted on independent agencies, and he was one of many faculty members to resign from Faith Seminary that year. He became at that time one of the founding faculty members of Covenant Theological Seminary. He was professor there and chairman of the Old Testament department from 1956 until he retired from full-time teaching in 1981. He remained an occasional lecturer at Covenant, and was also a lecturer in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan and a visiting professor in India, Hong Kong and Germany following his retirement, while also working on further revisions to the New International Version translation of the Bible.

He remained active in church leadership, serving as chairman of the fraternal relations committee of the Bible Presbyterian Church, Columbus Synod during the late 1950s, when discussion began concerning union between the BPC, Columbus Synod and the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, General Synod. He remained on that committee through 1965, seeing the effort through to the culmination of ecclesiastical union with the creation of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (RPCES). In 1982, the RPCES joined the Presbyterian Church in America and Dr. Harris was elected moderator that year for the 10th General Assembly of the PCA.

Harris was not only a teacher and church leader, but a prolific author as well. He published an Introductory Hebrew Grammar, the prize-winningInspiration and Canonicity of the Bible, and additional works such as Your Bible and Man–God’s Eternal Creation. He was editor of The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament and a contributing editor to the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, and wrote articles for the Wycliffe Bible Commentary and Expositor’s Bible. Also, as noted above, Dr. Harris served as chairman of the Committee on Bible Translation that produced the New International Version of the Bible .

Dr. Harris’ first wife, Elizabeth K. Nelson, died in 1980. He later married Anne P. Krauss and they resided for some time in Wilmington, Delaware before declining health prompted a move to the Quarryville Retirement Home in Quarryville, PA. Dr. Robert Laird Harris entered glory on 25 April 2008. The funeral service for Dr. Harris was conducted on 1 May 2008 at the Faith Reformed Presbyterian Church, Quarryville, PA, and internment was on 2 May 2008 in the historic cemetery adjacent to the Thompson Memorial Presbyterian Church, New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Words to Live By:
For those who enter upon the study of the Scriptures, especially at the academic level, there is a hidden pitfall. It is a deadly danger which ultimately springs from pride and the imposition of human intellect upon the very Word of God. By God’s grace, Dr. Harris avoided this pitfall and to his dying day, his heart remained humble before the Lord his God. The Puritan theologian John Owen, in his Biblical Theology, gives an excellent summary of both the problem and the proper, necessary approach that any scholar must maintain in the study of the Scriptures:

“Wherever fear and caution have not infused the student’s heart, God is despised. His pleasure is only to dwell in hearts which tremble at His Word. Light or frivolous perusal of the Scriptures is a sickness of soul which leads on to the death of atheism. He who would properly undertake the study of the Bible must keep fixed in his memory, fastened as it were with nails, that stern warning of the Apostle in Hebrews 12:28-29, ‘Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and Godly fear; for our God is a consuming fire.’ Truly, ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ If this fear is not experienced in the study of the Word, it will not display itself in any other facet of life.’
— Biblical Theology, by John Owen (Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), pp. 699-700.

Let’s Take a Quiz

Who am I? I have been called the father of American revivalism . . . the forerunner of everyone from Dwight L. Moody to Billy Graham . . . and still, living in the Vineyard movement to the Church growth movement . . . a darling of both the religious right and the Christian left, or both to the late Jerry Falwell and Jim Wallis . . . envisioned in the church as an agent of change to both individuals and the social gospel? Have you identified me yet? If you chose Charles Grandison Finney, you have passed the test. Finney lives on in all these men and movements today.

Charles G. Finney was a Presbyterian minister whose dates are 1792 to 1875.   A product of the New England states, he taught in his early life and later became an attorney in New York state.  One day, he decided to find God in the woods behind his law practice. He came back to his office claiming to have a baptism of the Holy Spirit which he could barely describe, so wondrous was it.  Giving up his law practice, he refused to attend Princeton Seminary, or for that matter, any seminary, and still was ordained into the Presbyterian church.  He began to conduct revivals then and there. What transpired was what has become known in American church history as the second great awakening.  Only this awakening was diametrically different from the first great awakening.

In examining Finney’s theology and subsequent preaching, listen to the words of Michael Horton. He summed up Charles Finney’s theology and subsequent preaching, as believing that God is not sovereign, that man is not a sinner by nature, that the atonement is not a true payment for sin, that justification by imputation is insulting to reason and morality, that the new birth is simply the effect of successful techniques, and that revival is a natural result of clever campaigns.  He consistently held all these positions in both his campaigns and his books. In short, whatever it was that Charles Finney accomplished, his efforts were rooted in an aberrant theology known as Arminianism. And while any real spiritual results were fleeting, his methods persist to this day.

How different was this from the first great awakening which was rooted in Calvinistic theology?  What you would find in the first great awakening was the teaching that God was sovereign in salvation, that every human being was sinful by nature, that Jesus Christ took on human flesh to stand in our place, bearing our sin and achieving a righteousness for us which is ours by faith, that this new life in Christ is a work of the Holy Spirit, and that revival is brought about by that same Holy Spirit Who is not dependent upon human means for the accomplishment of His work.

It was in 1831 that Charles Finney began a six month revival in the Presbyterian Church of Rochester, New York.  He would preach close to a hundred sermons, complete with all the emotional excesses of a man-centered gospel, ending it on March 9, 1831.  It was these meetings which were the zenith of his evangelistic career.  He went on to other churches and revival, but would come back to Rochester two more times.

Words to Live By: There are two approaches to the gospel which distinguish between the First and Second Great Awakenings. So the question is a simple one : Which do you side with — a God-centered awakening or a man-centered awakening? It was this same question which American Presbyterians had to answer in the early nineteenth century.  Old School Presbyterians answered clearly in the theology of the First Great Awakening.

Set a watch over it!

Here’s to our Stated Clerks!

Back Creek Presbyterian Church, located in Mount Ulla, Rowan county, North Carolina, was organized in 1805, and is now a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. In the same year that the church was organized, church members George and Catherine (Barr) Andrews welcomed a child into their family, with the birth of Silas Milton Andrews on March 11, 1805.  Young Silas later took his college education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, graduating in 1826. He worked as a teacher for several years before entering the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1828 and was regularly graduated in the Fall of 1831.

Mr. Andrews was licensed to preach by the New Brunswick Presbytery on February 2, 1831. Shortly after graduating from Princeton, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Philadelphia on November 16, 1831 and installed as pastor of the Presbyterian church in Doylestown, PA, with concurrent duties over a congregation still remaining at Deep Run, PA. The Doylestown church had originally begun in Deep Run, organized by the efforts of the Rev. William Tennent, and this church was first mentioned in the records of the Presbytery of Philadelphia in 1732.  For forty-nine years Rev. Andrews labored in this one charge, without interruption, until the day of his death. The succession of pastors preceding him included William McHenry, Hugh Magill, James Latta, James C. Greer, Uriah DuBois and Charles Hyde.

One source tells us that Rev. Andrews was single-minded in his focus, “concentrating all his efforts on his charge, and taking very little part in outside affairs, gathering in from time to time large numbers of converts, and training and edifying his people in the way of truth, holiness and duty.” Perhaps to make ends meet during those early years when the congregation was smaller, Rev. Andrews also operated a private classical academy in addition to his pastoral duties. Rev. Andrews died on March 7, 1881.

This was a quiet and unassuming man, not one who sought attention for himself, not one given to pride or ostentation. He was a good scholar, fair and even-handed in his judgment, and he was a rather good preacher who knew the Scriptures well. From mid-October, 1848 until the reunion of the Old School and New School wings of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in 1870, Rev. Andrews served as the Stated Clerk of the Synod of Philadelphia. He brought both care and attention to detail to his work, and had excellent penmanship as well.

Words to Live By:
Now here’s something you don’t think about often : We might from time to time be reminded to pray for our pastors, but when was the last time someone exhorted you to pray for our Stated Clerks? The record of the Church that they help to create is particularly crucial in future years, and each of them must exhibit that same character of meticulous care and accuracy if they are to do their work properly. Clearly this is not a work that just anyone can do, and do well. They are a rare breed.

For Further Study:
Apparently Rev. Andrews only wrote one work that was ever published, The Sabbath at Home, which was issued by the Presbyterian Board of Publication in 1836 and then reprinted twice, in 1837 and 1840. That book can be read online, here.

There was also a student’s journal which was preserved and later transcribed and published in 1958 as Mister Andrews’ School, 1837-1842. Transcribed and illustrated by Ellen Swartzlander and published in Doylestown, PA by the Bucks County Historical Society. The book is about 126 pages in length, and some 58 libraries around the country hold copies, so it should be easy to obtain via interlibrary loan.