Baptist HeritageSamuel Harriss
| Col.
Samuel Harriss was among the most effective preachers that ever proclaimed
the glad tidings in this country. He was born Jan. 12, 1724, in Hanover Co.,
Va. He was at one time church-warden, sheriff, justice of the peace, colonel
of the militia, and captain of the Mayo Fort. His position was respectable,
and his genial disposition made him exceedingly popular. His education had
been liberal. He first became anxious about his soul in his thirty-fourth
year. On one of his journeys to visit the fort officially he called at a
small house, where he learned there was to be Baptist preaching; the
ministers were Joseph and WIlliam Murphy. He seated himself behind a loom to
hide his uniform. The ey of God, however, was upon him, and his heart was
very deeply affected; but some time afterwards the Lord revealed his love to
him in such fullness that, in an ecstasy of joy, he exclaimed, "Glory!
glory! glory!" He was baptized by Rev. Danile Marhsall in 1758, it is
believed. He forthwith, like converted Paul, began to preach Jesus. At first
his labors were restricted to some neighboring counties of Viriginia and
North Carolina; but in process of time he preached throughout all Virginia
and many parts of North Carolina. He was not ordained for years after he had
been preaching. This event occurred in 1769; then he administered the
ordinances. The first candidate he baptized was James Ireland, a much
persecuted and very useful Baptist minister in Virginia. Mr. Harriss was the
best-known man in his native colony, and it is doubtful if Patrick Henry
could control a vast assemblage by a power superior to that of Samuel
Harriss. His ministry was attended by conversions in very large numbers;
churches sprang up on the line of his missionary travels; he was truly the
apostle of Virginia. Not a few of his spiritual children became preachers
after the order of Mr. Harriss, and the aristocratic Episcopalian colony was
agitated from one end to the other by these Baptist innovators. Mr. Harriss feared nothing; legal prosecutions and private persecutions had no effect upon him. He was the owner of a respectable estate, and when he was converted he devoted the greater part of it to religious objects. He had been erecting a new and capacious residence before the Savioiur called him, and when it was "covered in" he made it a meeting-house, and lived in his former confined abode. During the Revolutionary war, when salt was scarce, he kept two wagons running to Petersburg to bring it up for his neighbors. When the Baptists in Virginia mistakenly supposed, in 1774, that the apostolic office still existed, Mr. Harriss was elected an apostle, but he held this honor for only a few months. At all meetings of delegates of the churches he was the presiding officer. Virginia Baptists loved to honor him, and under God, he was chiefly instrumental in opening the prison-doors of the Old Dominion for the persecuted, and in sweeping away the foul ties uniting church and state. He made a great mistake in the earlier part of his Christian life in denouncing the acceptance by ministers of any compensation for preaching the Word. This unscriptural and unjust doctrine nearly ruined some of God's faithful shepherds and their families; but Col. Harriss was led to see his error and renounce it. Take him "all together," he was a glorious man of God, a Virginia Whitefield, for which we gratefully bless our divine Redeemer. He died in the year 1795. source: Cathcart's Baptist Encyclopedia |