Independence Day 1820 with James Brainerd Taylor, uncommon American Christian . . . "The contrast will be fully seen only above"

Here is how one 19-year-old student--the "uncommon" American Christian, James Brainerd Taylor--spent his American Independence Day holiday near Lawrenceville, New Jersey, in 1820.

On Tuesday I called at ten houses. At most of them I presented one or more [Gospel] Tracts such as I thought likely to be useful. This was the fourth of July.

In the evening I had many reflections on the manner which I had spent the day, so totally different from that in which I had heretofore spent that anniversary. O how much greater cause of triumph to be instrumental in delivering one soul from the power of sin and Satan than to be the conqueror of nations! The contrast will be fully seen only above.

*Benjamin Holt Rice and John Holt Rice, Memoir of James Brainerd Taylor, 2nd Edition (NY: American Tract Society, 1833), page 48.

May today's Christian--American or otherwise--not take holidays off in our efforts at telling others about the sin-bearing Savior Jesus Christ who "came to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10).