PART III HOW TO OBTAIN THE BLESSING

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CHAPTER - SANCTIFICATION A CHRISTIAN OBLIGATION What I wish to say in this chapter, in a general way, as an introduction to the reception of the baptism with the Holy Spirit, is suggested by the following passages of Scripture: “Be filled with the Spirit” ( Ephesians 5:18). “Though it tarry wait for it, because it will surely come; it will not tarry” ( Habakkuk 2:3). “The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple” ( Malachi 3:1). “Ye are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you “ ( 1 Corinthians 3:16).

These passages suggest to me these great facts:

I. It is the universal obligation of all Christians to become sanctified. This is not supposed to be the case. I have no doubt these words will be a surprise to many readers. But there can be no question whatever about it. The ringing exhortation of the Bible is, “Let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ and press on unto perfection” ( Hebrews 6:1). Who shall say that this command, “Be filled with the Spirit,” is not as imperative as the command not to steal? Bishop Taylor, one of the most effective Christian workers of the century, who has girdled the world with his undying influence and has personally labored in America, Australia, India and Africa, says: “It is not optional with a believer to ‘go on to perfection’ or not. It is his imperative duty, just as fast as the Holy Ghost gives him light and applies the command to his conscience. After the soul is somewhat established in the grace of pardon wherein it stands, then the Holy Sanctifier sheds increasing light into the heart of th e young believer, and reveals its inherent depravity to an alarming degree. This is an occasion of great temptation. Our only safety is to obey God, walk after the Spirit and ‘go on to perfection.’ The neglect to obey God’s positive command, ‘Be ye holy,’ involves a risk of forfeiture of the justified relation, and soul distraction that no person should take. “But this is not merely a question involving the personal salvation of the Christian professor, but one on which hangs conditionally the salvation of the world. Whatever may be the organic strength of the church, the number and grandeur of her institutions and appliances, her real spiritual effectiveness in the prosecution of her great mission of preaching ‘the gospel to every creature.’ will be proportionate to the holiness of her individual members. A church composed of spiritual dwarfs, instead of perfect men,’ must be a dwarfish, ineffective church. When we remember that the provision of salvation in Christ embraces every sinner on the globe, and that God the Holy Ghost hath been sent down to ‘abide with us,’ and administer this provision to the salvation of the whole human family, we see at once the appalling fact that there is a dreadful miscarriage somewhere. “Why is it that we grapple so feebly and ineffectively with Mohammedanism and the various forms of heathenism? Why is it that, even in Christian countries, comparatively so few even profess to be loyal to God? Why is it that the large majority of our children, brought up at our family altars, and trained in the nursery of our churches — the Sunday-school — go out into the world unblushing rebels against God?

Why is it that the Christian Church, instead of pushing a bold, aggressive warfare, under the leadership of her divine Teacher, the Holy Spirit, for the conquest of the world, is in the main quietly reposing in her trenches, barracks, and spiritual hospitals, maintaining a feeble defensive, unable to resist the innovating forces of worldliness and sin, and the corrupting tide of infidelity itself? In searching for the grounds of this dreadful deficiency, involving the loss of millions of souls, we will find them not so much in organizations and ordinances, and institutions, as in want of entire hear t purity in her individual members” (Infancy and Manhood, pp. 7-13). “We have a sickly, dwarfish type of Christianity, which is proving itself to a demonstration quite inadequate to meet the demands of her great mission of mercy in saving the whole world” (p. 14).

Rev. F. B. Meyer, of London, says in the same strain: “How little power average Christians have. They wave the censer between the living and the dead, but the plague is not stayed. Like Gehazi, they lay the staff on the face of the dead child, but life does not return. Like the disciples at the foot of the mount, they speak the healing words, but the devil-possessed are not relieved. They pray; but prayers are unanswered. The life-giving power must be in us, or we shall not see dead sinners come to life through our words.” Just here is the weakness of the church of our time. There are many members; but too many of them are Gehazis and faithless disciples.

Until more believers are filled with the sanctifying and power-giving Holy Spirit, even the children of the church households will remain dead and devil-possessed. Mrs. E. M. Whittemore, of the Door of Hope Mission for fallen women in New York, said in an address in Boston: “Of two hundred girls taken into the mission, one hundred and ninety-nine w ere from Christian homes (so called). I rarely if ever meet a grown up girl born in the slums in sin, down there still; and I mean, too, those whom we have reached.” It is safe to say those girls had parents who were easy-going, indifferent, worldly church members, but strangers to the Baptism with the Holy Ghost. They did not have religion enough to make their children respect it and want it. Their Sabbath-school teachers probably had the same kind of piety, and perhaps their pastors preached to them without a touch of Spirit power. And all these representatives of lukewarm piety, all unfilled with the Spirit, simply conspired to send these girls to the street, and sent five times as many young men to be their companions.

Hear Mrs. Catherine Booth, in one of her magnificent addresses on The Holy Ghost: “What a tide of lamentation and mourning reaches us all round the land as to the deadness, coldness and dearth of Christian churches! We can not help feeling that there is a great want somewhere!

This is not only my opinion, but it is almost universally admitted, that with the enormous expenditure of means, the great amount of human effort, the multiplication of human instrumentalities during the past century, there has not been a corresponding result. People say to me, on every hand, we have meetings without number, services, societies, conventions, conferences, but what comes of them all, comparatively? And I may just say here that numbers of ministers and clergymen in private conversation admit the same thing. When talking behind the scenes, they say: ‘Yes, it is a sad fact; I think I preach the truth, I pray about it, I am anxious for results, but alas! alas! the conversions are but few and far between, and even those few are superficial.’ Now I say this is universally admitted, and it behooves us to ask before God, Where is the lack? Now note, this want is not the truth. O, what a great deal of talk about the truth, and not any too much. But there will be thousands of sermons preached today — the truth and nothing but the truth. Nobody will pretend to say they were not in perfect keeping with the Word of God; and yet they will be perfect failures, and nobody will know it better than they who preach them. These are facts. “I was talking on this point a while ago with a good man who said: ‘Ah, yes; I have not seen a conversion in my church these two years.’ Now what was the reason? There was a reason, and I am afraid many might say the same. Yet there are the unconverted. They come to be operated on. They are not lifted into salvation. What is the matter? There must be something wrong. God is not changed. Human hearts are not changed; they are depraved, vile, devilish, just the same as ever. The gospel is the same power that it ever was — the power of God unto salvation. Where is the lack? I say most unhesitatingly that the great want is the Power of the Holy Ghost. The masses come to the churches Sunday after Sunday, come and go, like a door on its hinges, neither better nor worse? — nay, God grant it might be so, but they are worse. They get enough light to light them down to damnation, but they do not get enough power to lift them into salvation.

This power is as distinct, and definite, and separate a gift of God, as was this Book, or God’s Son, or any other gift which he has given us! We can not explain this gift, but it is the power of the Holy Spirit of God in the soul of the speaker, accompanying his word, making it cut and pierce to the dividing of soul and spirit. “Oh, what numbers of ministers, elders, deacons, leaders, Sabbath-school teachers and the like have come to me confessing that they have been working with little results. They want the Holy Ghost to accompany their testimony. This is how I account for the want of results — the want of the direct, pungent, enlightening, convicting, restoring. transforming power of the Holy Ghost. And I care not how gigantic the intellect of the agent, or how equipped from the school of human learning. I would rather have a hallelujah lass, a little child with the power of the Holy Ghost, hardly able to put two sentences of the Queen’s English together, to come to help, bless, and benefit my soul, than to have the most learned divine in the kingdom come without it; for ‘it is not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit.’ Oh, that you would learn it! When you have learned that you will be made. When you experience it you will lay hold on God. It is not by might of intellect or learning or eloquence or position or influence — man’s power of any sort, but by my Spirit. That is as true as it ever was.

Here is the secret of the Church’s failure. She is like Israel of old: ‘She hath multiplied her defenced cities, and her palaces, but she hath forgotten the God of Israel, in whom her strength is’” (Aggressive Christianity; Address, The Holy Ghost). In view of these solemn facts that individual Christians are weak and worldly and joyless, and churches are barrer and lifeless without this filling of the Spirit, is it any wonder that God commands all believers to obtain this blessing.

Furthermore, reflect on the account we must meet if we do not seek and obtain the Baptism with the Spirit. Finney said: “If we are not filled with the Spirit our guilt amounts to disobedience of God. It amounts to all the good we might do if we had the Spirit of God in as great measure as possible — but good which is now all undone because we are without this power. Our guilt is farther measured by all the evil you do in consequence of not having the Spirit.” I read this awful thought something more than a year ago, and it made a profound impression on my soul. Prior to that time I reviewed my ministry with great satisfaction, because I had been blessed with the privilege of leading perhaps twenty-five hundred souls to Christ.

But I had consciously worked with a very limited enduement of spiritual power, compared with what God was willing to give. And when I thought what I might have done for God and his cause had I sought with all my soul and obtained the divine anointing for service twenty years ag o, my heart sank within me. I look upon my past ministry now with sadness, and plead that the tears and blood of Christ may wash out the stains and guilt of my imperfect service.

In the same feeling Mrs. Booth said: “Let me remind you — and it makes my own soul almost reel when I think of it — that God holds us responsible for all the good we might do if we had this Holy Spirit power.

Do not deceive yourself. He will have the five talents with their increase.

He will not have an excuse for one, and you will not dare to go up to the throne and say: ‘Thou wast a hard Master. Thou biddest me to save souls when thou knewest I had not the power.’ What will he say to you? ‘Wicked and slothful servant, out of thine own mouth will I judge thee.

You knew where you could have got the power. You knew the condition.

You might have had it. Where are the souls you might have saved? Where are the children that I would have given you? Where are the fruit? ‘ Oh, friends, these are solemn and awful realities. If I did not believe them I should not stand here. Oh, what you might do! Who can tell? Who would ever have thought, twenty years ago, when I first raised my voice, a feeble, trembling woman, one of the most timid and bashful the Lord ever saved, the hundreds of precious souls that would be given me? Let me ask you, supposing I had held back and been disobedient to the Heavenly Vision, what would God have said to me for the loss of all this fruit? Thank God, much of it is already gathered into heaven. My brother, my sister, he holds you responsible.”

II. I observe, because God has commanded us all to have this blessing, and it is so infinitely important, it is reasonable to conclude that each true Christian may seek this blessing with full assurance that he may obtain it.

Whatever is obligatory upon believers each believer may realize in his own life. Only be sure at the outset that you are a son or daughter of God in a justified state. Have the witness of the Spirit that you are born again as an absolutely essential preliminary condition to all seeking of sanctification.

Then after that never entertain a doubt that you are an heir of all the covenant blessings and promised grace of God. Only keep your sonship clear as a truly regenerate man, then cling to your title to all the revealed privileges of the sons of God, the best of which is the Baptism with the Holy Ghost, and go on to the conquest of the blessing. Be fully persuaded that this blessing is for you, on the simple ground that you are a child of God, and that he commands you personally t o obtain it, and says “the promise is unto you.” He has told each one of you that “this is the will of God, even your sanctification.” “For God hath called you unto sanctification “ ( 1 Thessalonians 4:3,7). It is no vain presumption, therefore, to plead your claim and title with all boldness at the throne of grace.

III. It would logically follow from the above that Christians of any age or degree of Christian experience may hopefully seek the blessing. This is literally true. It is not a question of education or culture. Christians scarcely able to read the Bible readily have had a marvelous anointing of the Spirit, while profound scholars and theologians utterly miss the way. Again, it is not at all a question of years in Christian service. I have known a child just entering the teens to receive the filling of the Spirit unto sanctification, while church members of two score years’ standing, and gray in honors and service, were as far from the great prize as when they themselves were beginners in the Christian life.

Hear John Wesley: “I have been lately thinking a good deal on one point wherein, perhaps, we have all been wanting. We have not made it a rule as soon as ever persons are justified, to remind them of going on to perfection.WHEREAS THIS IS THE VERY TIME PREFERABLE TO ALL OTHERS. They have then the simplicity of little children; and they are fervent in spirit, ready to cut off a right hand or pluck out the right eye.

But if we once suffer this fervor to subside, we shall find it hard enough to bring them again even to this point. Every one, though born of God in an instant, yea andSANCTIFIED IN AN INSTANT, yet undoubtedly grows, by slow degrees, both after the former and the latter change. But it does not follow from thence that there may be a considerable tract of time between the one and the other. A year or a month is the same with God as a thousand. It is therefore our duty to pray and look for full salvation every day, every hour, every moment, without waiting until we have either done or suffered more” (Perfect Love, pp. 50, 55). Wesley’s Journal, August 4, 1762, records: “The next morning I spoke severally with those who believed they were sanctified. There were fifty-one in all — twenty-one men, twenty-one widows or married women, and nine young women or children. In one, the change was wrought three weeks after she was justified; in three, seven days after it; in one, five days, and in S. L., aged fourteen, two days only.”

Two days afterwards, he records: “Many believed that the blood of Jesus had cleansed them from all sin. I spoke to these, — forty in all one by one.

Some received the blessing in ten days, some seven, some four, some three days after they found peace with God, and two the next day” (Love Enthroned, p. 103). He also gives a remarkable instance of Grace Paddy, who was “convinced of sin, converted to God, and renewed in love, with in twelve hours. Yet it is by no means incredible, seeing one day is with God as a thousand years.” “Although, therefore, it usually pleases God interpose some time between justification and sanctification, yet we must not fancy this to be an invariable rule. All who think this must think we are sanctified by works, or which comes to the same, by suffering; for otherwise, what is time necessary for? It must be either to do or to suffer. Whereas if nothing be required but simple faith, a moment is as good as an age” (Christian Perfection, pp. 49-52).

Any one who has read thoughtfully the Autobiography of Charles Finney must have noticed that within twenty-four hours of the time that he went into the woods to give his heart to God, he was converted, baptized with the Holy Ghost, sanctified and endued with such matchless power that he was then, and has been ever since, in that respect, the marvel of the century.

Dr. Steele exclaims: “What a revolution would be wrought in the Church — what a resurrection to spiritual life — what a girding with power if preachers insisted on the duty of all believers imitating their Master in the Spirit baptism as in the water-baptism, in the reality as in the shadow, in the thing signified as in the symbol! O blessed Jesus, hasten that day — the day of power in thy Church, as it was when it was the first inquiry of the preacher, ‘ Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?’ Then would he who writes these words for thy glory, O adorable Saviour, joyfully drop his pen, and exclaim with good old Simeon: ‘Nunc dimitts.’ ‘ Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!’” (Love Enthroned, p. 106).

IV. We draw another inference from the passages of Scripture at the head of this chapter: None should be discouraged at the time occupied in the preparatory process. We have seen that the process may be cut short and lessened to hours only. It may take days or weeks or months or years, according as we are apt pupils of the Master — as we are in earnest, as we yield to the Spirit in absolute submission, and are quick or slow in receptive faith. Brother Torrey, at the head of Moody’s Institute in Chicago, tells us in some one of his addresses that he got weary of blustering about in most zealous inefficiency, and he stopped short and vowed that he would not, God helping him, enter his pulpit again until he knew he was baptized with the Spirit. He shut himself up with God, and sought with full purpose of soul the great prize; and kept his vow — for the Spirit came.

Dear Dr. Keen and his wife sought together the enduement of “power from on high” for seven days, and that great outpouring came that never left him until he was glorified after a quarter of a century of triumphant service.

The disciples at Pentecost shut themselves up in the Jerusalem chamber for ten days, and sought with “strong crying and tears” for the “Promise of the Father.” The Spirit’s memorable coming introduced a new era in the visible kingdom of God.

Dr. Daniel Steele says: “Six months ago I made the discovery that I was living in the pre-pentecostal state of religious experience — admiring Christ’s character, obeying his law, and in a degree loving his person, but without the conscious blessing of the Comforter. I settled the question of privilege by a study of St. John’s Gospel and St. Paul’s Epistles, and earnestly sought for the Comforter. I prayed, consecrated, confessed my state, and believed Christ’s word. Very SUDDENLY, after about three weeks’ diligent search, the Comforter came with power and great joy to my heart” (Half Hours, p. 306).

Moody sought for three months with great longings of soul for the enduement of power. “Then the blessing came upon me SUDDENLY, like a flash of lightning.” According to the dates in A. B Earle’s Rest of Faith nearly five years elapsed between the date of the solemn consecration for the blessing and the witness of the Spirit to his purifying. It was a needless delay, all caused by the tardiness of his soul to die to self and surrender to the filling of the Spirit.

Remember, God will wait no longer than you make it necessary for him to wait by your own failures in surrender or consecration or faith. Only seek him with “all your heart” and all your soul, and with all “patience and perseverance.” “If the blessing tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come; it will not tarry.”

V. Avoid forming any preconceived opinion or plan as to what your experience shall be when the blessing comes upon you. Some souls have a marvelously thrilling, overwhelming experience when the Sanctifier comes.

These are the experiences that are most likely to find their way into print, and they sometimes produce discouragement to other seekers, to whom God is not pleased to send such an emotional experience. When Paul was converted he was given a vision of Christ and heard his Voice and was knocked off from his horse and made blind. But most men have no such conversion. John Wesley writes: “It was not long after conversion before the enemy suggested: This can not be faith, for where is thy joy? Then I was taught that peace and victory over sin are essential to faith in Christ; but that as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes withholdeth them, according to the counsels of his own will.” It is precisely so in the experience of sanctification. Mrs. Jonathan Edwards and Finney and Moody and Carradine and others have had an excess of glory pour through their beings that overwhelmed them. Moody had to cry to God to stay his hand. He was receiving more than he thought his physical nature could endure. Some have a prostration, some laughter, some tears, some a heavenly calm, like the hush of the sea when Jesus said, “Peace, be still.”

Dr. Carradine says this of his wonderful blessing “In another minute I was literally prostrated by the power of God. I called out again and again, ‘O, my God! my God! Glory to God!’ while billows of fire and glory rolled in upon my soul, with steady, increasing force. The experience was one of fire. I recognized it all the time as the baptism of fire. I felt that I was being consumed. For several minutes I thought I would certainly die. I knew it was sanctification” (Sanctification, p. 21). Yet he sweetly writes, lest such an experience should stumble others: “It is not a necessary feature of sanctification that a person should be overwhelmed. Some may be; but the majority are not. It is a purifying and filling rather than an overwhelming, a filling of the soul rather than a falling of the body. I grant that some have been perfectly prostrated for minutes; but many have not this torrent-like baptism, and yet are as soundly sanctified as the other class” (p. 39).

Dr. Thomas C. Upham, describing his experience, said: “I was then redeemed by a mighty power, and filled with the blessing of perfect love.

There was no intellectual excitement, no marked joys when I reached this great rock of practical salvation; but I was distinctly conscious when I reached it.” Banish, then, all plans as to how the Spirit shall be given, and what shall be the effects. Banish philosophy and conjecture from your mind, and give yourself to searching of heart and prayer, and consecration and faith, and the Spirit will come.

VI. “The Lord whom ye seek shall SUDDENLY come to his temple.” As early as 1749, John Wesley had reached these correct principles on this great subject: 1. Christian Perfection implies deliverance from all sin. 2. It is received merely by faith. 3. It is givenINSTANTANEOUSLY, in one moment. 4. We are not to expect it at death, but every moment. “Inquiring (in 1761) how it was that in all these parts we have so few witnesses of full salvation, I constantly receive one and the same answer:

We see now, we sought it by our works; we thought it was to come gradually; we never expected it to come in a moment, by simple faith, in the very same manner as we received justification. What wonder is it, then, that you have been fighting all these years as one that beateth the air?”

Again Wesley said: “You may obtain a growing victory over sin from the moment you are justified. But this is not enough. The body of sin, the carnal mind must be destroyed; the old man must be slain, or we can not put on the new man, which is created after God (or which is the image of God) in righteousness and true holiness; and this is DONE IN A MOMENT. To talk of this work being gradual would be nonsense, as much as if we talked of gradual justification” (Christian Perfection, pp. 54, 55).

The truth seems to be this, — that the conditional preparatory work done in the soul under the guidance of the Spirit may be a process more or less lengthy, according as the seeker after sanctification is more or less receptive and yielding to the Spirit’s influence. But when that preparatory work is all completed, and the soul is submissive and open to God, “suddenly the Lord whom ye seek will come to his temple “ — your heart, your whole being, and fill you with himself and reign there without a rival. “Come in, come in, thou heavenly Guest!

Nor hence again remove; But sup with me, and let the feast Be everlasting love” (Wesley).

CHAPTER - CONDITIONS OF RECEIVING THE BLESSING — “CONVICTION OF WANT” — FEEL ITS IMPORTANCE — BELIEVE IT IS FOR YOU — HUNGER AND THIRST Mrs. Amanda Smith, a negress, was very definitely converted when a slave in 1856. Twelve years later, under the labors of Dr. Inskip she received the second blessing of sanctification. She has since then been a wonderfully successful evangelist, laboring with the enduement of Spirit-power, in the United States and England and Africa, turning thousands to righteousness, and leading multitudes of others into the sanctified life. She often speaks with fifty ministers and learned doctors of divinity and Bishops on the platform behind her, and she is the peer of any of them in spiritual power.

Last summer she entered the building where the General Conference of the M. E. Church was assembled in Cleveland, and the whole body rose to their feet and gave her an ovation.

I quote the following brief extract from a speech of hers delivered in England: “I had now begun to seek entire sanctification. I asked an elder what was meant by being ‘pure in heart’ ‘Oh child,’ he said, ‘that means you must come as near to it as you can.’ I went home, but oh, this hunger and thirst after righteousness was not satisfied. When I was convicted for holiness I was in a clearly justified state. I had no doubt about my acceptance with God. When I was converted it was conviction of guilt, now IT WAS CONVICTION OF WANT. As the heart panteth after the water brook, so my soul panted after God, the living God. ‘That comes to me what I want,’ I said, ‘it’s God!’ The elder said, ‘You must come to it as near as you can.

What is the use of fretting yourself. Do all you can. Visit the sick, sing, pray!’ But the hunger went on, and when I read, ‘Rejoice when men persecute you,’ I felt that was not my experience; there was a feeling of retaliation. And when they spoke about me and blamed me, I wanted to justify myself instead of leaving it all with God. Then I read, ‘ This is the will of God, even your sanctification.’ I went to the old deacon and asked, ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘ that’s the blessing people get just before they die.’ Well, I didn’t want to die; I wanted to live and work for God; and when they told me, ‘you’ll never live this life till you die,’ I wanted to live and not to die.”

This quaint address leads me to say:

I. That this dear black saint’s “CONVICTION OF WANT” is usually the first condition of receiving the Holy Spirit. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

People who think they are spiritually “rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing, and know not that they are miserable and poor and blind and naked” will heed no counsel to seek the “white raiment” of holiness.

The consciously “poor in spirit” are “those who seek and gain the treasures of the kingdom of heaven. Those who want and seek, receive. Those who are satisfied to be puling babes, chronic spiritual weaklings, desiring just enough religion to act as a “fire-insurance policy,” will not care to hear about any higher spiritual attainments. A deacon of the writer’s church once said in prayer-meeting. he would be abundantly satisfied if he got into heaven. Evidently he was not “coveting earnestly the best gifts,” or seeking “the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ,” or longing for an “abundant entrance,” or desiring the reward of “t hose who turn many to righteousness.” No; he was satisfied with the least amount of religion that would get him through, as a brand plucked from the burning, even though the “wood, hay, and stubble “ of his unworthy life were all consumed!

Fire-insurance religion! Such people will never become sanctified, till they have a conviction of want.

Dear Mother Booth said in Exeter Hall, in an address on holiness: “I think it must be self-evident to every one present that it is the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man. How much like God can we be? — how near to God can we come on earth preparatory to our being perfectly like him, and living, as it were, in his very heart for ever and ever in heaven?…. The mystery of mysteries to me is how any one, with any measure of the Spirit of God, can help looking at the blessing of holiness and saying, ‘Well, even if it does seem too great for attainment on earth, it is very beautiful and very blessed; I wish I could attain it.’... And yet, alas! we do not find it so. In a great many instances the very first thing professing Christians do is to resist and reject this doctrine of holiness, as if it were the most foul thing on earth. “I heard of a gentleman saying, a few days ago — a leader in one circle of religion — that for anybody to talk about being holy showed that they knew nothing of themselves and nothing of Jesus Christ. I said: ‘Oh, my God! it has come to something if holiness and Jesus Christ are at the antipodes of each other. I thought he was the center and foundation of holiness. I thought it was in him only we could get any holiness, and through him that holiness could be wrought in us.’ But this poor man thought this idea to be absurd.”

Now Amanda Smith and Catherine Booth were right. It was the religious leader who was utterly wrong — densely ignorant of himself and of Christ.

These two women had been convicted of a great want, which regeneration did not meet, and they knew Jesus as the full supply of their want: a “sanctifying,” “uttermost” Saviour. Let us hear the cry of want of two other great souls whose writings have been as “precious ointment poured forth.”

Hannah Whitall Smith writes: “I was converted in my twenty-sixth year, in Philadelphia. Never since that time have I doubted my conversion, or had a moment’s fear about my acceptance with God, or my present possession of eternal life. My guarded education in the Society of Friends had separated me from the vain fashions and amusements of the world, and my chief interests were all centered around the religion of Jesus Christ as the only object really worthy of serious thought or attention. “But my heart was ill at ease. That I grew in knowledge I could not deny; but neither could I deny that I did not grow in grace; and, at the end of eight years of my Christian life, I was forced to make the sorrowful admission that I had not even as much power over sin as when I was first converted. In the presence of temptation, I found myself weakness itself. It was not my outward walk that caused me sorrow, though I can see now that was far from what it ought to have been; but it was the sins of my heart that troubled me — coldness, deadness, want of Christian love, intellectual apprehension of truth without any corresponding moral effects, roots of bitterness, want of a meek and quiet spirit — all those inward sins over which the children of God are so often caused to mourn. I could not but see that sin still had more or less dominion over me, and I did not come up to the Bible standard, The Christian life contemplated there was a life of victory and triumph; my life was one of failure and defeat. The commands to be holy and blameless, the sons of God without rebuke, seemed almost a mockery to me. At times I went through agonies of conflict in my efforts to bring about a different state of things. I resolved, I prayed, I wrestled, I strove; I lashed myself up into the belief that all I held most dear in life could continue to be mine only as I attained to more faithfulness and devotedness of walk. But all was vain, and it seemed worse than vain. ‘When I would do good evil was present with me.’ I could see no hope of deliverance but in death. At times a new discovery of truth would seem to carry me above temptation, and my heart would rejoice at the thought that now at last I had found the secret of living. But after awhile, as the truth became familiar, I found to my bitter sorrow, that it seemed to lose its power, and I was left as helpless as ever. … I would redouble my efforts, and go through the same weary round of conflicts and struggles again, only, of course, to meet with the same bitter defeat. I felt that my life, in spite of earnestness and devotedness, was a failure. Often I said to myself that if this was all the gospel of Christ had for me, it was a bitterly disappointing thing.” (Forty Witnesses, pp. 144-148).

Here was the “conviction of want,” which drove this dear soul to Christ for complete salvation — the sequel to which we will give later.

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote: “For some three or four years past there has been in my mind a subdued undercurrent of perplexity and unhappiness in regard to myself in my religious experience. I have often thought when sifting myself, ‘Why am I thus restless? Why not at peace? I love God and Jesus Christ with a real and deep devotion, and in general I mean to conform my life to him. I am as consistent as many Christians, more; then why not satisfied? I could conceive of a style of Christian devotion as much higher than my present point, as my present position is above that of the world. The more I groaned in spirit, and longed and prayed, the more inveterate and determined and unsubdued seemed every opposing desire ….. ‘Am I then not a Christian?’ thought I. Then why do I, why have I, loved Christ — loved him so deeply as I know I have, nay, as I know I do? I can not tell. I think I love him above all; yet certainly my will is at best only in a small degree subjected to his. ‘Well, then,’ I thought, ‘if you see that entire union and identity of your will with Christ is the thing, why do you not have it? Just, give up all these separate interests.

Unite your soul to him in a common interest. Why not? Ah! why not?

Words of deep meaning to very one who tries that vain experiment! Every effort breaks like a wave upon a rock. We reason, reflect, resolve, and pray, weep, strive, love — love to despair; and all in vain. In vain I adjured my soul. ‘Do you not love Christ? Why not, then, cut wholly loose from all these loves, and take his will alone? Is it not reasonable, since you can be blessed in no other way? What else can you do? Something said to me, ‘You are a Christian, perhaps, but not a full one.’ ‘Learn of me,’ said Christ. ‘and ye shall find rest.’ I perceive that the New Testament ideal of a Christian was different from and higher than what I ever tried or purposed to be; that I was only trying at parts, and allowedly in some things living below. … The question was distinctly proposed to me, ‘Will you undertake and make a solemn and earnest effort to realize the full ideal of Christ’s plan, though not one other Christian should?’ The obstacles were many. ‘It will do no good to try. With a lower standard have I striven, wept, prayed, despaired in vain; and shall I undertake this? I shall never do it.’ “This was my discouragement. ‘How can I see God clearer than I have seen him? Can I ever be searched and penetrated and bowed by a deeper love than I have known, and which yet has been transient, has never wholly subdued me? Can I make deeper, sincerer resolutions? No. Can I have more vivid views? No. What then?’ I thought of this passage: ‘I will love him, and my Father will love him; and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.’ ‘That is it,’ I thought. ‘Christ has been with me by visits and intervals; this permanent abode is what I have not known.’ Again: ‘Abide in me and I in you.’ A steady, ever present Christ within, who should exert an influence steady as the pulse of my soul. This I needed. I copied that class of texts. I prayed with prayer unceasing that Christ would realize them. I despaired of bending my will; I despaired of all former and all present efforts; but at his word I resolved to begin and go for the whole …..

What was the result? When self-despair was final and I merely undertook at the word of Christ, then came long-expected and wished-for help. All changed. Whereas once my heart ran with a strong current to the world, now it runs with a current the other way. What once it cost an effort to remember, now it costs an effort to forget. The will of Christ seems to me the steady pulse of my being, and I go because I can not help it. Skeptical doubt can not exist. I seem to see the full blaze of Shechinah everywhere. I am calm, but full, everywhere and in all things instructed, and find I can do all things through Christ.”

That has all the ring of a genuine soul experience. What all the excellent religious training of her father’s household, and early piety, and regenerating grace, and visions of truth, and solemn vows, and agonizing prayers, and many tears could not effect, must still be wrought in her. An indwelling, sanctifying Christ must come in and “abide” in her to cast out the “old man” of sin and be her very life, the steady pulse of her being.”

Dr. Carradine tells of an aged minister who had steadily opposed holiness for three years, as many a younger minister does; but he came into the meeting for holiness and suddenly and unexpectedly arose and said:

You all know me to be a Christian man, and so I am. I walk with God, and yet I feel that there is something here in my heart that needs to be taken away, a something that is not right.” Says Dr. Carradine: “I will never forget the solemnity of the face and attitude, and especially the way in which the old man of God placed his long, bony finger on his breast, working it as he spoke, as if he would penetrate his heart and extract that dark, disturbing, worrying something within.”

Andrew Murray says: “The believer must be convicted, and brought to the confession of his being in the carnal state. You know that before a sinner can be converted, he must be convicted of sin; he must know and confess his transgressions and his lost estate. Just so, believers must see that they are in a wrong state; before they get into the spiritual life they must be brought under conviction of the shame and evil of this carnal state ( <460301> Corinthians 3:1-3). There is a great difference between conviction before conversion and this. Then, that which principally occupied the mind was the thought, ‘I am lost, I am under condemnation’; the great idea was the greatness of his transgressions, and the desire to have them pardoned.

There were two things that he was not convicted of: that his nature is utterly sinful, the other that there are many heart sins, that he has never known. This is the reason why God brings a believer in to what might be termed a SECOND, CONVICTION. It is most needful that he be fully convicted of two things — the utter impotence of the flesh to do any good, and the mighty power of the flesh to work evil. The flesh is ruling him. He has the Spirit of God in him, and why does he yet do these things? It is just the seventh of Romans: ‘I am struggling to do right and I can not.’ Oh, friends, it is when a man is brought under conviction of the utter impotence of the flesh to do good, its helplessness, that he will understand why he lost his temper, and why pride comes up, and why he speaks wrong words. The Holy Spirit convicts of pride as being of the flesh; unloving thoughts toward wife or child or servant; self-pleasing before God and man. And so he needs an entire deliverance different from that at conversion. Then he was delivered from the curse of sin; now he wants deliverance from the power of sin” (Spiritual Life, pp. 9, 10).

When the readers of this book get over their serene satisfaction over their religious condition, and, feel their grave need of riddance from the “sin that dwelleth in them,” and of the consequent “purifying of their hearts by faith” — that “conviction of want” will be the first condition of receiving the “Baptism with the Holy Ghost.”

II. The second condition of receiving the blessing is repentance for having kept the sanctifying Saviour out of his full possession of your being so long, and for the resulting failures of your life. A lady who had been a church member and Christian for many years said not long ago in one of my revival meetings: “How can God ever forgive my past?” “ Blessed are they that mourn,” with such a sorrow. “For wrong words spoken, questionable deeds done, evil thoughts harbored, duties neglected, enjoyment lost, usefulness impaired, cleansing deferred, holiness hindered, and perhaps souls lost because of this ‘keeping out’ of the King from his rightful place in the heart, there must be deep, heartfelt contrition and besides this the foul indignity offered him by compelling him to either wait or go away, when for long months, or perhaps longer years, with kingly robes, he stood knocking and waiting admittance, demands repentance in ‘sack-cloth and ashes,’ and even then none but he would forgive so unprovoked an insult” (Christ Crowned Within, p. 172).

III. If you would have this great blessing that renovates the soul and brings it into the image of Christ, you must feel its importance. Take that group of one hundred and twenty disciples in the upper chamber. Their Lord has left them a charge to be his representatives — the “salt of the earth,” the “light of the world,” to “go and disciple all nations.” There they are gathered in secret, so far as we know not a rich or educated or influential person among them. Represent Jesus! disciple all nations! How would they feel about it? Peter would remember his fickleness and lying and blasphemy and cowardice. Thomas would remember his doubting, and John and James — the hot-headed sons of thunder — would remember their passion and ambition, and all would remember the shouts of the mad rabble that raged about the cross of their divine Lord, before which they trembled and fled, and which they still must face. They would be sadly conscious that everybody and everything — even their own hearts — were against them.

We can imagine they would fall on their faces in prayer and cry: “O Lord, we are not like thee; as we are, we can not represent thee before men, and in our helplessness we can not face our enemies and thine, and overcome them. We might as well die here and now as to attempt to confront the world as we are. Take all sins out of our hearts, make us like thee, and equip us for service. Give us the enduement of power.” Thus they would go down on their faces and wait before God day after day in utter self-abasement. They appreciated its importance. “They wanted this one thing, and they were there to get it. They cared for nothing else but that.

They cried for it as hungry children cry for bread. They wanted it,” and sought the blessing as if determined to have it. Mrs. Booth says: “God never gave this gift to any human soul who had not come to the point that he would sell all he had to get it. Oh, it is the most precious gift he has to give in earth or in heaven — to be filled with the Spirit, filled with himself, taken possession of by God, moved, inspired, energized, empowered by God, by the great indwelling Spirit moving through all our faculties, and energizing our whole being for him. That is the greatest and most glorious gift he has. He is not likely to give it to people who do not highly appreciate it, and so highly that they are willing to forego all other gifts for it — everything else, creature love, creature comfort, ease, enjoyment and aggrandizement for this one thing” (Aggressive Christianity; Filled with the Spirit, p. 8).

Brother Torrey says: “No man ever got this blessing who thought he could get along without it.”

IV. Another condition is: Believe that the promise is for you. General Booth very wisely observes that a person must be convinced that if he seeks deliverance from sin, and power to serve Christ, with all his heart he will find it. Unless a man believes the blessing to be attainable, he will not seek it with all his heart. Unbelief concerning the possibility of securing the prize would paralyze effort and make the prayer of faith impossible.

Nobody tries to build a ladder to the moon, because nobody believes success in the enterprise attainable. God says the promise is unto you.

Believe and strive, as for a goal actually within sight and reach.

Dr. Daniel Steele, speaks of his receiving the blessing as follows: “I was then led to seek the conscious and joyful presence of the Comforter in my heart. Having settled the question that this was not merely an apostolic blessing, but for all ages —’He shall abide with you forever’ — I took the promise: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.’ The ‘verily’ had to me all the strength of an oath. Out of the ‘whatsoever’ I took all temporal blessings, not because I did not believe them to be included, but because I was not then seeking them. I then wrote my own name in the promise, not to exclude others, but to be sure that I included myself. Then writing underneath these words, ‘Today is the day of salvation,’ I found that my faith had three points to master — the Comforter, for me, NOW. Upon the promise I ventured with an act of appropriating faith, claiming the Comforter as my right in the name of Jesus.” That preliminary settling of th e question that the blessing was not merely for the apostles, but for all Christians of all ages, according to Scripture — “Ye shall receive the Holy Ghost, for the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call “ -made it possible for Dr. Steele’s faith to claim the Comforter as the right of a son of God. The filling of the Spirit belongs to us as a covenant privilege,” says Dr. A. J. Gordon. When every Christian settles that fact beyond all doubt or question, that, in addition to the spiritual blessing received at conversion, “there is another blessing corresponding in its signs and effects to the blessing received by the apostles at Pentecost — a blessing to be asked for and expected by Christians still, and to be described in language similar to that employed in the book of the Acts,” he will be ready to hear how to obtain the Baptism with the Holy Ghost, the filling of the sanctifying Spirit of God. “To bring yourself,” says Dr. Lowrey, “under the conviction that holiness is for you is a prime necessity. How is this to be done? First, consider the power by which it is to be accomplished, the unlimited power of God, which reaches you through the unlimited merit of Christ. We admit that to create a clean heart in a sinner is a greater work than to create a world or light up a sun.

But we must remember God has imposed upon himself the task of cleansing us from all sin. And we read, ‘All things are possible with God.’

Whatever does not involve sin, nor imply a contradiction, God can do.

And, certainly, to save a man from all moral wrong (with his consent) is not committing sin; nor does it contradict any known truth, much less clash with any attribute of God. Second, consider the fact that the atonement provides for (your) personal holiness. Inspire your drooping spirits by the recollection that this was the chief purpose of Christ’s mission. Again stimulate your faith by the truth that God has promised full redemption in the most positive and explicit manner: ‘Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you’” (Possibilities of Grace, pp. 294-296). Let these truths of Holy Writ burn into your mind a deep conviction that this unspeakable blessing is FOR YOU.

V. A still further indispensable condition of receiving this crowning gift is a hunger and thirst for it. To all who have that holy longing described by such figures of speech God sends special promises. “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty.. I will pour my Spirit “ ( Isaiah 44:3). “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled” ( Matthew 5:6). Ah, we must hunger and thirst for this blessing. We feel that as parents, teachers, Christians, preachers, we can not get along without it. I said to an audience not long ago: “You may pray for the Holy Spirit till your tongues are tired, but as long as you fight holiness he will not come to your souls.” At the close of my address a lady came forward and said: “Ah, I see my mistake. For years I have been pleading for the baptism with the Holy Spirit, but all the time I have been rejecting and fighting the doctrine of holiness as a possible experience of God’s people. I now see that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit o f Holiness.” That is precisely it; that truth was never stated better. “THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE SPIRIT OF HOLINESS.” When he comes he brings holiness to the heart. God could not safely bestow such a mighty power upon people who will not accept holiness. To pray for this baptism while fighting sanctification or holiness is a waste of breath. “I can not take another step in Christian service,” said Torrey, “till I know I am baptized with the Holy Ghost.”

Here was his sharp appetite crying out for God. The feast of grace is provided only for appetites, not for dainty, sated dyspepsia. Dr. Lowrey writes: “The proposition of the Saviour is equally true in nature and grace.

A man who does not relish food can not receive it. He will grow lean and die in the midst of plenty. The same may be affirmed of the Christian. No appetite means no fatness, and soon no life. He may read and sing about holiness, and hear it preached, and even ask its bestowment in the words of prayer, and yet if there be no soul hunger for it not a single step can be taken towards its realization. If the human stomach be charged with food which it loathes, it will be found impossible for the organ to assimilate it. It may be good and nourishing matter, but the absence of a corresponding appetite will prevent the system from taking in and appropriating its nutritious quality. It is so with the mind. It may be crammed even to satiety with the most exalted truths, and the soul may be practiced in all devout recitals of worship, and still if there is no craving for spirituality, signified by the outward forms, the richest truth and sublimest service will be nothing more to the worshiper than ‘sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.’

Unless he ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness’ he will come and go unfilled.” “But the reader may say, ‘I find myself destitute of this indispensable hunger, and consequently, according to the argument, holiness is not attainable to me.’ But this does not release you from responsibility, for yon can command hunger and thirst. Appetite itself is created by healthy conditions, whether physical or spiritual.. .. Let the Christian’s reading, conversation, habits of life, and associations, be irreligious, and he will find in himself a disrelish for spiritual things. I do not think it possible for a man to love holiness who loves novels, or craves the staple matter of our secular newspapers. Nor is it possible for a man to find zest in sanctified and sanctifying literature who frequents the theater and other common resorts of worldly men. The same may be said of those who participate in popular amusements or mingle in the hilarities of fashionable society. Such frivolities and vices create revulsions to holiness. And wherever Christians make worldly customs and tainted literature the irelement, soul-hunger for purity is sure to die out. A candle can not burn in foul air that settles in old wells and cisterns. No more can a flame of holy love exist in an atmosphere of unchristian habits, though not grossly wicked” (Possibilities, pp. 298-303).

But the man who gives himself to the Word and prayer, and papers and books which tend to the knowledge and love of God, will soon find a deep hunger for holiness created in his soul.

For proof of all we are saying let us read some of God’s living epistles, written in human hearts. Here is the testimony of the sainted Friend, David B. Updegraff: “I hated pride, ambition, evil tempers, and vain thoughts, but I had them, for all that, and they were apart of me. Not as acts to be repented of and forgiven, but as dispositions lying behind the acts, and promptings thereto, natural to the ‘old man’ and inseparable from his presence in my being. I began to ask God, with a measure of faith, to ‘cast him out.’ Along with this desire there came A GREAT HUNGER AND THIRST to be ‘filled with all the fullness of God.’ I longed for a clean heart and constant spirit.”….. “I went upon my knees with the resolute purpose of ‘presenting my body a living sacrifice to God.’ There passed quickly before me the obstacles in the way, and the things to be suffered for Jesus’ sake — the misapprehensions, suspicions, and revilings of carnal professors, as well as the conflicts with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Selfishness, pride, and prejudice joined forces and rose in rebellion, while the ‘Old man’ pleaded for his life. But I could not, would not, draw back. ‘Vile affections’ were resolutely nailed to the cross, and those things that ‘were gain to me ‘denominational standing, friends, family, business, possessions, time, talent, and reputation — were irrevocably committed to the sovereign contro