One of the results spoken of by Christ in His prayer, and brought about by sanctification, is Christian unity—"that they all may be one." There is but one remedy for sectism and bigotry, and it is found in the answer to Christ's petition. When Pentecost comes to us we are all lifted upon one grand common platform and shake hands and shout and weep and laugh and get so mixed up that a Presbyterian can not be distinguished from a Methodist, nor a Friend from an Episcopalian vestryman.
We have heard much about the organic union of churches. Many great and good men have looked forward with sanguine hopes to the day when we should do away with denominations. In a few cases two churches of different sects have united and worshipped in one congregation. But the causes of such unity are frequently far from gratifying. In D——the Methodists and Primitive Methodists clasp hands and join forces because they can thus make one preacher do the work which two formerly performed. In K——the Baptists and Presbyterians unite because the thirteen members of one church and the seven of the other feel lonely in their great refrigerators and are inclined to make friends and preserve life. The cold is most intense. In the far North the weather is sometimes so severe that wild beasts, ordinarily hostile both toward each other and man, crowd close together near the campfire of the explorer.
With many churches it is "unite or die!" The mallet of the auctioneer threatens the steeple-house, the young folks are off "golfing" or "hiking," and the gray-beards, lonely and terror-stricken as they see church extinction approaching, favor "a union of forces with some other church." In the church magazines of the next month appear sundry articles on "the broad and liberal spirit of the nineteenth century church." "A large catholicity is taking the place of the old fogyism of former days," scribbles the hack-writer.
In a few cases large congregations have united. When we behold it our hopes rise, but they are doomed to early blight by a careful study of the situation. The cause of denominationalism is the tenacious clinging to faith and doctrines. Whether or no we ought to all believe precisely alike about non-essentials, one thing is sure, the man who does not cleave to some faith, heart and head and brain and blood, is worthless in Christ's army. Milksops may be ornamental, they are certainly not militant, and God wants soldiers. The man who does not know what he believes, and the man who says "it does not matter what one believes if one is only sincere," are more despicable than the Yankees who burned witches in Salem. Better that a man be "narrow" than that he be so "broad" as to take in "the devil and all his angels." Out upon our folly when we barter away the truth of God for a flimsy, tissue-paper bond of so-called "fellowship"!
There is a unity, however, and to it Christ referred, which does not consist in uniformity of creed but in oneness of heart. When we are truly sanctified the non-baptizing Quaker, and the trine immersionist, and the High Church Episcopalian, and the foot-washing Tunker, and the Methodist, and the Baptist, and the Congregationalist all unite in one far-reaching melodious chorus,
"HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD!"
Sanctification destroys sticklerism for non-essentials and the lust for fine distinctions in dogmatics. It slays the doctrinaire and makes a red-hot revivalist out of him. The purified soul takes the Bible for his "credo" and loves God's children of whatever name with a generosity that overtops every inadequate consideration. The sanctified are united by a common cause and a common experience. Opinions may differ as to ecclesiastical polity or the mode of baptism, but the white cord of sanctification is "the bond of perfectness" which makes them one bundle. Yale and Cornell are rivals with their "eights" and "shells" on American Hudson, but men from both colleges join forces to beat the Britishers at Henley. Holiness people of every church unite to "push holiness."
When the glorious grace of full salvation is experienced, love for Christ is increased and intensified. Everyone wants to magnify Him and live close to Him: and as we get close to Him, the Hub, the distance between us, the spokes, is lessened.
A D.D. and a negro meet on a Mississippi River boat. They fall into conversation. The doctor speaks of the Lord. The negro's eyes fill and he says, "You know my Savior?" and they shake hands and weep and shout. Why this community of feeling between men of such diverse stations in life? Both possess the blessing of entire sanctification.
The writer has had the privilege of preaching in churches of different denominations in the work of special evangelism, but never has he known the falling of Pentecostal fire to fail to burn up sectarianism. It is no easy matter to find out from the preaching of our holiness preachers under what denominational flag they sail. Full salvation obliterates the fences which separate the people of God and makes them really "one in Christ Jesus."
There was a man among the one hundred and twenty "upper room believers" in whom Pentecost effected a most apparent and almost spectacular change. It was Peter. We remember him as the man at whom the young girl pointed her finger and laughed. We recall that he was so cowardly that he denied his Lord on the spot, swearing that he did not know Him. Behold this same Peter on the day of Pentecost. He is charging home the murder of Christ. Fear is gone, and gone forever. He faces men and does not flinch an iota. Carnality, the source of cowardice, has been removed, and the weakling is turned into a Lord Nelson for bravery, and a Savonarola for faithfulness to men's souls.
Fear of man is one of the most illogical things in the world. Men sell the blood of Jesus and hope of heaven and eternal happiness because of "what people say." Think of it, afraid of a man who will die and be hurried under ground before he rots! Frightened at a thing dressed in a long black coat and a white cravat with a golden-headed cane and a tall hat and a frown; a thing which will stop breathing some fine day and the worms will eat! Shall I tremble when an ecclesiastical Leo utters a roar? Shall I halt and stammer because a top-heavy lad from a theological seminary, hopelessly in love with himself, scowls at the word "sanctification"?
There are some who bolster their courage by saying ostentatiously, "I don't care what folks say," but their very vehemence shows that they DO care a very great deal. We boys all remember how we used to whistle when we passed a graveyard after dark to show we "weren't afraid"; and how hard it was to keep our mouths puckered and how shaky our legs felt!
The folks we are afraid of are afraid of us. What a situation! A great regiment of people marching straight down to hell, everyone afraid to break step for fear the others will laugh! That is precisely the condition of nearly every sinner.
Sanctification takes away the shrinking timidity and puts in a courage like that at Thermopylae. There was once a young man who, previous to his sanctification, was so timid that he frequently stayed away from church for no other reason than that he feared God might ask him to testify. He enjoyed meetings and loved to hear preaching, but the very idea of testimony would frighten him almost ill. Now he frequently addresses many hundreds and never feels the slightest embarrassment.
The ministry is sadly in need of a blessing which will give it courage to attack sin of all kinds and degrees. We need men who will rip the mask off the putrid face of corruption and pronounce God's sentence upon it; who will lift up the trap-door of the cess-pools of men's hearts and bid them look within at their own slime and filth; who will "cry aloud and spare not," though the infuriated cohorts of bat-winged demons snarl and shriek.
There will be a day when men will curse us because we have not preached more plainly. You can call a spade "a spade" or you can designate it as "an iron utensil employed for excavating purposes," but if you want folks to understand what you are driving at use the shorter term.
There is too little plain Anglo-Saxon preaching. We shoot far over the heads of our congregations and do not even scar the varnish on the gallery banister. We dwell on the points of distinction between Calvinism and Arminianism when the greater part of our people do not know the difference between an Arminian and an Armenian, and some good old sister thinks we are preaching on the cruelty of the Turks. Here I am discussing "The Dangers of Imperialism" and "The Anglo-American Friendship," while men are starving for the Bread of Life! Brethren in the ministry, let us be less anxious about the syllogistic accuracy of our sermons and be more eager to help men live right and quit sin and go to heaven.
There are many sins which few men have the courage to antagonize in public. Theoretically the pulpit is supposed to cannonade all sin of every variety and species, but, alas, it is usually too cowardly. The Spirit-filled man fears no one from Sandow down to Tom Thumb, from a plug-hat Bishop to a little pusilanimous dude preacher.
It is not that ministers are unawares of the prevalence of black and ghastly crimes, but that they dare not speak openly against them. Too many are contaminated with evil and involved in guilt for the preacher to voice with impunity the truths which burn in his soul. He knows only too well that if he dares assert his manhood and exercises the prerogative of Christ's minister, the retribution will be swift and terrible, viz: ejectment from his pastorate!
How ominous is the silence concerning murder. And yet the land is swarming with crimson-handed murderers and murderesses. Many of them are members of our "best churches" and move in the most select society. Some of them read with animation the responses in church service and repeat the Lord's Prayer with the greatest gusto. A few—not many, we devoutly trust—talk about "sanctification." Poor, deluded, hoodwinked souls! they are blinded by Satan. Their hands are red with blood, and their hearts are black as hell. Were they to ever approach the heaven of which they sanctimoniously prate, they would be met at the gate with the curse of murdered infants who never saw the light.
If there is a pitiable sight in all God's great universe, if there is a scene over which angels shed tears and demons shriek laughter, it is an old cruel-eyed mother, who has seared her conscience and sinned away all noble womanliness and blasted her own soul, whispering into the unsoiled ears of her daughter the way in which to murder her own offspring; and if there is a hot hell, such a mother will make her bed in it.
The duties and cares of maternity are too irksome, and so the women who might be the mothers of John Wesleys and Fenelons and Metchers and Inskips and Cookmans are petting poodle-dogs and rat-terriers.
How many preachers dare speak in clarion tones what religion and science concur in asserting concerning vice? But know ye by these presents, all of Adam's race, that what depraved humanity pronounces all right and harmless, the Almighty God who whirls the worlds will corrode and scald with the burning vitriol of His wrath, and woe! woe! woe! to the man or woman with whom is found sin.
Any tyro knows who drowned Morgan, but the clergyman who "opens up" on Masonry is a curiosity. Why, how can the ministers say anything when they are the chaplains of these gilt-edged frauds called "lodges"? It does not take much calculation to show that an institution which spends three dollars in giving away one has no right to exist. Some of the more weak-minded and puerile of the clergy are doubtless in fear lest their "tongues should be torn out by the roots and their hearts buried in the rough sands of the seashore." Brave men are not so easily scared.
Secretism in itself is suspicious. Solon said that he wanted his house so constructed that the people could see him at all hours and thus know him to be a good man. A system which is so built that the public is kept in the dark is entitled to the attention of a Pinkerton. Bologna sausage made in a factory at the door of which is a huge sign, "No Admittance," may be all right, but you can not make people think so.
There are few preachers so foolish and illogical as to believe that the entertainment plan is the best way to raise money for church work, yet scarcely one of them declares his honest straight-forward conviction about it. Now and then a Hale, more daring than the rest, writes a remonstrative article for the Forum, but the great mass keep quiet. A Pentecostal ministry will wheel its guns into position and load and fire into the supper and festival crowd notwithstanding the voices of objectors.
Whatever may be the matter under consideration the sanctified man dares anything right. God is with him, and he feels His presence. Right is right, and by the grace of God he will stand by it though all the world howl and roar.
Among the results of the coming of the Comforter is an increase in warm personal love for Jesus. Conversion plants divine love (agape) in the heart, but sanctification quickens and intensifies it. Conversion drops a coal into the breast; the fuller grace fans it into a flame.
There is a place in experience where Christ's voice sets the whole being vibrating. The soul is so in tune with Him that the cadences of His tones fill the soul with a tremor of glee and gladness. If you sing the scale in a room where there is a piano the corresponding strings of the instrument will sound. Thus it is with Jesus and the sanctified soul. When Christ speaks the heart answers spontaneously.
Regeneration does much for us. But there is that even in the heart of the regenerate which is antagonistic to Christ. The whole man does not say instinctively, "Thy will be done"; yet there is something within to which the Lord can appeal. Consult Peter. He tells us of "exceeding great and precious promises by which we become partakers of the Divine nature." We "take a part" (partakers) of the divine Shekinah into our hearts. We are not only "adopted" but born of God, and by a divine heredity we possess His character.
We see this beautifully illustrated in the case of Samuel. Given in covenant to God from his birth, and early taught the word of the Lord, he possessed the changed heart and the attuned ear. When God's voice fell out of the skies that night something in Samuel heard what aged and mitred Eli could not hear. Eli had the theory and reasoned out who the speaker must be, but the heart of Samuel awoke intuitively at the sound of that voice.
As Jesus taught in the temple God spoke, and many whose ears were dull because their hearts were hard and unchanged said, "It thundered." Others saw that something extraordinary had occurred and admitted that "an angel spoke to Him." But the disciples whose "names were written in heaven," and who had regenerated hearts, knew it was the voice of God.
But while the child of God is in sympathy with God he must be sanctified wholly to be fully, constantly and completely responsive to Christ. Jesus wants a bride who will live His life with Him and enter into all His plans and sorrows, ambitions and trials, aims and purposes. There are many people who are glad Jesus died for them who know nothing about "suffering with Christ." Yet the Bible is filled with allusions to it. The Heavenly Bridegroom wants a companion who will understand Him. This cold, hard, flinty, wicked world does not. "He came unto His own and His own received Him not." He knocked at the door of His own vineyard and the husband-men said, "Come, let us kill the Son." The divine Lord hungers for some one who will not misjudge His purposes nor impute to Him base motives.
We have all seen people who were never appreciated. Those who were near to them by blood and kindred always thought them strange and visionary. What a sad thing if Christ's bride does not appreciate His aims for the world, His sorrow over perishing souls, His heart-ache over dying men! "The fellowship of His sufferings"—what can it mean? It means that we mourn over the sin in the world which makes Christ weep; sob over the evil that makes Him hang His fair head and groan. It means that ever and always we shall look at things from the Christ standpoint.
"My sheep know [recognize] my voice," says the Shepherd. He states the principle that "sheep" always hear when He speaks. "Lambs" may be at times mistaken as to the voices that cry in the soul, but Christians whose experience entitles them to the designation, "sheep," do not err as to the speaker. Watch a good shepherd collect his flock at evening. Every sheep knows him. It is getting dark, and the quiet animals are busily feeding in the fragrant clover, but the tender cadences of the voice of their guide and protector pierce their delicate ears and enter their gentle hearts, and the white flock comes bounding toward the shepherd. A sportsman in golf suit and plaid cap and with a fine baritone voice may call earnestly, but "a stranger will they not follow." The shepherd holds the key to their confidence, and no one else can unlock the door to their love.
Christ has the key to our hearts. He stands in the dusk of evening in the falling dew and sends His sweet voice out across the billowing fields of clover, and all His sheep leap toward "the Good Shepherd."
Sanctification brings out the power of appreciation in the soul. What God does for you fills your soul with gratitude, and you can get blessed any time of day or night by simply reflecting on the mercies and lovingkindnesses of the Lord. The natural human heart does not appreciate God, and sees nothing especially lovely in Him. A cow and the man who owns the cow may stand side by side and look at the same sunset. The cow sees a big splotch of crimson and gold; the other sees one of God's sky-paintings, and is inspired to holy living and self-denial and fidelity to the Master. You must have a "sunset nature" to appreciate a sunset, and you must be sanctified wholly to see in Christ a beauty and loveliness which no Murillo and no Raphael and no Del Sarto have yet put on canvas.
O the lovely Christ! How the heart aches to go to Him! We get so homesick for Jesus. People are so dull and uninteresting and vapid and stupid—so precisely like ourselves—we get weary of the world and its emptiness, and yearn to fly away to be with the spotless Christ and live in that
"Undiscovered country, from whose bourneNo traveller returns"
Some day, thank God! the Bridegroom will step out upon the balcony of heaven and look at us and speak to us in a tone inaudible to all but ourselves, and our souls will bound with rapture and the earthen vessel will crumble and we will spread snowy pinions and wing our flight up to the presence of our soul's King!
One of the beatific effects of the cleansing of the heart from all sin is soul-rest. It always accompanies the glorious experience of entire purity.
This poor tired world of ours needs rest. Study the faces of the people you meet in the streets, in the markets, in the cars, in the churches, and there is one word NOT written on them, and that word is "Rest." You will find many other words written on them. On some faces you see "Selfishness" in crabbed, crooked letters; on others "Lust" in bold-faced type; on others "Gluttony"; on others, "Self-Conceit"; on others, "Craftiness"; and on through a thousand unworthy legends; but the one thing which makes life worth living is not found except among the sanctified.
It is wonderful how elusive rest is. You may search for it all your days and grow gray and haggard, and sit down in the evening of life with the vampires circling about you and be forced to confess, "I have not found rest!" You may retire from business and say, "I will spend my declining years in peace," but as the sun goes down the bats come out and flap the black skinny wings of the sins of other days in your affrighted face. If you are a student you may drop your books like Dr. Faust and hurry to the country, but the imp of restlessness will dog your steps and snare your pathway and you will carry home with you a Mephisto who will never leave you.
Some Christian people seek rest in changing preachers, but there is nothing in that to bring it. You may leave the minister who thumps the desk and listen to a man with a nasal twang, but you are still restive and unsatisfied. You think the reason your peace of soul is disturbed is that Mrs. Garrulous talked about you, or that the weather is rainy and disagreeable, or that the meetings are dull, or that people are selfish. The real reason is that you have a restlessness in your heart characteristic of inbred sin. You possess the seeds of dissatisfaction, and lawlessness, and anarchy, and nothing but holiness of heart will expel them.
Down in the unfathomed depths of old Ocean there is no movement, no disturbance. Gigantic "Majesties" and "Kaiser Wilhelms" and "Oregons" and "Vizcayas" plow and whiten the surface; tempests rage and Euroclydons roar and currents change and tides ebb and flow, but the great depth knows no ripple. It is said that down there the most fragile of frail and delicate organisms grow in safety. In the depths of the sanctified heart there is no storm and no breaker. Trials may come and leave white scars; billows may beat and surges may roll, and water-spouts and tornadoes may make the upper sea boil with anguish and sorrow and grief, but deep in the heart there is calm. There the delicate graces of the Spirit thrive and luxuriate. Great, soulless, iron-keeled, worldly institutions and sharp-prowed cutters may ride over your sensibilities, but the inner placidity is unbroken.
God's plan is to rest us so we can work for Him with ease and success. He institutes an everlasting Sabbath in the spirit that we may be ceaseless in sanctified activities. If a man is always jaded and tired he can not take hold of his work with much enthusiasm.
There is no mistaking the man or woman who has found the second rest. There is a poise of spirit and a sweet serious balance of soul which can not be counterfeited. The preacher who appreciates spirituality sees no sight more beautiful than the serene, calm faces of auditors from whose souls the tempests have been cast. Life's toils and distractions and disappointments have all been negatived by the power of the all-conquering Christ.
These words are being written in the city of Allentown, Pa., where the writer is spending ten days in a series of Pentecostal services. Last evening we saw a symbol of the rest Christ gives. We strolled along the east bank of the Lehigh River about half an hour after sunset. All the western sky was beautiful with an afterglow. The water of the river, silver near the shore and golden toward the west, was as still as the face of a mirror. The trees on the shore leaned over perfect pictures of themselves. The hills, which fell back gracefully from the valley, were covered with cloaks of gold and vermillion and emerald, and not a leaf stirred in the evening air. Far up the river the tiny bell of a canal-mule tinkled drowsily. On the veranda of a little cottage a young mother crooned a lullaby to a slumbering child, and a little bird in a thick grove called, "Peace! Peace!"
If God can make so beautiful a scene in the physical world, what can He not make in the spiritual? Thank God! He can excel anything the natural eye ever beheld. He can hang the soul with paintings and turn the "River of Life clear as crystal" through it, and fill the chambers of the heart with lullabies and the song of birds crying, "Peace!" If there are times when we are awed and charmed by
"All the beauty of the world"
let us remember that what we see is only a type of the grandeur and glory and splendor He will put in our spirit-nature if we but permit Him to sanctify us and cast out the storms and tempests.
While we may possess and enjoy "the second rest" here and now, we need not forget that another is promised to us. We get weary physically sometimes here. The days frequently seem long and trying. There are hours and hours of labor, and nights and nights of toil, but, thank God! we can say at each sunset, "I am one day nearer rest." For while a sanctified man is always at rest spiritually, he can not rest physically to much satisfaction. In his dreams he can see the white, drawn faces of the doomed, and hear the wild uncouth shriek of the tormented. He remembers with horror that one hundred thousand souls are rolled off into Eternity while the earth makes one revolution! He thinks of cheerless homes, and torn and bleeding hearts, and wives waiting for the sound of unsteady steps, and children friendless and hungry, and figures leaping from bridges, and shaking hands holding poison, and maniacs behind the bars glaring with wild eye-balls through dishevelled hair! And he leaps from the couch with the cry, "O the pity of it all!" And he can not be still, he can not be idle, but is constrained to do his utmost by word and pen to save a sinking, gurgling, drowning humanity.
But one day it will all be over. Soon we shall all have preached our last sermon and prayed our last prayer and spoken our last word. Our lives will soon have passed into history. That blessed hour will soon be here in which we shall "lay down the silver trumpet of ministry and take up the golden harp of praise." Hallelujah, it is coming! it is coming! Praise the Lord!
The precious grace of entire sanctification brings to the heart a prayerful spirit. Prayer becomes the normal occupation of the soul. One is surprised to discover that while it was formerly difficult, if not irksome, to pray at times, now one prays because it is delightful and easy.
Many of us have been surprised to read in the biographies of pious men and women that they frequently spent hours in prayer. But the sanctified man understands all that now. He can readily believe that De Renty heard not the voice of his servant, so intent was he gazing into the Father's face. He does not doubt that Whitefield in his college room was "prostrate upon the floor many days, praying for the baptism with the Holy Ghost."
The writer remembers of reading when just a child the thrilling life of John Wesley Redfield. There was nothing which struck the boy-reader with greater force than the prayerfulness of the man. It awed him, and made him long to enjoy such an experience as would make prayer so delightful. In the golden experience of sanctification he found that prayer was delightsome and blessed. Such is the uniform testimony of all who have been cleansed from depravity and anointed with the Holy Ghost.
God means true prayer to have audience. We can not understand how God can vouchsafe to us such tremendous effects as He asserts shall follow prayer. We can not defend prayer philosophically; but either "he that asketh receiveth," or the Bible is misleading and untrustworthy.
But what is "true prayer"? In the first place, it is prayer which says, "Thy will be done." If we pray selfishly, "asking amiss," we can hope for no answer. We will get no hearing. We must ask with the thought, "What is the Father's will? What does He consider best?"
True prayer must be earnest. It was the IMPORTUNATE widow that was heard, and it is the importunate seeker that never fails of an answer. If when sinners, backsliders, or believers come to the altar they would pray with earnestness and desperation, there would be a far larger PER CENT. of them who would go away fully satisfied. God never gives great blessings to indifferent people. When He sees a man in an agony of desire and longing, then He hastens to gladden his heart with an answer.
Prayer must be full of faith. James makes this clear to us. "Let him ask in faith nothing wavering." God cannot bestow a blessing upon us if we doubt Him. If a neighbor doubts your character, how much of your heart do you let him see? If a fellow-preacher imputes selfish motives to your acts, how often do you go to him and pour your heart out to him? But those who believe in us—how frequently we run to them, unlock our hearts and tell them all! It is thus with God. If we believe His word, if we are sure of the veracity of His promise, and are confidently expecting an answer, He will not, can not disappoint us.
There must be in us a forgiving spirit if our prayers are to be heard. Forgiveness of our enemies precedes blessing for ourselves. "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive your trespasses." If I am bitter in my heart toward any creature, God can not but be deaf to all my cries. If I nourish hatred, or meditate revenge, or plot the downfall of any man, my prayers are vain; yea, all my hope in Christ is futile!
O that God may send us all the prayerful blessing! It is better that we pray than that we discuss politics or talk "shop," or gossip or jest. If we preachers and evangelists at camps and conventions would pray more instead of getting in groups and talking about a world of nothings, our sermons would mean full as much to those whom we address.
Sanctification makes it possible for us to "pray without ceasing." The indwelling Paraclete keeps the heart in a constant spirit of prayer, so that at all hours and in all places prayers ascend. Communication is kept up between the heart and the throne of Grod. No snows break the wires. No floods wash away the poles. From the pulpit, from the sidewalk, from the counter, from the railway coach, from the sick bed, an ever-steady stream of prayer is kept up. They may befoul our names, but they can not stop our praying. They may "cast us out as evil," and may deny us pulpit privileges, and take away our salaries, but prayer and praise they can not stifle nor hinder.
The prayers of God's people are sweet to Him. "With much incense" burning in a golden censer (Rev. viii. 3) they float to His throne. But notice the effect of the prayers of saints. Not only is there a silence of an half-hour but "voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake" are observed in the earth. The children of God, if they but pray and believe, can pull spiritual fire and earthquakes down upon earth and effect great things for God and His Church.
Nothing is clearer in the Acts of the Apostles than that the disciples after Pentecost had success in gospel service. Everywhere they went God rained fire upon their Word and sanctioned the truth which they preached by tremendous moral and spiritual upheavals.
Bishop Roberts has put the matter of success very succinctly: "If the lawyer must win his case and the doctor cure his patient in order to be successful, the minister and worker must save souls if they in their calling are to be said to be successful." But alas, saving souls is precisely what we are not doing. Thank God! there is here and there a man who stands out as a soul-saver. But the average minister is not distinguished for revivalism so much as proficiency in making a church social a "blooming success."
We all want to seem to succeed. We shun and dread the appearance of failure. When a church begins to rot instead of grow it is natural for us to do our utmost to find out some way of excusing the retrogression without admitting our failure to reach men with the gospel. There are evangelists, who in the palmy days of their power had wonderful, heaven-gladdening revivals, who have ceased to wield "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and, in order to cover their spiritual nakedness, are forced to resort to finger-raising, card-signing methods for stuffing and expanding "the big revival." There is no more sobbing, no more desperate praying, no more shouting; all is "decent and in order," as well it may be, for all is dead.
Honor to soul-saving! Show us the man who wins men to our Master, that we may clasp his hand and look into his face. Right here hangs all the discussion about evangelism. If the evangelist gets men soundly and scripturally converted and sanctified, let us bid him Godspeed! If he only amuses them and deals in paltry three-cent sensationalism, away with more of the same sort of stuff which we already have in so many pastors!
One thing is certain: God intends success and only success for His people. If, as His children, we fail, it must be because we have not followed the divine recipe for power and accomplishment. It was because the one hundred and twenty obeyed Christ and tarried at Jerusalem that God used the early Church to whip the Roman Empire.
"How to Succeed," used as the title for a book, will make any book sell, though it be as dry as a patent-office report. People want to know how to succeed in the world. How strange then that ministers and churches who are brilliant and conspicuous failures should shun the preaching of Pentecost—the one cure for failure and the sole guarantee of success.
How many times some of us have sighed over our inefficiency! How frequently, in default of apparent results, we have been forced to console ourselves with the thought that we are "sowing seed" and that there will be an abundant harvest at no distant date! Thank God! there is success for us all. Pentecost will give it to us.
We do not mean by success financial opulence. A man may be a success and yet as poor as John the Baptist lunching on dried locusts and honey-comb. One may be as wealthy as Croesus and yet be an awful failure. A church may be rich and increased with goods and incur the Laodicean curse.
Neither does success mean a great and highly-trumpeted statistical report to lug to conference. Some of our most inspiring "successes" are all right on paper, but in reality they are stuffed and padded scandalously. No, success in Christian work is to "turn many to righteousness," save souls, and secure the sanctification of believers. If we do not see such results following our labor, we have either missed God's plan as to our selection of a field or we are not living in the present enjoyment of the Pentecostal Baptism.
The preachers and evangelists who have won great successes in the calling of sinners to repentance have almost without exception testified to having received an "enduement" or "anointing" subsequent to their conversion. The Caugheys, the Moodys, the Whitefields, the Wesleys, the Foxes, the Earles, though in some instances they have not believed in holiness according to the Wesleyan view, have all had an epochal event after which their work and works were effective and startling.
Pentecost coming to a mission-worker will fill his heart with enthusiasm and energy, and give him a host of jewels washed from the mire and shining like meteors. The same experience coming to a mechanic will fire him with a love for Jesus and a solicitude for souls that will make him pray and fast and weep and work for his fellow-laborers, for his neighbors, and for his friends. The Spirit coming to a gifted singer will cause her to consecrate her voice, like Rachel Winslow in Sheldon's "In His Steps," so that with holy melody she will reach hearts hitherto hard and untouched.
One of the conditions of success in soul-saving is a passion for the salvation of immortal men and women. Full salvation always brings this, and as long as a worker lives in its plentitude and enjoyment he is consumed with a burning, longing, panting thirst for souls.
The ministers of early Methodism and early Quakerism were not of the sort who congregate in groups and discuss the relative desirability of various appointments. They did not spend their leisure in jesting, punning and guffawing, but in praying, studying, and working, for even their vacations were turned into days of toil. They spent their all in one endeavor—to save men from a yawning Pit and a lurid Hell. Nowadays we live in perpetual relaxation and recreation. Smooth, insipid preachers talk to shallow, giddy audiences, and the whole thing is on a gigantic landslide. Lord, save! or death and damnation are sure.
There can be no successful denial of the assertion that real soul-absorbing earnestness in religion is dying out. We sometimes mock at the Herculean labors of men like Owen, and Baxter, and Calvin, and Edwards. But though these men were perhaps more or less legalistic and at times a little narrow, yet one thing is sure, they made religion the business of life, and went at it with zest, enthusiasm, and determination. Your modern "Christian" has "certain intellectual difficulties"; is "not fixed in belief concerning Socinianism"; does "not like the old idea of the Atonement"; in fact, is in a state of fusion so far as his belief and faith are concerned. Men do not give their life's blood for matters in which they have only a half-faith. But when one is convinced that men are dying in the dark and that their salvation depends in a measure on one's activity and fidelity, then one is hot with zeal and fire from hat to heel and set to working for God and eternal souls.
This is the explanation of the zeal of men who are "burning for Jesus." This is the reason men so frequently wear out in short order after they are sanctified. They are dipped in fellowship with Christ's sorrow, and beholding Him weeping over modern Capernaums and Chorazins their hearts are melted at the sight, and they speed away to preach the gospel of the lovely Son of God.
No wonder success comes to the sanctified man. Indwelt by the Shekinah, filled with the Holy Ghost, his whole being energized with power and force, "whatsoever he doeth prospers."