SOME OF MY EXPERIENCES IN
TEACHING HOLINESS
I once received a letter from one of the most devoted young
officers I know, in which he said, "I love holiness more and more,
but I am just about discouraged. It seems to me that I shall never
be able to teach holiness, for it seems that I get things too
straight, or not straight enough." God bless him! I think I know
just how he feels. One day, a few months after I got the blessing of
holiness, I felt most gloomy about my inability to get people
sanctified. I knew, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that I had a
clean heart; but, somehow, I felt I couldn't properly teach others
how to get it.
That morning I met a certain brother who gets more people sanctified
than any man I know, and I asked him, "How shall I teach holiness so
that my people will get it?" His reply was, "Load and fire, load and
fire."
Light broke in on me at once. I saw that it was my business to pray
and study my Bible and talk with those who had the blessing, until I
got myself so loaded that it would almost talk itself, and then fire
away as best I could, and that it was God's business to make the
people receive the truth and become holy.
That was on the Saturday. The next day, I went to my people loaded
with truth, backed by love and faith, and I fired as hard and
straight as I knew how, when lo! twenty people came to the
Penitent-form for holiness. I had never seen anything like that
before in my life, but I have seen it many times since.
From then till now I have attended strictly to my part of the
business, and trusted God to do His part, and I have had some
success everywhere I have gone. But everywhere, also, Satan has
sorely tempted me at times, especially when the people hardened
their hearts and would not believe and obey. Then I have often felt
that the trouble must be in my way of preaching the truth. At one
time the devil would say, "You are too straight; you will drive all
the people away." Then again he would remark, "You are not straight
enough, and that is the reason the people don't get holy." In this
way I have suffered very much at times. But I have always gone to
the Lord with my trouble and told Him that He knew my earnest desire
was to preach the truth just right, so that the people would love
and trust Him with perfect hearts.
Then the Lord has comforted me, and shown me that the devil was
tempting me, in order to get me to stop preaching holiness. A few
times, professors of religion have come to me and told me I was
doing more harm than good. But they were the kind Paul describes,
"who have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof," and I
have followed his command, "From such turn away," and have not dared
to listen to them any more than to the devil himself. And so I have
kept at it, through evil report and through good report, and the
dear Lord has never left me alone, but has stood by me and given me
the victory, and I have constantly seen some one led into the
glorious light of liberty and perfect love. Satan has tried in many
ways to get me to stop preaching holiness, for he knew that if he
could get me to stop he would soon get me to sin, and so overthrow
me altogether. But the Lord put a godly fear in me from the
beginning, by calling my attention to Jeremiah i. 6, 8 and 17. The
last verse made me very careful to speak just what the Lord said.
Then Ezekiel ii. 4-8 and iii. 8-11 impressed me very much. In these
Scriptures the Lord commanded me to speak His truth as He gave it to
me, whether the people would hear or not. In Ephesians iv. 15, He
told me how I was to preach it -- that is, "in love."
I then saw that I must preach the truth Just as straight as I
possibly could, but that I must be careful always to keep my heart
full of love for the people to whom I was talking.
I read in 2 Corinthians xii. 14, 15, how Paul loved the people. He
said, "I seek not yours, but you ... and I will very gladly spend
and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the
less I be loved." Then in Acts xx. 20 and 27, "I kept back nothing
that was profitable unto you ... for I have not shunned to declare
unto you all the counsel of God." This made me feel that to withhold
the truth of holiness from the people -- which is necessary to their
eternal salvation -- was worse than keeping back bread from starving
children, or as the murder of souls is worse than the murder of
bodies. So I earnestly prayed to the Lord to help me love the
people, and preach the whole truth to them, though they hate me for
it -- and, bless Him! He answered my prayer.
There are three points in teaching holiness that the Lord has led me
to emphasize continually.
First, that men cannot make themselves holy, any more than the
Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots. That no
amount of good works, of self-sacrifice and denial, of labors for
the salvation of others, can cleanse the heart, can take out the
roots of pride, vanity, temper, impatience, fear and shame of the
Cross, lust, hatred, emulation, strife, self-indulgence and the
like, and in their stead put unmixed, perfect love, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and
temperance."
Truly, millions who have labored to purify the secret springs of
their hearts, only to fail, can testify, "It is not of works lest
any man should boast."
Second, I keep prominent the fact that the blessing is received by
faith. A poor woman wanted some grapes from the king's garden for
her sick boy. She offered the gardener money, but he would not sell
the grapes. She came again, and met the king's daughter, and offered
her money for the grapes. The daughter said, "father is a king; he
does not sell his grapes." Then she led the poor woman into the
king's presence, and told him her story, and he gave her as many as
she wanted.
Our God, your Father, is King of kings. He will not sell His
holiness and the graces of His Spirit, but He will give them to all
who will ask in simple, childlike faith. Truly He will. "Ask, and ye
shall receive. Where is boasting, then? It is excluded. By what law?
Of works? Nay: but by the law of faith ... Do we then make void the
law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law." By faith
the law of God is written on our hearts, so that when we read the
command, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," we
find a law of love in us because we have within us a law that
corresponds to the command. The Apostle says, "With the heart man
believeth unto righteousness" (Rom. x. 10), and that statement is
true to our experience, for where real heart-faith is, it makes the
impatient man patient, the proud man humble, the lustful man chaste,
the covetous man benevolent, the quarrelsome man meek, the liar
truthful, the man who hates loving; it turns misery into joy, and
gives peace and constant comfort.
Third, I emphasize the truth that the blessing is to be received by
faith NOW. The man who expects to get it by works will always have
something more to do before he can claim the blessing, and so never
comes to the point where he can say, "The blessing is now mine. But
the humble soul, who expects to get it by faith, sees that it is a
gift; and, believing that God is as willing to give it now as at
some future time, trusts and receives it at once.
By thus urging the people to expect the blessing "just now," I have
sometimes had them get it just while I was talking. People who had
often been to the Penitent-form, and had wrestled and prayed for the
blessing, have received it while sitting in their seats listening to
the simple "word of faith which we preach."
"Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His
holy name "(Ps. ciii. 1).
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