Three brief testimonies -as related by Daniel Steele
"The experimental evidence that the blood of Christ avails to the complete cleansing of the believer before death would fill many volumes. We give the first that comes to hand."
"A few years ago the wife of a distinguished minister was lying hopelessly ill. All was mist and uncertainty before her. She longed for the purity and peace promised in the holy word, but her husband had always preached a gradual growth in grace, and completeness in Christ only at the last moment of life, and she waited for that hour in dread uncertainty.
"'O that I could have complete deliverance from sin now, before that fearful hour!' she exclaimed.
"'Why not now?' the Spirit suggested.
"She sent for her husband, and as he entered her sick-chamber, she anxiously inquired, 'Can Christ save me from all sin?'
"'Yes; he's an almighty Saviour, your Saviour, able to save to the uttermost.'
"'When can he save me? You have often said that he saves from all sin at the dying moment. If he is almighty, don't you think he could save me a few minutes before death? It would take the sting of death away to know that I am saved.'
"'Yes, I think he could.'
"'Well, if he could save me a few minutes before death, don't you believe it possible for him to save a few hours or a day before death?' The husband bowed his assent 'But,' she said with deep earnestness, 'I may live a week, or a month; do you think it possible for God to save a soul from sin so long before death?'
"'Yes; all things are possible with God,' he answered with deep emotion.
"'Then kneel right down here and pray for me. I want this full salvation now, and if I live a month, I will live to praise God.'."
He knelt beside her bed, and poured out his soul to God in prayer as he had never done before. And while he prayed, the cleansing blood that makes whiter snow was applied to her soul, and she was enabled to rejoice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. She lived a month afterward to magnify the grace of God, and testify of the perfect love that casteth out all fear. And since that hour her husband has preached Christ as a present Saviour, able to save from all sin." [9]
The following experience of a Presbyterian preacher's wife who still lives, and testifies on both continents to the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ purifying her from all sin years after conversion, meets the objection urged by some that those experiencing entire sanctification are only just then converted or reclaimed from a backslidden state:—
"When I was converted my conversion was so marked, so clear, so decided, that I never could have a doubt of it. I went on for three years in the ordinary Christian way, (sometimes gaining a little, perhaps, but at other times defeated,) battling against my besetting sins—against pride and ambition, against impatience and irritability, against worrying about the future, and about the petty things of life.
"But at the end of three years I was taught a very different way from that of making resolutions, and struggling into the Divine life, and battling down my ambition, and pride, and levity, and all those things which tormented me.
I found that Jesus Christ would do all that work for me. After I learned this, my life was changed. O, how changed it was! How calm and serene it became! There was such a resting on Jesus! He seemed to be with me every day, and all the time; and I looked to him to keep me from pride and ambition, and from the worriments of life, and from anxiety about the future, and I found that he did that work for me. He did it all the time. He is the Conqueror of sin.
If we leave ourselves in his hands he does for us what we cannot do for ourselves."
A widely-known deaconess, in evangelical labors most abundant, testifies to a steady growth up to the time when the love of Christ was made perfect in her heart by the fullness of the Holy Ghost:—
"For years I worked and worked to get the Christian graces, and fit myself for salvation by Christ And O, how hard that was! But then it was a great deal easier than to submit to Jesus. My heart chafed and found no rest until I was willing to accept the words of Christ when he said to me, "Your heart is deceitful and desperately wicked," and at the same time to accept his words when he said, "I will save you," and to trust in him. After that, doubts went from me, and there seemed to be a full resting in the righteousness of Christ, in his merits, in his atonement. There was no rest in myself, in my experiences, or aught else besides simply resting upon Christ to save me eternally, and accepting his promises to be with me every-where and every day, and to guide me in all things. In this there was peace and joy to my soul.
"All that I can think of by which to illustrate my Christian life is this, that it was like sitting in a rowboat and rowing up stream, and making progress by severe effort; until, by and by, there comes a steamer along, and the weary toiler is asked if he will not have a ride, and he steps on board, and makes the remainder of the voyage easily and pleasantly. It seemed at first that the Christian work was hard and wearying, but after that it was God doing the work in me, God pushing me on, God leading me, God guiding. And now it is easy—easy in the family, with the little ones, everywhere.
For it is love—the love of God—that is working. The soul is filled with love. And O, how love will go anywhere, and count no cost, and keep no record of what it.does! There is no burden at all about living for a loved object. It is perfect freedom."
We have not space for the clear testimonies of Madam Guyon, Catharine Adorna, Monsieur De Renty, John and Mary Fletcher, Hester Ann Rogers, Bramwell, Carvosso, Adam Clarke, J. B. Taylor, Wilbur Fisk, Olin, Hamline, Alfred Cookman, and a host of others, whose biographies are a precious legacy to the Christian world, and a directory to all who are seeking to find the highway of holiness.
We understand that the baptism, the anointing, the fullness, the abiding, the indwelling, the constant communion, the sealing, the earnest, of the Holy Spirit, are equivalent terms, expressive of the state of Christian perfection. Wherever these terms occur, the Spirit of inspiration is pointing to that state of serene rest, that unbroken peace, that repose in the blood of Christ, that unwavering trust in God, that deliverance from fleshly desire, and that eradication of inbred sin, which come from being “filled with an the fullness of God.” This great blessing is the constant theme of the Apostle Paul, especially in his later epistles. He exhorts all to be filled with the Spirit; he prays for believers that they “may know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge; that Christ may dwell in their hearts.” St. Paul was a practical man, and never wasted his time in urging the impracticable, in inciting to the unattainable. According to Meyer the ordinary sequence of blessings is (a) Hearing, (b) Faith, implying preventing and saving grace; (c) Baptism; (d)
Communication of the Holy Spirit. Compare together Acts 2:37, 38, (a, c, d;) 8:6, 12, 17, (a, b, c, d;) 19:5, 6; (c, d.) Acts 10:44, (d, c,) and perhaps 9:17, are exceptional cases. The reason for the seeming blending of the baptism of the Holy Ghost with regeneration in exceptional instances in the Acts of the Apostles is to be attributed to the fact that the regenerate were urged to the immediate attainment of this great blessing, so that they did attain it with the interval of only a brief period.
A similar experience was that of Rev. John Fletcher, who seems to have been born into the kingdom with such a grasp of faith that he apprehended Jesus Christ as his complete Saviour a very few
days afterward. In the days of John Wesley, where this privilege was held up to the young convert by the preachers, and exemplified by many believers, there are instances of the attainment of perfect love within a day or two after justification. “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 of these 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.”—Wesley’s Journal, August 4, 1762.
Please observe how minute and searching Wesley was in his investigations into this subject. No naturalist in pursuit of a scientific truth could be more patient and painstaking in the collection of facts from which to make his induction. Wesley may well be called the spiritual Bacon. Again, two days afterward, he says of another Society, “Many believed that the blood of Jesus Christ had cleansed them from all sin. I spoke to these, forty in all, one by one. Some of them said they received the blessing ten days, some seven, some four, some three days after they found peace with God, and two of them the next day. What marvel, since one day is with God as a thousand years?
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