Godliness | Page 2

members, aptly described by the prophet Micah: "The sin of
Israel is great and unrepented of, yet they will lean on the Lord, and say,
Is not the Lord among us?" We are convinced that much of the work of
the faithful and pungent preacher, who preaches with his eye fixed on
the great white throne and the descending Judge, is to dislodge
professors from their imaginary trust in a Saviour who does not save
them, and probe deeply their hearts festering with sin, which have been
hastily pronounced healed, "slightly healed." Many of us have
incautiously said to awakened souls, "Only believe," before we have
thrust the heart through and through with the sword of God's law. We
have dismissed God's schoolmaster. The law, like the slave charged
with the task of leading the boy to school, and of committing him to the
teacher, we have thought to be too harsh and severe for our sentimental
age, and have unwisely discharged, and have assumed its office of a
paidagogos to Christ, and we have missed the way, and misled a
priceless soul. God have mercy on us, and give us humility, as He gave
Apollos, to be set right by an anointed woman!
After her timely correction of erroneous teachings on faith, Mrs. Booth
proceeds, pruning-knife in hand, to cut away from the tree of modern
Christianity the poisonous fungus of a "spurious charity." Her four
sermons on Charity are four beacons set on the rocks of counterfeit
Christian love. She sets forth several infallible tests by which genuine
love may be distinguished from the devil's base imitation. Like the
Epistles of St. John, these sermons are full of touchstones for testing
love, that golden principle of the Christian life. It would be very
profitable for all professors of that perfect love which casteth out all
tormenting fear, to apply unflinchingly these touch-stones to
themselves. They may find the word "perfection" taking on a meaning
deeper, broader and higher than they had ever before conceived. Why
should not our conception of Christian perfection steadily grow with
the increase of our knowledge of God and of His holy law?
The sermon on The Conditions of Effectual Prayer, we commend to all
Christians and to all seekers of Christ, who are mourning because their
prayers do not prevail with God. In the clear light of this sermon they

will find that the difficulty lies, either in the lack of fellowship with
Jesus Christ, or of obedience to His commands, or in the absence from
their hearts of the interceding Spirit, or in defective faith. In the
discussion of these hindrances to prayer, the preacher lays open the
heart, and with a skilful spiritual surgery, searches it to the very bottom.
The incisiveness of her style, her courage and plain dealing with her
hearers, tearing off the masks of sin and selfishness, the various guises
in which these masquerade in many Christian hearts and obstruct their
access to a throne of grace, remind us of Dr. Finney's unsparing
exposure and condemnation of these foes to Christian holiness, and of
John Wesley's cutting up by the roots "Sin in Believers."
In this sermon Mrs. Booth turns her attention to another phase of faith
and of practical error in the guidance of souls to Christ. Her views on
this vexed question are not extreme but philosophical and scriptural.
She teaches that God has made the bestowment of salvation
simultaneous with the exercise of faith, and that "telling a person to
believe he is saved, before he is saved, is telling him to believe a lie."
But she insists that the act of faith is put forth with the special aid of the
Holy Spirit giving an assurance that the blessing sought will be granted.
This assurance, or earnest, given by the Spirit, becomes the basis on
which the final act of faith rests, namely, "I believe that I receive." This
corresponds with William Taylor's Divine "ascertainment of the fact of
the sinner's surrender to God, and his acceptance of Christ," before
justification. [Footnote: Election of Grace, pp. 38-42.] Both teachers
agree with Wesley's analysis of faith which teaches that the fourth and
last step, "He doth it," can be taken only by the special enabling power
of the Holy Spirit, [Footnote: Sermons. Patience, Section 13; Scripture
Way of Salvation, Section 17; and Whedon on Mark xi. 24.] All three
locate the Divine efficiency before the declaration, "I believe that I
receive," or "have received" (R. V.), making that declaration rest upon
the perception of a Divine change within the consciousness. They all
insist that saving faith is not a mere humanly moral exercise, but that
power to believe with the heart descends from God, and that it must be
waited for in prayer, and that