Life Sketches and Sermons

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1920. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES. From the time in my ministry that I began to hear, and learn something of the deeper Christian life, or the privilege in Christ of an experience of freedom from sin, and the fulness of the Spirit, which was about the year 1890, I began to search the Word of God, read what I could find written on the subject, and prayed to God that I might receive the light and walk in the light of the fulness of the gospel of Christ. When I first met the question of freedom from sin, sanctification or holiness, I opposed it in my preaching, as contrary to my theological training, though I had not gone to a theological seminary. After awhile God not only led me to see that I was wrong in opposing these truths, but put a hunger in my soul for a deeper spiritual life than I enjoyed, to be made free from all sin, to be sanctified, or as I was led to call it, baptized with the Holy Ghost. I had a fearful struggle with the question of freedom or emancipati m from sin, for I had been drilled in the teaching or doctrine that the remnant of sin or the o1d man, must remain in us until natural or physical death. That one must sin daily. It made it hard for me to enter by faith into the experience of the sanctified life. I thought that sanctification was a long life time progressive work altogether, and that no one could claim the sanctified experience, by an act of faith as an immediate result. I have since learned that we may enter into the experience of the sanctified state, and then live out the life in that state by a progressive development, or growth in grace. After I began to see the light from the Word, I became anxious for any experience that would deliver me from all sin, not only actual transgressions, but the power of the sin principle within. I reany ...