The Crisis of Sanctification

Steve DeNeff

Sanctified by Intimidation

Sanctification –– that is, complete devotion –– is possible in this life, but it does not necessarily happen just because we consecrate ourselves. It is not only more commitment that leads to a crisis of entire sanctification but also less sin and selfishness.

My generation saw a multitude of holiness folk who prayed to receive “the blessing,” as it was called, but who never then rid themselves of habits and attitudes indigenous to their former, sinful life. They were just as stingy or cantankerous as they had been before only now they had a testimony.

This generation knows that if it doesn’t quack like a duck, fly like a duck, or swim like a duck, then it isn’t a duck –– no matter what it claims. The sanctified-by-intimidation approach left a sour taste. And for years, most people wanted nothing to do with the doctrine of holiness. But at last we have begun to separate the gift from its vendors, and now people want it again. Only this time they want the real thing. They have learned that much of the “touch not, taste note, handle not” paraphernalia associated with sanctification has precious little to do with the Holy Spirit, who allegedly inspired it. And so, with or without the rules, with or without the circus of emotion, with or without the fire-breathing evangelists, and with or without the madefor-television testimonies, the sons and daughters of this modern age, like those godly predecessors who were honest with themselves, desire a life wholly devoted to the glory of God alone.

We want sanctified careers and marriages, too. We want pure minds that meditate instead of coveting or lusting. We want hearts without carnal ambitions. And we want temples suited for the dwelling of Christ. We are no longer interested in how high a person jumps at the altar but in how he or she walks when he or she comes down.

So how are we sanctified? By three steps or stages: one, wait on God; two, seize the moment; three, reform our lifestyle. And always in this order.

Whatever Became of Holiness, Wesleyan Publishing House, © 1996. Used by permission.

“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.”

Vance Havner

We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.

–– Augustine, Bishop of Hippo

The Light Shines in the Darkness

F. F. Bruce

Jesus was all that the liberal protestants claim for Him, but He was more. He envisaged the advent of the divine kingdom, as the consistent eschatologists claim, and regarded Himself as the Son of man ordained to inaugurate that kingdom, but He had no thought of forcing the hand of God. He had freely chosen the path that inevitably led to the cross because that path was the Father's will for Him, and only by the suffering of death could He bring in the kingdom in its fulness and make its blessings available to all. And while He renounced the political and military ideal, He did, when occasion required, agree that He was the Messiah, the predestined king and liberator of the people of God, but a Messiah with a difference –a Messiah whose progress to His investiture must be by way of humiliation and death.

–– The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1954. 49.

Christian Perfection

John Wesley

“A Plain Account of Christian Perfection” as believed and taught by the Reverend Mr. John Wesley from the year 1725 to the year 1777:

A Further Explanation of the Sense in which Christians are Perfect. Continued from The Flame, July-September 2023

The next year [1764], the number of those who believed they were saved from sin still increasing, I judged it needful [necessary; requisite] to publish, chiefly for their use, “Further Thoughts on Christian Perfection”:

Question 12. Does then Christian perfection imply anything more than sincerity?

Answer: Not if you mean by your word sincerity love filling the heart (expelling pride, anger, desire, and self-will), rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, and in everything giving thanks. But I doubt, few use sincerity in this sense. Therefore, I think the old word is best.

People may be sincere who retain all their natural tempers [attitude, disposition, temperament], pride, anger, lust, self-will. But they are not perfect until their heart is cleansed from these and all its other corruptions.

To clear this point a little further: I know many who love God with all their heart. He is their one desire, their one delight, and they are continually happy in Him. They love their neighbour as themselves. They feel as sincere, fervent, constant a desire for the happiness of every person, good or bad, friend or enemy, as for their own. They rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks. Their souls are continually streaming up to God in holy joy, prayer, and praise. This is a point of fact, and this is plain, sound, scriptural experience.

But even these souls dwell in a shattered body, and they are so pressed down thereby that they cannot always exert themselves as they would by thinking, speaking, and acting precisely right. For want [need, lack] of better bodily organs, they must times think, speak, or act wrong ––not indeed through a defect of love, but through a defect of knowledge. And while this is the case, notwithstanding that defect and its consequences, they fulfil the law of love.

Yet even in this case, because there is not a full conformity to the perfect law, so the most perfect on this very account need the blood of atonement and may properly for themselves as well as for their brothers and sisters say, “Forgive us our trespasses” [Matt. 6.12-14].

Question 13. But if Christ has put an end to that law, what need of any atonement for their transgressing it?

Answer: Observe in what sense He has put an end to it and the difficulty vanishes. Were it not for the abiding merit of His death and His continual intercession for us, that law would condemn us still. These, therefore, we still need for every transgression of it.

Question 14. But can a person who is saved from sin be tempted?

Answer: Yes, for Christ was tempted.

Question 15. What you call temptation, however, I call the corruption of my heart. And how will you distinguish one from the other?

Answer: In some cases, it is impossible to distinguish without the direct witness of the Spirit. But in general, one may distinguish thus:

A person commends me. Here is a temptation to pride. But instantly my soul is humbled before God. And I feel no pride –– of which I am as sure as I am sure that pride is not humility.

A man strikes me. Here is a temptation to anger. But my heart overflows with love. And I feel no anger at all –– of which I can be as sure as I am as sure that love and anger are not the same.

A woman solicits me. Here is a temptation to lust. But I instantly shrink back. And I feel no desire or lust at all –– of which I can be as sure as I am as sure that my hand is cold or hot.

Thus it is if I am tempted by a present object. And it is just the same if, when it is absent, the devil recalls a commendation, an injury, or a woman to my mind. Instantly, the soul repels the temptation and remains filled with pure love. And the difference is still plainer when I compare my present state with my past wherein [in which] I felt temptation and corruption, too..

Question 16. But how do you know that you are sanctified, that you are saved from your inbred corruption?

Answer: I can know it in no other way than I know that I am justified. “Hereby know we that we are of God” (in either sense) “by the Spirit that He has given us” [cf. “We are of God. Those who know God hear us; those who are not of God do not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (1 John 4.6), and “By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4.13)].

We know it by both the witness and the fruit of the Spirit. When we were justified, the Spirit bore witness with our spirit that our sins were forgiven; and similarly, when we were sanctified, the Spirit bore witness that our sins were taken away. The witness of sanctification is not always clear at first (as neither is the witness of justification); neither is it afterward always the same, but, like that of justification, it is sometimes stronger and sometimes fainter. Yes, and sometimes it is withdrawn. Yet, in general, the latter testimony of the Spirit is both as clear and as steady as the former.

Question 17. But what need is there of the testimony of the Spirit seeing sanctification is a real change not. like justification, a relative change?

Answer: But is the new birth just a relative change? Is it not a real change? Therefore, if we need no witness of our sanctification because it is a real change, for the same reason we should need no witness that we are born of (that we are the children of) God.

Question 18. But does not sanctification shine by its own light?

Answer: And does not the new birth, too? Sometimes the new birth shines by its own light, and sometimes sanctification shines by its own light; at other times, it does not. In times of temptation Satan clouds the work of God and injects various doubts and reasonings, especially in those who have either very weak or very strong understandings. At such times there is an absolute need of that witness, without which the work of sanctification not only could not be discerned but also could no longer subsist [remain in being, force, or effect; maintain or support itself, especially at a minimal level].

Were it not for this witness, the soul could not then abide in the love of God –– much less could it rejoice evermore and in everything give thanks. In these circumstances, therefore, a direct testimony that we are sanctified is necessary in the highest degree.

“But I have no witness that I am saved from sin. And yet I have no doubt of it.” Very well, as long as you have no doubt, it is enough; when you doubt, you will need that witness.

To be continued in the next issue.

Harriet Earhart Monroe

Continued from The Flame, July-September 2023 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/New_York_Nursery_and_Child %27s_Hospital_Annual_Report_%281910%29_%2814764900981%29.jpg/640pxNew_York_Nursery_and_Child%27s_Hospital_Annual_Report_%281910%29_ %2814764900981%29.jpg

Pull quote: The hand that reaches down to help sinful men and women must have the other hand clasped close in God's strong hand.

The Dispensary

The Dispensary was opened February 1, 1912, after the need was very apparent, and further neglect of this branch of work seemed impossible.

Never will I forget the day when I first called up Dr. C. H. Bowker, one of the leading physicians of the city, living on Massachusetts Avenue near Thomas Circle, the very heart of the city, and told him of a man who had pneumonia, and of a woman in the shelter with a severe cold, and asked him to go to the Mission free of charge. I waited with bated breath for the reply. It was, “I am an exceedingly busy man, but I shall try to go within an hour.” Very much emboldened, I said, “Could you stop in once a day to see if anyone there has a contagious disease, or if anyone should be sent immediately to the hospital?”

The answer seemed very slow, and I fairly trembled, for our need was so great. At last he said, “Well, I have noticed if I put a duty on my daily program, I manage in some way to get it in.” From that day to this that blessed doctor has been at the beck and call of the Mission day and night; only God knows what a help and a comfort he has been to broken men and sorrowful women in that part of the city.

The Gospel Tidings of February 1912 had the following: For several months we have had a house physician, and the use and need for him has steadily increased. The establishment of regular hours at which patients could see the doctor, and a proper place for consultation, naturally suggested the establishment of a dispensary. This appeared feasible to the Executive Committee, and Mrs. Monroe, Superintendent Kline, and Dr. Bowker were appointed a committee to study the advisability of such an addition to our work. The report from this committee was favourable to the project, and active steps were at once taken to the establishment of a free general dispensary for the treatment of all classes of cases or their reference, where necessary, to special institutions.

The location of the Mission for dispensary work could not be better from any point of view. It is accessible to the hundreds needing its help. There is no conflict in its field by any other institution doing this class of work. Four rooms on the first floor of the Mission, with the chapel for a waiting-room, will serve admirably for dispensary needs at present. And these rooms are rapidly being put in shape by carpenters and painters. Shelves are being made for the pharmacy, a door has been cut through the partition, and running water is to be installed. Our printing plant will again demonstrate its usefulness by furnishing the necessary record blanks, labels, treatment cards, etc.

The Executive Committee has placed Dr. Charles Harvey Bowker, 1204 Massachusetts Avenue, in full charge of the Gospel Mission Dispensary, and he will have associated with him at first Dr. O. C. Cox, 1320 Eleventh Street, N.W.

A number of leading physicians and surgeons have evinced an interest and willingness to give their services, and Dr. Bowker will add them to the dispensary staff and assign them work as the clinic grows and they are needed.

Dr. Bowker's experience in managing a hospital in his home city and his hospital and dispensary work in Washington assure us a business-like management of this new branch of our work.

Our need at present is for drugs and surgical dressing, and it is hoped that the druggists of the city may contribute.

The dispensary opened Thursday, February 1, 1912, at 10 A.M., which will be the regular daily hour, and all those who are interested are invited to inspect the new rooms.

And so we opened February 1, 1912, and our annual report in the Gospel Tidings of May 1913, shows the following:

Physician in charge:

The Mission Free Dispensary Staff

Dr. Charles H. Bowker, 1204 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.

Associates:

Dr. Oliver C. Cox, 1320 Eleventh Street, N.W.

Dr. W. O. Owen, Southern Building.

Dr. William F. Hemler, 706 Eighth Street, N.W.

Dr. C. A. Simpson, 1217 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.

Dr. C. F. Dufour, 1347 L Street, N.W.

Dr. Adam Kemble, Cecil Apartments, Fifteenth and L Streets, N.W.

Dr. Jesse Ramsburgh, The Portner.

Hours for Treatment

Medical and surgical cases treated daily, 11 to 12 A.M.

Diseases of Women—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Diseases of Men—Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Diseases of Children—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Diseases of Ear, Eye, Nose, and Throat—Monday and Thursday.

Report for the Year Ending April 30, 1913

The dispensary is in need of a sterilizer and a special fund for medical supplies for those too poor to pay.

The sterilizer later was the gift of Dr. Jesse Ramsburgh, and we have a complete set of lenses for testing the eyes of school children.

It would break your heart to see the women with babies, the old people on crutches, the hosts of children, the aged victims of every vice, now broken and often repentant, seeking the aid of these good men.

Often, we run short of remedies. “What do they do then?” you ask. Well, they simply go down in their own pockets and buy the necessities, and no one is turned empty away.

Think of a procession of sick and needy persons, 2500 human beings in line, and you will see in your mind what that blessed dispensary has done for the sorrowful of this city in one year.

I wish I dare to tell you the particulars of one of these great physicians who had not been living close to God, seeing our work of faith, seeing how the Mission people lay their many needs before a patient God, who meets every demand in answer to their prayer, and possibly feeling that in a mission he could not minister to a mind diseased without himself being in touch with the living God, was led to revise his views, make public confession of his faith and enlist in God's organized method of evangelizing the world by joining the church. We all need God, but the hand that reaches down to help sinful men and women must have the other hand clasped close in God's strong hand if he would do effective work.

To be continued in the next issue.

The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity

George MacDonald

, Thecarethatisfillingyourmindatthismomentorbutwaitingtillyoulay what you are reading --- , asidetoleapuponyouthatneedwhichisnoneedisa demonsuckingatthespringofyourlife

“No! Mine is a reasonable care --- an unavoidable care, indeed!”

“Is it something you have to do this very moment?”

“No.”

“Then you are allowing it to usurp the place of something that is required of you this moment!”

“There is nothing required of me at this moment.”

“Nay, but there is --- the greatest thing that can be required of man.”

“Pray, what is it?”

“Trust in the living God. His will is your life.”

–– Unspoken Sermons, Series Two

Azusa Street

Frank Bartleman

Continued from The Flame, July-September 2023 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:026_la_times.gif https://www.apostolicarchives.com/i/History/Azusa_Revival.gif

Pull quote: There was much persecution, especially from the press. Pull quote: The purity and fullness of the individual Pentecost must depend upon the completeness of the individual Calvary.

The work was getting clearer and stronger at “Azusa.” God was working mightily. It seemed that everyone had to go to “Azusa.” Missionaries were gathered there from Africa, India, and the islands of the sea.

Preachers and workers had crossed the continent and come from distant islands with an irresistible drawing to Los Angeles. “Gather my saints together to me, those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice...” and so on (Ps. 50.1-7).

They had come up for “Pentecost,” though they little realized it. It was God’s call. Holiness meetings, tents, and missions began to close for lack of attendance. Their people were at “Azusa.” Brother and Sister Garr closed the “Burning Bush” hall, came to “Azusa,” received the “baptism,” and were soon on their way to India to spread the fire.1

Even Brother Smale had to come to “Azusa” to look up his members. He invited them back home, promised them liberty in the Spirit, and for a time God wrought mightily at the New Testament Church also.

There was much persecution, especially from the press. They wrote us up shamefully, but this only drew the crowds. Some gave the work six months to live. Soon the meetings were running day and night. The place was packed out nightly.

The whole building, upstairs and down, had now been cleared and put into use. There were far more white people than coloured coming. The “colour line” was washed away in the blood.

A. S. Worrell,2 translator of the New Testament,3 declared that the “Azusa” work had rediscovered the blood of Christ for the church. Great emphasis was placed on the “blood” for cleansing and so on. A high standard was held up for a clean life. “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him" (Isa. 59.19).

Divine love was wonderfully manifest in the meetings. They would not even allow an unkind word said against their opposers or the churches. The message was the love of God. It was a sort of “first love” of the early church returned.

The baptism as we received it in the beginning did not allow us to think, speak, or hear evil of anyone. The Spirit was very sensitive, tender as a dove. The Holy Spirit is symbolized as a dove. A dove has no gall bladder.4 We knew the moment we had grieved the Spirit, by an unkind thought or word. We seemed to live in a sea of pure divine love.

The Lord fought our battles for us in those days. We committed ourselves to His judgment fully in all matters, never seeking to even defend the work or ourselves. We lived in His wonderful, immediate presence. And nothing contrary to His pure Spirit was allowed there.

The false was sifted out from the real by the Spirit of God. The Word of God itself decided absolutely all issues. The Holy Spirit searched the hearts of the people, both in act and motive, to the very bottom. It was no joke to become one of that company. “None of the rest dared join them” [Acts 5.13] except they meant business to go through. It meant a dying out and cleaning up process in those days, to receive the “baptism.”

We had a “tarrying” [cf. Luke 24.49 KJV] room upstairs, for those especially seeking God for the “baptism,” though many got it in the main assembly room also. In fact, they often got it in their seats in those days. On the wall of the tarrying room was hung a placard with the words, “No talking above a whisper.” We knew nothing of “jazzing” them through at that time.

The Spirit wrought very deeply. An unquiet spirit or a thoughtless talker was immediately reproved by the Spirit. We were on “holy ground” [cf. Exod. 3.5 and Acts 7.33]. This atmosphere was unbearable to the carnal spirit. They generally gave this room a wide berth unless they had been thoroughly subdued and burned out. Only honest seekers sought it, those who really meant business with God. It was no “lethal chamber,”5 nor place to throw fits, or blow off steam in.

Men and women did not “fly to their lungs” in those days. They flew to the mercy seat. They took their shoes off, figuratively speaking. They were on “holy ground.” “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Arthur Booth-Clibborn6 has written the following weighty words for the “Pentecostal” people:

Any cheapening of the price of Pentecost would be a disaster of untold magnitude. The company in the upper room, upon whom Pentecost fell, had paid for it the highest price. In this they approached as near as possible to Him who had paid the supreme price in order to send it. Do we ever really adequately realize how utterly lost to this world, how completely despised, rejected and outcast was that company? Their master and leader had just passed, so to speak, through the “hangman’s rope” at the hands of the highest civilization of the day. Their Calvary was complete, and so a complete Pentecost came to match it. The latter will resemble the former in completeness. We may, therefore, each of us say to ourselves: “As your cross, so will your Pentecost be.” God’s way to Pentecost was via Calvary. Individually it must be so today also. The purity and fullness of the individual Pentecost must depend upon the completeness of the individual Calvary. This is an unalterable principle.

To be continued in the next issue.

1 Alfred (1874-1944) and Lilian Garr (1878-1916) from Kentucky, were leaders of the Burning Bush congregation in Los Angeles, a radical Holiness movement that had emerged in 1894 in a secession from the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Garrs moved with their congregation to join services in Azusa Street early in the revival in 1906 and were among the first Azusa Street missionaries to leave Los Angeles.

English Pentecostal leader Alexander Boddy* met the Garrs at a camp meeting near Toronto in June 1909 and described them as “Southerners of a refined type... good-looking, well-made young people, fit to move in any society.” Lilian Garr, he wrote, was “about six feet high, and both she and her husband had voices that would carry a great distance in the open-air.”

The Apostolic Faith reported that when the Garrs received the Spirit (perhaps the first white people to do so at Azusa Street), they received the gift of tongues, especially “the language of India and dialects”; they both spoke in Bengali, and Lilian Gar spoke in Tibetan and Chinese.

The Garrs left Los Angeles in July 1906 via Chicago and Danville, Virginia, where they held a series of meetings in the Burning Bush Church, which they had pastored the previous year. From there they went to India, arriving in Calcutta in December 1906 with an African American nanny, Maria Gardner, and a baby daughter, Virginia.

Because of a shortage of funds, they were forced to rent cheap accommodation. These undaunted missionaries had fully expected to speak Bengali on their arrival. They did not and could not. But unlike many others who returned home disappointed and disillusioned, they stayed several years before going on to Hong Kong, where they again chose not to study the language. Although disillusioned with their lack of any divinelygiven language abilities, they persevered.

In January 1907, while still in India, they were invited to testify about the Azusa Street revival and hold nightly meetings in William Carey's old Baptist church in Bow Bazaar now under Pastor Hook. Shortly afterwards a British military captain donated enough money to the impoverished Garrs to sustain them during their entire time in India.

They continued holding meetings in a house rented by Max Wood Moorhead, at the time Presbyterian secretary of the YMCA in Sri Lanka. Lillian Garr wrote in her first report to Azusa Street in March 1907 that thirteen or fourteen missionaries and other workers had received Spirit baptism. The Garrs’s work in the Indian subcontinent was fraught with controversy because of their dogmatic stance on Holy Spirit baptism, which they taught was always accompanied by speaking in tongues.

They moved to Bombay in March 1907 and visited Pandita Ramabai's Mukti Mission. By September they were on their way to Hong Kong and stopped for a while in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where it appears they might have recruited Dias Wanigasekera, one of the earliest Sri Lankan Pentecostals. Their missionary reports abounded with hints of the frustrations they felt because they could not communicate in the languages of the people.

The focus of the Garrs' ministry was now on reaching missionaries with their message, for this was, as they put it, tantamount to “laying the axe at the root of the tree” [Matt. 3.10] because these missionaries (unlike the Garrs) knew the customs and languages of India. “The only way the nations can be reached,” the Garrs declared, “is by getting the missionaries baptized with the Holy Ghost.” https://www.academia.edu/11607929/The_Missionary_Spirit_Alfred_and_Lillian_Garr_and_the_Hong_Kong_Pent ecostal_Mission?auto=download and Editor. http://www.dovesoflove.com.au/dove-facts/#:~:text=Doves%20and%20Pigeons%20have%20no,milk%20is %20called%20crop%20milk

This became a strategy for many expatriate Pentecostals in foreign countries who could not speak local languages and resulted in a rapidly developing network of interconnected missionaries who spread the Pentecostal message throughout the world with astonishing rapidity. Most of these missionaries came from evangelical faith missions like the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) and the China Inland Mission (CIM), but sometimes missionaries from older denominational missions were affected. The Garrs returned to India for nine months in 1909-10 before returning to Hong Kong.

*Alexander Alfred Boddy (15 November 1854 – 10 September 1930) was one of the founders of Pentecostalism in Britain. He was born into an ecclesiastical family: his father was a vicar, and his mother was a descendant of Mary Vazeille, who had been married to John Wesley. Although he trained to be a solicitor, a religious experience at a Keswick Convention convinced him he should become ordained into the Church of England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Boddy and Editor.

2 Adolphus Spalding Worrell was brought up as a Landmark Baptist but later in life converted to Pentecostalism. His translation reflects both traditions. Worrell sought to update the accuracy and grammar of the King James Version in his translation of the New Testament and included his personal study notes in it as well.

3 The Worrell New Testament: A. S. Worrell's translation with study notes. Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House. 1980. ISBN 9780882433929.

4 Doves and pigeons have no gall bladder. Although the reason behind this anomaly in unknown, these birds still produce bile; the bile is simply secreted directly into the gut.

5 Perhaps an allusion to the idea of an automated suicide booth Cf. the government lethal chamber from The Repairer of Reputations(1895) by Robert W. Chambers.

6 Commissioner Arthur Sydney Booth-Clibborn (né Clibborn) (1855-1939) was a pioneering Salvation Army officer in France and Switzerland. He was the husband of Kate Booth, the oldest daughter of General William and Catherine Booth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Booth-Clibborn

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth and having on the breastplate of righteousness (Eph. 6.14)

The Breastplate of St. Patrick https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._Patrick%27s_Church_on_the_Hill_of_Tara.jpg https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-st-patrick-image3628116#res336036 https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b42769/

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through a belief in the Threeness, Through confession of the Oneness Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism, Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial, Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension, Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of cherubim, In obedience of angels, In service of archangels, In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward, In the prayers of patriarchs, In preachings of the apostles, In faiths of confessors, In innocence of virgins, In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven; Light of the sun, Splendour of fire, Speed of lightning, Swiftness of the wind, Depth of the sea, Stability of the earth, Firmness of the rock.

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me; God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me,

God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me, God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me, God's hosts to save me

From snares of the devil, From temptations of vices, From everyone who desires me ill, Afar and anear, Alone or in a multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and evil, Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul, Against incantations of false prophets, Against black laws of pagandom, Against false laws of heretics, Against craft of idolatry, Against spells of women and smiths and wizards, Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ shield me today Against poison, against burning, Against drowning, against wounding, So that reward may come to me in abundance.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in the eye that sees me, Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through a belief in the Threeness, Through a confession of the Oneness Of the Creator of creation.

–– St. Patrick (ca. 377)

“The Lorica,” otherwise known as the "Lorica Sancti Patricii," an invocation to the Holy Trinity, is an ancient Gaelic morning prayer attributed to St. Patrick –– hence the prayer’s more common name: “The Breastplate of St. Patrick” (“lorica” is Latin for “shield” or “breastplate”

[cf. Isa. 59.17, Eph. 6.14, 1 Thess. 5.8]). The prayer is also known by its incipit (repeated at the beginning of the first five sections): atomruig indiu, "I bind unto myself today."

Embracing prayer as a shield or breastplate, the early Irish Church used many loricas in both Gaelic and Latin against both spiritual and physical evils. The loricas arose as replacements for Gaelic pagan incantations, which the new Christians discarded.

In the original, all the verses but the last were in Gaelic, the last being in Latin. The translation above is from the 11th-century Irish Liber Hymnorum, G.H. Bernard, D.D. and R. Atkinson, LL.D, 1898, where it appears as Faeth Fiada1 . It also appears, but in a more fragmentary state, in the 9th-century Vita tripartite Sancti Patricii. It was edited in 1888 (Vita Tripartita), in 1898 (Liber Hymnorum), and again published in 1903 in the Thesaurus

Paleohibernicus http://www.thehypertexts.com/Song%20of%20Amergin%20Modern%20English%20Translation.htm). http://www.catholictradition.org/Litanies/litany41.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Breastplate Editor.

The Liber Hymnorum recounts how Saint Patrick used this prayer when an ambush was laid against him by Lóegaire, who reigned as King of Tara or High King of Ireland from 428 to 458 AD. Lóegaire attempted to prevent Patrick from going on a missionary journey to Tara. Upon Patrick’s reciting the prayer, he and his band appeared to those lying in ambush as wild deer with a fawn following them.

The prayer was directed to be sung in "all monasteries and churches through the whole of Ireland" ("canticum ejus scotticum semper canere"), which is a proof that it was at that time universally acknowledged to be Patrick’s composition. That regulation disappeared when the old Celtic Church lapsed into the Roman.

A fine example of Ireland’s early bardic poetry (see also, the "Song of Amergin”), Patrick’s lorica is dated on linguistic grounds to the early 8th century. John Colgan (c. 15921658), an Irish Franciscan friar, attributed the prayer to Saint Evin, the author of the 9thcentury Vita Tripartita.

I Bind Unto Myself Today

Cecil Frances Alexander

I bind unto myself today

The strong Name of the Trinity, By invocation of the same The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this today to me forever By power of faith, Christ's incarnation; His baptism in Jordan river, His death on Cross for my salvation; His bursting from the spiced tomb, His riding up the heavenly way, His coming at the day of doom I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power Of the great love of cherubim;

The sweet 'Well done' in judgment hour, The service of the seraphim, Confessors' faith, Apostles' word, The Patriarchs' prayers, the prophets' scrolls, All good deeds done unto the Lord And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today

The virtues of the star lit heaven, The glorious sun's life giving ray, The whiteness of the moon at even, The flashing of the lightning free, The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks, The stable earth, the deep salt sea Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today

The power of God to hold and lead, His eye to watch, His might to stay, His ear to hearken to my need. The wisdom of my God to teach, His hand to guide, His shield to ward; The word of God to give me speech, His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin, The vice that gives temptation force, The natural lusts that war within, The hostile men that mar my course; Or few or many, far or nigh, In every place and in all hours, Against their fierce hostility I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan's spells and wiles, Against false words of heresy, Against the knowledge that defiles, Against the heart's idolatry, Against the wizard's evil craft, Against the death wound and the burning, The choking wave, the poisoned shaft, Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name, The strong Name of the Trinity, By invocation of the same, The Three in One and One in Three. By Whom all nature hath creation, Eternal Father, Spirit, Word: Praise to the Lord of my salvation, Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

In 1889, Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895), née Humphreys –– married to the Rt. Rev. W. Alexander, D.D., Bishop of Derry and Raphoe –– wrote the version above at the request of H. H. Dickinson, Dean of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle. He recalls, "I wrote to her suggesting that she should fill a gap in our Irish Church Hymnal by giving us a metrical version of St. Patrick's "Lorica," and I sent her a carefully collated copy of the best prose translations of it. Within a week she sent me that exquisitely beautiful as well as faithful version that appears in the appendix to our Church Hymnal." https://hymnary.org/text/i_bind_unto_myself_today Editor.

Mrs. Alexander wrote nearly four hundred hymns and poems, mostly for children. Some of the narrative hymns are rather heavy, and not a few of the descriptive are dull, but a large number have won their way to the hearts of the young. Such hymns as "In Nazareth in olden time," "All things bright and beautiful," "Once in Royal David's city," "There is a green hill far away," "Jesus calls us o'er the tumult," "The roseate hues of early dawn," and several others are deservedly popular. Mrs. Alexander has also written hymns of a more elaborate character, but it is as a writer for children that she has excelled.

- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907). Editor.

The “Lorica of St. Patrick” is also the source of “Patrick’s Rune,” a prayer that Madeline L’Engle works into A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the third book of Time Quintet, a fivevolume fantasy/science fiction set of novels for young adults.

Patrick’s Rune

At Tara to-day in this fateful hour I place all Heaven with its power, And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And fire with all the strength it hath, And lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path,

And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness: All these I place, By God’s almighty help and grace, Between myself and the powers of darkness. (Anon. Trans. Charles Mangan)

1 Faeth Fiada –– or, more fully, fáeth fiada a hainm –– was interpreted as the "Deer's Cry" by the medieval editor of the Liber Hymnorum and is so understood in Middle Gaelic popular etymology, but it is more accurately regarded as a spell of concealment –– a mythological magical mist or invisibility veil in which members of the Tuatha De Danann, deities of pre-Christian Gaelic mythology, would enshroud themselves.

Unless You Become as Little Children: Tales for the Childlike

Percy H. P. Gutteridge

https://unsplash.com/photos/jdYSJdk4kRc https://unsplash.com/photos/yslJWLexT3A https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canada_geese_by_the_River_Darwen__geograph.org.uk_-_3465307.jpg

Professing to be Wise

“Don't be such a bully," I called. "Give the ducks a chance!”

I had often watched this Canada goose and his mate doing exactly what they were doing now, gobbling up the oats, birdseed, and cracked corn the children had brought to feed the birds.

“l don't want to interfere,” I continued, "but you're not being fair to the ducks. They’re hungry too. You act as if you’re the only ones on the water that deserve to eat! You're becoming utter nuisances,” I said to the gander, “with all your hissing and flapping and honking!”

“Whose honking?” the gander said.

“You and your wife,” I replied.

“Well aren’t you an ignorant interferer! How dare you accuse my dear wife of honking. Dames hrink, which you would hear if you listened for once. A hrink is shorter and more highpitched than a honk. And we don’t just honk or hrink. We use ten different vocalizations, depending on the situation.” And he hissed fiercely as he swam away.

“I don’t care if your honking or hrinking or whatever; I just know that you’re noisy, dirty, and unwanted pests,” I called after him very annoyed.

“Well said, sir! Well said!” quacked all the ducks in chorus. "It's about time someone said something to them. They’ve been nothing but a nuisance ever since they arrived. And they’re going to make themselves ill! They’re not just eating the nutritious food some people give us, but they’re eating all the unhealthy food, too.”

“What do you mean, unhealthy food?" I asked.

“Things like bread, crackers, donuts, cereal, and popcorn. We ducks like high carbohydrate foods, too, but we know it's just junk food and that it’ll make us so malnourished that we and our babies will become ill. The ducklings won’t grow properly because the bread and stuff will fill their stomachs and stop them wanting to forage and get the exercise they need. And it’ll pollute the waterways and attract rodents and other pests.”

“But I thought corn was good for you!”

“Corn is good for us, but popcorn isn't. We can't properly digest popcorn kernels; they often stay in our digestive system until they fester and putrefy, which usually kills us. People sometimes give us cereals, especially cornflakes, and we like them, but they're not very good for us because they contain a lot of sugar and bad additives.”

“Well!” I exclaimed. “I feel silly. I suppose I thought that all human food was good for you.”

“You’re not alone. But some of that stuff’s bad for you, too. Give us lettuce or cabbage or kale! And rice is good for us –– even cooked rice –– and peas, spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, and most fruits. But we can’t handle anything citrus. Oh, and oats. We’ll bless you for your left-over porridge.”

“Frankly,” I admitted, “I thought you lived on snails, slugs, and bread!”

“Ah, now you’re talking! But not the bread bit. We love slugs and snails and lots of other insects. Put us in a vegetable bed and we’ll clean it up in no time. And, you know, geese like just about everything we do. If this pair followed our diet, they’d be a lot better off.”

"How long have they been here?" I enquired.

“They came some months ago, and seemed very friendly, and so we showed them all the best feeding places, but now they want everything for themselves. And what’s more, we’ve just heard that they’ve invited a lot of their friends to join them.”

"And so what if we have? You don't own the lake. Face it! They'll soon be a lot more of us than of you, and so I suggest you either quack to the back of the line or find another lake!”

The gander had quietly come up behind me while we were talking.

“And furthermore,” he continued, "you better get used to how it's going to be because things aren’t going to change anytime soon. The handouts are great in this neck of the woods!

We’re here to stay. Life in the UK has suited us just fine since we first arrived –– and that’s about three hundred years ago now. Food’s always here for the asking.

Nothing and no one is after us, except for a few hunters, but we steer clear of them. So don’t bother us! Don’t you know we’re a protected species? The Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 makes it an offence to kill or injure us or to damage or remove our nests without a license. It's been so good in this country that we haven't needed to go on those tiresome migrations like a lot of our North American cousins. In fact, it's a good job we don't need to migrate because we’ve forgotten how.”

“But I've often seen you flying of an evening,” I said.

“Oh, yes! We can still fly, but we just take short hops. Our cousins can cover 1500 miles in a single 24-hour period. But we're sedentary now.”

“Sedentary? But aren’t you wild?” I asked, surprised.

“Not a bit of it,” he sneered. “Why do you think I’m talking to you? We’ve lost our fear of humans, and now they’re scared of us! If they don’t feed us when they come into our territory, we go after them. And don’t we love it when they run away so we can chase them!”

“And you’re proud of that?” I chided. “My friends the ducks were just telling me about how much they like to help humans. To be honest, I think....”

“That’s nothing!” the gander interrupted, “A lot of our less-enlightened brothers and sisters do the same thing. They slave as ‘weeder geese’ to clear orchards, vineyards, and nurseries and to clean strawberry and corn fields.”

“But you’d prefer to scrounge and beg and make a general nuisance of yourself?”

“Who wouldn’t if they could eat without working? And you’re the ones who feed us. We eat the rubbish you give us because it’s there, but we’d prefer grasses, herbs, and weeds! In fact, we’d very happily eat pretty much nothing but grass with some oats, wheat, or corn thrown in ––but the grass doesn’t last long when a flock of us move in.”

“You’re right,” I said meditatively. “We humans are partly to blame. If the free food wasn’t available, you’d be forced to work for it. And frankly, if animals or humans don’t work, they don’t deserve to eat. But can’t you see what not working and eating food that isn’t nutritious is doing to you?” I asked. “I hate to be rude, but it seems as if the fatter you get, the worse tempered you get. You’re obviously designed to work and to eat properly; if you weren’t, you wouldn’t possess the ability to forage and you couldn’t know good food from bad food. Quite frankly, your laziness is going to kill you.”

“Whatever! We all have to die some time,” the gander responded.

“Oh no!” I exclaimed. “You won’t die. You’ll kill yourself. You’ll commit suicide! And furthermore, you’ll be setting such a bad example for your goslings you’ll be killing them, too!”

“And since when has any of this been your business?” the gander sneered. “Save your empty moralising for your duck friends. Reasoning with you is like reasoning with them.”

“Ignore him,” I said as I turned to the ducks. "His Maker gave this bird wings to fly up into the blue sky in the warm bright sunshine, but he has settled down to a selfish earth-bound life, a slave to appetite and at the mercy of muddy thinking. Don’t be intimidated by its baffle gab! It thinks its thoughts are lofty and novel, but they’re just empty and mundane pontificatings.”

"The more you say," huffed the goose, “the more you display your multi-dimensional phobias, intolerance, and paranoia. In fact, you're beginning to trigger me and make me feel very unsafe. And so I don't feel I need to discuss anything with you at this or any other time. But in passing, I need to point out that I have had a higher and more extensive education than any of you. Furthermore, unlike you I am an original thinker; I am not stuck in your narrow-minded traditions. All my peers agree with me. And being young and in the majority, we are obviously right. My concepts and re-orientated philosophies are based on the very latest psychological hypotheses. And what you foolishly call my selfishness is but the uninhibited manifestation of my liberated ego, my unshackled rational self-interest.”

And then the goose launched into a vile personal attack on both me and the ducks in vituperation so disgusting I'm not going to repeat it. And then he waddled away.

“You see,” I said to the ducks, “that’s typical of those who believing themselves to be wise have become fools. They’ll invariably retreat into ad hominem argument!”

“Add honey to them argument?” one of the ducks queried. I tried not to smile. “Ad hominem means ‘to the person’ and is short for argumentum ad hominem. It’s essentially a fallacy in argument some people use when they know they’re losing and so revert to a personal attack. Instead of addressing an argument or a position, they irrelevantly attack the person or group or something associated with the person or group contending with them. We should never do it, tempting though it can be. It’s the bastion of weak minds.”

“Some of the things you say,” replied the duck, "remind me of a tradition we have of a very kind man who told us some lovely things and always encouraged us to do what was right, not what was easy or sensible or logical or profitable. He warned us that a time was coming when people would laugh at us and would live following whatever evil they want to do and would say, ‘The Maker promised to come again. Where is He? Our fathers have died, but the world continues the way it has been since it was made.’ He said they would obey spirits that tell lies and would follow the teachings of demons.”

“Yes,” I said. “Wonderful words! And He also said that people who do not have His Spirit would not accept the things that come from His Spirit. They think these things are foolish. They can’t understand them because they can only be understood with the Spirit’s help. They’re headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth. And that goose is a good example of these people.”

“He is,” the ducks agreed. “And he doesn’t know that his destruction is fast approaching: we overheard the park keeper’s wife say that the wildlife commission has begun to cull the geese, and so she has her eye on him for her Christmas table! We feel very frightened for him, but he just laughs at us and insults us when we try to warn him.”

“You’re doing all your Maker expects of you. The gander will never be able to say he wasn’t warned. Keep trying, and I’ll do the same. I need to be off now, but I’ll see if I can have a chat with him on my way home. Goodbye and peace be with you.”

“And peace be with you,” the ducks responded heartily.

A version of this story first appeared in The Pilgrim as part of “Uncle Timothy’s Adventures.” Rev. Percy H. P. Gutteridge, 1909-1998, lecturer at Emmanuel Bible College and pastor with the Calvary Holiness Church and the Church of the Nazarene, left Britain in 1967 for an international itinerant teaching ministry.

Book Review

The Turning of the Tide. Author Linda Herbert. Available from Amazon £14.99. Reviewed by Carol Manley.