The Flame. October-December 2023

PRAYER — HOLINESS — REVIVAL

October–December 2023

Founded in 1935 by Rev. Maynard James

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Volume 89 Number 4

Contents Words of Comfort in Scripture and Verse . . 2 Bernhard of Clairvaux. Tr P. Gerhardt.

Blind Eyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Samuel Logan Brengle/Clara H. Scott The World and the Christian . . . . . . . . 5 William Law John Wesley and William Law . . . . . . . 7 John Wesley/Gerda J. Joling-van der Sar Wesley’s Scriptures . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 John Wesley/Adam Clarke Editorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Maynard James/Jack Ford The Loveliness of Nothingness . . . . . . 13 Andrew Murray Advice to the Sanctified . . . . . . . . . 14 The Double Cure . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Daniel O. Teasley The Crisis of Sanctification . . . . . . . 19 Steve DeNeff The Light Shines in the Darkness . . . . . 20 F. F. Bruce Christian Perfection . . . . . . . . . . 20 John Wesley Twice-Born Men in America . . . . . . . 23 Harriet Earhart Monroe Azusa Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Frank Bartleman Praise God in His Sanctuary . . . . . . . 31 Tales for the Childlike: Professing to be Wise . . . . . . . . . . 37 Percy H. P. Gutteridge Book Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Reviewed by Carol Manley Missing Issues from The Flame Archive . . 43 The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity . . . . . 44 George MacDonald Word Search . . . . . . insiDe Back coVer

Words of Comfort in Scripture and Verse “Upon Him.”

“He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities.”

“He was delivered over to death for our offences and was raised again for our justification.”

“The chastisement that procured our peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.”

“For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.”

“Mercy and truth are met together.”

“All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth for those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.”

“Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

“And the fruit of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever.”

“To those who do not work but believe on Him who justifies the ungodly, their faith is counted as righteousness.”

“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the one against whom the LORD imputes no iniquity.”

“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God who justifies.”

“The Justifier.”

“A just God and a Saviour.”

“Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace.”

“O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down, Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown; How pale Thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!

How does that visage languish, which once was bright as morn!

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain; Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.

Lo, here I fall, my Saviour! ‘Tis I deserve Thy place; Look on me with Thy favour, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

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Men mock and taunt and jeer Thee, Thou noble countenance, Though mighty worlds shall fear Thee and flee before Thy glance.

How art Thou pale with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!

How doth Thy visage languish that once was bright as morn!

Now from Thy cheeks has vanished their colour once so fair; From Thy red lips is banished the splendour that was there.

Grim death, with cruel rigor, hath robbed Thee of Thy life; Thus Thou hast lost Thy vigour, Thy strength in this sad strife.

My burden in Thy Passion, Lord, Thou hast borne for me, For it was my transgression which brought this woe on Thee.

I cast me down before Thee, wrath were my rightful lot; Have mercy, I implore Thee; Redeemer, spurn me not!

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend, For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?

O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

My Shepherd, now receive me; my Guardian, own me Thine.

Great blessings Thou didst give me, O source of gifts divine.

Thy lips have often fed me with words of truth and love; Thy Spirit oft hath led me to heavenly joys above.

Here I will stand beside Thee, from Thee I will not part; O Saviour, do not chide me! When breaks Thy loving heart, When soul and body languish in death’s cold, cruel grasp, Then, in Thy deepest anguish, Thee in mine arms I’ll clasp.

The joy can never be spoken, above all joys beside, When in Thy body broken I thus with safety hide.

O Lord of Life, desiring Thy glory now to see, Beside Thy cross expiring, I’d breathe my soul to Thee.

My Saviour, be Thou near me when death is at my door; Then let Thy presence cheer me, forsake me nevermore!

When soul and body languish, oh, leave me not alone, But take away mine anguish by virtue of Thine own!

Be Thou my consolation, my shield when I must die; Remind me of Thy passion when my last hour draws nigh.

Mine eyes shall then behold Thee, upon Thy cross shall dwell, My heart by faith enfolds Thee. Who dies thus dieth well.

— Bernhard of Clairvaux. Tr P. Gerhardt.

— Hope in Despair, Daily Readings for Times of Darkness and Pain T HE F LAME • Volu me 8 9 | Number 4

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Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash

Blind Eyes Samuel Logan Brengle “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him.” (1 Sam. 3.7)

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hen the Holy Spirit becomes the Holy Guest, He opens the eyes of our understanding to understand the Scriptures. Without His aid the Bible is just literature, and some of it is dry and hopelessly uninteresting and not understandable literature. But when He removes the scales from our eyes and illuminates its pages, it becomes most precious. It is a new and living Book, in which God speaks to us in love, in promise, in precept, in types and symbols, in warning, rebuke, entreaty, and always in love and always to save.

It reveals God. It comforts, rebukes, inspires, convicts, converts, and rejoices the heart. It is “sharper than any two-edged sword” and proves itself to be a “discerner of the thoughts and intents [intentions and motives] of the heart” (Heb. 4.12).

When the Holy Spirit becomes the Holy Guest in the yielded, welcoming heart, He dwells there ungrieved and with delight. “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride” [Isa. 62.5], so He rejoices over that soul while the soul has sweet, ennobling, purifying fellowship and communion with its Lord. He illuminates that soul; He purifies, sanctifies, empowers it; He instructs it, comforts it, protects it, adjusts it to all circumstances and crosses, and fits it for effective service, patient suffering, and willing sacrifice.

Silently now I wait for Thee, Open my eyes, illumine me, Ready, my God, Thy will to see.

Spirit divine.

— Clara H. Scott

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The World and the Christian

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William Law

f contempt of the world and heavenly affection is a necessary temper [attitude, temperament, disposition] of Christians, it is necessary that this temper appear in the whole course of their lives, in their manner of using the world, because it can have no place anywhere else.

If self-denial be a condition of salvation, all who would be saved must make it a part of their ordinary life.

If humility be a Christian duty, then the common life of a Christian is to be a constant course of humility in all its kinds.

If poverty of spirit be necessary, it must be the spirit and temper of every day of our lives.

If we are to relieve the naked, the sick, and the prisoner, it must be the common charity of our lives, as far as we can render ourselves able to perform it.

If we are to love our enemies, we must make our common life a visible exercise and demonstration of that love.

If contentment and thankfulness, if the patient bearing of evil, be duties to God, they are the duties of every day and in every circumstance of our life.

If we are to be wise and holy as the new-born sons and daughters of God, we cannot otherwise be so but by renouncing everything that is foolish and vain in every part of our common life.

If we are to be in Christ new creatures, we must show that we are so by having new ways of living in the world.

If we are to follow Christ, it must be in our common way of spending every day.

Thus it is in all the virtues and holy tempers of Christianity; they are not ours unless they be the virtues and tempers of our ordinary life. Christianity is so far from leaving us to live in the common ways of life — conforming to the folly of customs and gratifying the passions and tempers that the spirit of the world delights in — it is so far from indulging us in any of these things that all Christianity’s virtues that it makes necessary to salvation are only so many ways of living above and contrary to the world in all the common actions of our life.

If our common life is not a common course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.

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Yet though it is thus plain that this and this alone is Christianity, a uniform, open, and visible practice of all these virtues, yet it is as plain that there is little or nothing of this to be found even amongst the better sort of people.

You see them often at Church, pleased with fine preachers. But look into their lives, and you see them just the same as those who make no pretence to devotion.

The difference that you find between them is only the difference of their natural tempers. They have the same taste of the world, the same worldly cares, and fears, and joys; they have the same turn of mind; they are equally vain in their desires.

You see the same fondness for state and equipage,1 the same pride and vanity of dress, the same self-love and indulgence, the same foolish friendships and groundless hatreds, the same levity of mind and trifling spirit, the same fondness for diversions, the same idle dispositions and vain ways of spending their time in visiting and conversation as the rest of the world who make no pretence to devotion.

— A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Boston, Ticknor, 1835. 19.

But look into their lives, and you see them just the same as those who make no pretence to devotion.

Photo by Hoover Tung on Unsplash

1 a carriage and horses with attendants.

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.

There is no other.

— C.S. Lewis, “The Shocking Alternative,” Mere Christianity, book 2, chapter 3

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John Wesley and William Law John Wesley, on his introduction to the work of William Law, writes: When I was about 22, my father pressed me to enter into holy orders.

At the same time, the providence of God directing me to Kempis’s Christian Pattern, I began to see that true religion was seated in the heart and that God’s law extended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was, however, very angry at Kempis for being too strict, though I read him only in Dean Stanhope’s translation.

Yet I had frequently much sensible [appreciable] comfort in reading him, such as I was an utter stranger to before, and meeting likewise with a religious friend, which I never had till now, I began to alter the whole form of my conversation and to set in earnest upon a new life.

I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I communicated [participated in the eucharist] every week. I watched against all sin, whether in word or deed. And I began to aim at and pray for inward holiness. So that now, doing so much, and living so good a life, I doubted not but I was a good Christian.

Removing soon after to another college, I executed [carried out, put into effect] a resolution, which I was before convinced was of the utmost importance: to shake off at once all my trifling acquaintance.

I also began to see more and more the value of time and to apply myself closer to study. I watched more carefully against actual sins, and I advised others to be religious, according to that scheme of religion by which I modelled my own life.

But meeting now with Mr. Law’s Christian Perfection and Serious Call, they convinced me more than ever of the exceeding height and breadth and depth of the law of God — though I was much offended at many parts of both. The light flowed in so mightily upon my soul that everything appeared in a new view.

I cried to God for help and resolved not to prolong the time of obeying Him as I had never done before. And by my continued endeavour to keep His whole law, inward and outward, to the utmost of my power, I was persuaded that I should be accepted of Him and that I was even then in a state of salvation.

— An Extract of the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s Journal,1 from February 1, 1738, to his return from Germany. 129-30, paragraphs 4 and 5.

1 Cf. http://divinityarchive.com/bitstream/handle/11258/38895/172%20John%20Wesley%27s%20Introduction%20to%20William%20Law.pdf?sequence=1 T HE F LAME • Volu me 8 9 | Number 4

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t is a common misconception, perpetuated especially by some twentieth-century (literary) critics …, to associate the English theologian and spiritual writer William Law (best-known for The Christian Perfection, 1726, and A Serious Call, 1728) with Methodism, the system of religious faith and practice promoted by John and Charles Wesley and their followers.

Though John Wesley admired Law’s early works of the 1720s, he considered Law’s later theology as it appeared in his works from 1737 and onwards as dangerously false because of its Behmenism2 and mysticism. As a result of this Wesley became Law’s fierce opponent.

— Gerda J. Joling-van der Sar. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ abs/10.1080/00138380600757810?journalCode=nest20 2 Behmenism does not describe the beliefs of any single formal religious sect but instead designates a more general description of Jakob Böhme’s interpretation of Christianity when used as a source of devotional inspiration. Böhme’s views greatly influenced many anti-authoritarian and Christian mystical movements, such as the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the Philadelphians, the Gichtelians, the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness (led by Johannes Kelpius), the Ephrata Cloister, the Harmony Society, Martinism, and Christian Theosophy. Böhme (1575-1624) was also an important source of German Romantic philosophy, influencing Schelling in particular. https://religion.fandom. com/wiki/Behmenism

Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.

Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.

A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea—he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 8

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Wesley’s Scriptures

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ver the years, Wesleyan scholars have listed the references John Wesley used to support his position on Christian Perfection. Though they differ in their selection, most scholars seem to agree on a number of central scriptures. In this and subsequent issues, we will look at each of these references together with some of John Wesley’s and Adam Clarke’s commentary.

Hebrews 6.1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God... (KJV).

Therefore let us get past the elementary stage in the teachings about the Christ, advancing on to maturity and perfection and spiritual completeness, [doing this] without laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God… (AB).

John Wesley (Explanatory Notes on the New Testament):

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ That is, saying no more of them for the present.

Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works From open sins, the very first thing to be insisted on.

And faith in God The very next point. So [, for example,] St. Paul in his very first sermon at Lystra (Acts 14.15)1 “Turn from those vanities to the living God.” And when they believed, they were to be baptized with the baptism not of the Jews or of John but of Christ. The next thing was to lay hands upon them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, after which they were more fully instructed touching the resurrection and the general judgment called eternal2 because the sentence then pronounced is irreversible, and the effects of it remain for ever.

Adam Clarke (Commentary on the Whole Bible):

Therefore Because ye have been so indolent, slow of heart, and have still so many advantages.

Leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ Ceasing to continue in the 1 “Men, why do you these things? We also are men of like passions with you and bring you good news that you should turn from these vanities to the living God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all things that are therein.”

2 “Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment” (Heb. 6.2).

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state of infants, who must be fed with milk, with the lowest doctrines of the Gospel, when you should be capable of understanding the highest.

Let us go on unto perfection Let us never rest till we are adult Christians, till we are saved from all sin and are filled with the spirit and power of Christ. ...The whole law of Moses pointed out Christ, ... and therefore the words of the apostle may be understood thus: “Leave the law and come to the Gospel. Cease from Moses and come to the Messiah.”

The original of “Let us go on to perfection” is very emphatic: “Let us be carried on to this perfection.” God is ever ready by the power of His Spirit to carry us forward to every degree of light, life, and love necessary to prepare us for an eternal weight of glory. There can be little difficulty in attaining the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls from all sin, if God carry us forward to it; and this He will do if we submit to be saved in His own way and on His own terms.

Many make a violent outcry against the doctrine of perfection — that is, against the heart being cleansed from all sin in this life and filled with love to God and all men and women because they judge it to be impossible! Is it too much to say of these that they know neither the Scripture nor the power of God? Surely the Scripture promises the thing, and the power of God can carry us on to the possession of it.

Laying again the foundation of repentance The phrase “dead works” occurs but once more in the sacred writings, and that is in the ninth chapter of this epistle: “how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (9.14). In both places, the phrase seems to signify such works as deserve death — works of those who were dead in trespasses and dead in sins and those who were dead by sentence of the law because they had by these works broken the law.

Repentance may be properly called the foundation of the work of God in the soul because by it we forsake sin and turn to God to find mercy.

Faith toward God is also a foundation, or fundamental principle, without which it is impossible to please God [Heb. 11.16] and without which we cannot be saved.

By repentance we feel the need of God’s mercy; by faith we find that mercy. But it is very likely that the apostle refers here to the Levitical law, which, in its painful observances and awful denunciations of Divine wrath against every breach of that law, was well calculated to produce repentance and make it a grievous and bitter thing to sin against God. And as to faith in God, that was essentially necessary in order to see the end of the commandment, for without faith in Him who was to come, all that repentance was unavailable and all ritual observances without profit.

To be continued in the next issue.

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From The Flame Archives Vol. 1. No. 2. April-May 1935

Editorial Maynard James and Jack Ford The past months have been months of enterprise and venture. We have followed the vision with labour and prayer. The result has been the first issue of The Flame and the Easter Convention at Oldham.

ENCOURAGEMENT In sending forth the first number of a new paper, we felt a very natural apprehension concerning how it would be received. We are glad to report that it has been greeted with widespread approval. The saints at Oldham, Salford, Bradford, and Queensbury rose to the occasion with commendable enthusiasm; in less than three weeks they had disposed of most of the copies they had ordered and were inquiring for more. It has become necessary for us to increase our order by forty percent this issue to cope with the demand.

Some of the best-known figures in Holiness Circles have encouraged us by their favourable comments. Not a few have prophesied a great future for the paper, some even suggesting that it would achieve a place beyond our most hopeful dreams and flights of faith. The man in the street has stamped it with the seal of his favour. Those who have carried it to the “pubs, clubs, and houses” have told us of an unprecedented eagerness to buy on the part of those approached. While we make due allowance for the interest aroused by every new thing, we rejoice to know that we have been instrumental in bringing into being a magazine with an appeal to both the Christian community and the unchurched masses.

Our greatest encouragement lies in the testimony of a young man, who attributes his entry into the Land of Canaan to the message of The Flame. His sister returned from the Oldham Convention with a copy of our paper, which he read. For some time, he had been convicted of his need of the experience of entire sanctification, but, confused regarding its true meaning, he had opposed rather than sought it.

On reading The Flame, however, God opened his eyes to see the real nature of the experience, and, in one of the meetings of the Morley Campaign, he claimed his inheritance in Christ. May God multiply such cases as this!

The Oldham Convention is described elsewhere. By some it will be remembered as the time when they had definite dealings with God; by others as a time of spiritual instruction and uplift; by others as time of blessed fellowship.

To us it will ever be the time when God honoured us with His presence and confirmed the new venture with success.

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What a Father we have in God! The best and bravest of us is but a child, susceptible to His slightest smile or frown. How good to know and prove that “as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust” [Psa. 103.13-14]. He is faithful in reproof, but He delights to commend — slow to anger, swift to bless.

We are encouraged because we feel we have His commendation and blessing.

RESPONSIBILITY Encouragement brings with it responsibility. Every token of Divine favour is an incitement to fresh endeavour.

The words of Christ to Paul, after he had been nearly lynched by the mob at Jerusalem, are an interesting illustration of this fact: “Be of good cheer, Paul, for as you have testified for Me in Jerusalem, so you must also bear witness at Rome” [Acts 23.11].

The Lord has encouraged us with His blessing to stimulate us to greater enterprise. We must not coddle ourselves with the blessing received, but in His strength press out to the hungry multitudes.

And, verily, there is need of such action.

A well-known journalist has calculated that only twenty percent of the entire population of our land regularly attend a place of worship;1 four out of every five persons live and die outside the borders of organized Christianity.

We do not know how far this statement is true, but we do know that time and again our hearts have been saddened as we have contemplated the deserted churches and the souls “for whom Christ died” outside. This state of affairs must not continue. The lost must be reached, and, by God’s grace, we are determined to reach them.

In our last issue we made mention of our need of men and money for large tent campaigns during the summer. We are glad to report that already eleven sanctified young men have volunteered their services for this all-important work.... For this response to the call of Christ and the need of the hour we render wholehearted thanks to God. The enlistment of such a fine company of men has led us to believe that God wants two teams on evangelistic work this summer. The more we have prayed about it, the more the need of the perishing has pressed upon us and the more convinced we have become that the vision must be realized. Yet, here is our difficulty. While we are exceedingly grateful for what we have received, only sufficient has come in so far to enable us to purchase one tent, holding about 900, with its necessary seating accommodation and equipment.

What about the tent for the second team? We can hire one, but that costs 1 This was 1935. A survey in 2019 reported that less than one percent of people in England attended a Christian church. Statistics from a 2021 study suggested that the average weekly attendance for those over 18 was 28 per cent lower than in 2019, and the average weekly attendance of children was 38 per cent lower than in 2019.

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money. Where is the money coming from? We know that God provides. For years we have proved His faithfulness over and over again. But we have also discovered that the people of God must do their part.

God has so ordained it that His people must volunteer to take the news of salvation before the lost can hear it. In the same way, God expects His people to give of their substance to support those who volunteer. What a tragedy if souls perish because the messengers of the Cross are unwilling to go! What a tragedy of tragedies, if the messengers are willing to go, but the people of God are unwilling to support them!

We do not ask for money to enable men to live in luxury. Those who have volunteered are content with the bare necessaries of life. We do not ask for money to erect a palatial edifice. We only want a canvas shelter in which to gather people to hear the message of abundant life. We ask for money to invest in the greatest enterprise on earth, the evangelizing of the perishing with the Gospel of Full Salvation. What will you do in this hour of awful need?

— Rev. Maynard James.

Above all, remember us at the Throne of Grace. Come to the help of the Lord against the mighty!

— J[ack] F[ord].

The Loveliness of Nothingness Andrew Murray If I am something, then God is not everything; but when I become nothing, God can become all, and the everlasting God in Christ can reveal himself fully.

That is the higher life. We need to become nothing.

Someone has well said that the seraphim and cherubim are flames of fire because they know they are nothing, and they allow God to put His fullness and His glory and brightness into them.

Become nothing in deep reality, and, as a worker, study only one thing—to become poorer and lower and more helpless that Christ may work all in you.

Workers, here is your first lesson: learn to be nothing, learn to be helpless. The person who has something is not absolutely dependent; but the person who has nothing is absolutely dependent.

Absolute dependence upon God is the secret of all power in work.

The branch has nothing but what it gets from the vine, and you and I can have nothing but what we get from Jesus.

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Advice to the Sanctified

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am told that many young people today confuse temptations of the flesh with departure from the blessing of full salvation. They remain masters of themselves but feel that if the blessing is theirs they should not even feel a stirring for things of the flesh. But this is not true. All the appetites and desires of the body are normally perfectly innocent. The sexual desire is no more sinful normally than the desire for food or drink. None of these desires are destroyed by the grace of God, but they are brought under subjection to the law of Christ, of purity and unselfish love, and are never to be indulged in — Samuel Brengle sinful ways.

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ome may ask me, “How do you know that you are sanctified, saved from your inbred corruption?” “I can know it no otherwise 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. 1 John 4.13]. We know it by the witness and by — John Wesley. the fruit of the Spirit.

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aving received the baptism with the Holy Spirit you can stand and say that “The very God of peace sanctifies me wholly” [cf. 1 Thess.5.23-24].

God can give you, in safety to yourselves and to His work, the power of His indwelling. The power of holy men and woman is not themselves but the indwelling Holy Spirit. They have power to witness, to suffer for Him, and to — Phineas Bresee be made partakers of His sufferings.

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wise person loses his or her wisdom through anger, and a prophet loses his or her prophecy through anger.

— Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 66b

I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more (Jer. 31.34).

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to (1 John 1.9) cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, (2 Cor. 5.17) the new has come.

Nothing is impossible for God (Luke 1.37)

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have been crucified with Christ [in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in (by adherence to and reliance on and complete trust in) the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

(Gal.2.20 AMPC)

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am the vine, and you are the branches. If any remain [abide] in Me and I remain [abide]in them, they produce much fruit. But without [apart from] Me they can do nothing.”

(John 15.5 EXB) 14

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lthough I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing.

(1 Cor. 13.1-3 KJV)

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things (Matt. 6.33 ESV) will be added to you.

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ur Lord never puts personal holiness to the fore when He calls a disciple.

He puts absolute annihilation of my right to myself and disinterested identification with Himself—a relationship with Himself in which there is no other relationship.

The first thing God does with us is to get us based on rugged Reality until we do not care what becomes of us individually as long as He gets His way for — Oswald Chambers the purpose of His Redemption.

Only in complete abandonment will we come into God’s promised rest, the rest of complete abiding.

We can only be of use to God when we are willing to be joyfully irrelevant, contentedly insignificant, blissfully nothing.

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et even now,” declares the Lord, “return to Me with all your heart, with (Joel 2.12 ESV) fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” or those who think themselves something when they are nothing deceive (Gal. 6.3) themselves. or of Him, and through Him, and for Him [are] all things: to Him be glory (Rom. 11.36 Darby) for ever. Amen. ...[L]ife is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter’d with the shocks of doom To shape and use.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 118

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he truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of — Thomas Merton being hurt.

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The Double Cure or Redemption Two-Fold Daniel O. Teasley Continued from The Flame, July- September 2023 The work of the Holy Spirit is twofold in our lives. He does some things for us in a moment of time: He eradicates the carnal mind and fills the soul with Himself. But He has another ministry to perform for us across the years: He teaches us how to make our conduct evermore consistent with the perfect love that He has placed within the soul. God can in time, and through grace and discipline, correct many human frailties and add many spiritual graces that He does not impart at a public altar.

— A. F. HarPer. Holiness and High Country. 242.

Native Depravity in the Justified Believer

“Brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as to people who are spiritual but as to people who are still carnal, even as to infants in Christ” (1 Cor. 3.1). e have already seen that there are many important Christian doctrines that are amply proved by the Bible as a whole but that cannot be fully established by a single text.

Those who oppose the doctrine of remaining depravity in the justified believer often insist upon a definite single text in proof of its correctness. Yet they themselves accept without question many doctrines that cannot be positively proved by a single text or texts. For instance, every orthodox Christian believes unquestionably in the divine Trinity, yet it is most difficult, if not impossible, to find a single text that proves the divine unity in trinity.

Therefore if the Bible as a whole, rightly construed, teaches that there is native depravity remaining in the justified believer, that doctrine will be as thoroughly established as the doctrine of the Trinity.

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Justification Removes Guilt, Not Depravity.

Justification, in its very nature, relates to personal guilt, not to native depravity. It were impossible to make one just who was not unjust. Justification, therefore, presupposes the existence of guilt. But personal guilt is not a native condition, but the result of a disobedient act of a free agent.

The terms “justification,” “forgiveness,” and “remission” denote the modes of that experience and point unmistakably to disobedience and consequent personal guilt but not to native depravity. We have before proved that unregenerate 16

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men and women are both depraved and guilty, that they have a double need. If, then, we are both depraved and guilty, and if justification removes only our guilt, there remains in the justified believer an element of depravity.

It is reasonable that the conditions required for the obtaining of a thing should be such as would lead naturally to the obtainance of that thing.

The condition requisite to justification leads unmistakably to the removal of personal guilt and not to cleansing from native depravity.

Godly sorrow for sin and a conviction of personal guilt cannot be based upon a consciousness of native depravity. How can we be convicted for the presence of an element when we are in no way responsible for its existence? We cannot be sorry for our having committed the Adamic sin for the very obvious reason that we were not present in the garden when our foreparents broke the divine law.

Repentance, another condition of justification, is a turning from sin to God on account of godly sorrow for disobedience. How can we turn from a nature that is native to us, from a moral state in which we were “conceived” and “shaped” (Psa. 51.5)? How gladly would we all turn, in our better moments, from that nature whose tendency is ever downward! When the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots [Jer. 13.23], then may we hope to turn, in our own strength, from the evil depravity of our hearts.

We can turn from our disobedience, repent of our sins, and be justified from our guilt; but it is impossible to repent of that native condition for which we are totally irresponsible. In meeting the conditions for justification, we ask pardon for acts of disobedience, not for the existence of native depravity in our hearts.

How could we ask pardon for being depraved when we are in no way

…we ask pardon for acts of disobedience, not for the existence of native depravity in our hearts.

Thy fishes breathe but where Thy waters roll; Thy birds fly but within Thy airy sea; My soul breathes only in Thy infinite soul; I breathe, I think, I love, I live but Thee.

Oh breathe, oh think, — O Love, live into me; Unworthy is my life till all divine, Till Thou see in me only what is Thine.

— George MacDonald, The Diary of an Old Soul, stanza five T HE F LAME • Volu me 8 9 | Number 4

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responsible for native depravity? However much we may deplore both our depravity and our being overcome by it, we can feel guilt of and ask pardon only for our own personal misdeeds.

The exercise of saving faith by the pleading penitent is for pardon, for forgiveness, and for release from personal guilt, not for the removal of depravity.

As penitent men and women cry out, like the despairing publican, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!” they do not stop to consider theories, formulas, deep spiritual truths, metaphysical conditions, and profound questions of theology.

The feeling of their personal guilt overshadows for the moment every other consideration.

It is only in later experience in the light of innocence and truth and hungering for more righteousness that they begin to discover that there is an element of depravity within. Therefore, since all the conditions leading up to the experience of justification relate not to the removal of native depravity but to the removal of the effect of actual transgressions, justification does not remove native depravity. That there should be native depravity in the believer is as consistent as that there should remain in fallen man a moral instinct that calls for God and right.

To be continued in the next issue.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee; Let the water and the blood, From Thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Save me from its guilt and power.

— AUGUSTUS TOPLaDY (1776)

As good Christians should consider every place as holy because God is there, so they should look upon every part of their lives as a matter of holiness because they are to be offered unto God.

— WILLIaM LaW. A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.

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The Crisis of Sanctification SteVe DeNeff Sanctified by Intimidation anctification — 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 not, 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 made-for-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.

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

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The Light Shines in the Darkness F. F. Bruce

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esus 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.

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Continued from The Flame, July-September 2023

he 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.

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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.

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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.

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Twice-Born Men in America or

The Psychology of Conversion as Seen by a Christian Psychologist in Rescue Mission Work (circa 1914) Harriet Earhart Monroe Continued from The Flame,, July-September 2023

The Dispensary he 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:

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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 T HE F LAME • Volu me 8 9 | Number 4

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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 hand that reaches down to help sinful men and women must have the other hand clasped close in God’s strong hand.

“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 24

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New York Nursery and Child’s Hospital Annual Report (1910)—Medical laboratories.

— From Wikimedia Commons

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: The Mission Free Dispensary Staff Physician in charge: 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.

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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 Cases treated Referred to Hospital Treated at homes

2,500 80 80

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,

“We have received a kingdom that cannot be moved—whose nature is immovable: let us have grace to serve the Consuming Fire, our God, with divine fear, not with the fear that cringes and craves, but with the bowing down of all thoughts, all delights, all loves before Him who is the life of them all and will have them all pure.”

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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.

Azusa Street FranK Bartleman

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Continued from The Flame, July-September 2023

he 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 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 T HE F LAME • Volu me 8 9 | Number 4

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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. 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 divinely-given 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.”

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. https://www.academia.edu/11607929/The_Missionary_Spirit_Alfred_and_Lillian_Garr_and_the_ Hong_Kong_Pentecostal_Mission?auto=download and Editor. *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.

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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

We knew the moment we had grieved the Spirit, by an unkind thought or word.

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. http://www.dovesoflove. com.au/dove-facts/#:~:text=Doves%20and%20Pigeons%20have%20no,milk%20is%20called%20 crop%20milk.

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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.

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

Revival is a renewed conviction of sin and repentance, followed by an intense desire to live in obedience to God. It is giving up one’s will to God in deep humility.

Charles G. Finney

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

The Breastplate of St. Patrick 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.

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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) 32

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An interior view of St. Patrick’s Church on the Hill of Tara.

“T

Niall O’Donovan (Digital Eye) via Wikimedia Commons

he 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.

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.

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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. 1592-1658), an Irish Franciscan friar, attributed the prayer to Saint Evin, the author of the 9th-century Vita Tripartita.

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

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.

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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

Our God has boundless resources. The only limit is in us. Our asking, our thinking, our praying are too small. Our expectations are too limited.

A. B. SimPson

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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’Engl works into A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the third book of Time Quintet, a five-volume 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)

Sanctification means being made one with Jesus.

It is not some thing Jesus Christ puts into me: it is HIMSELF in me.

Oswald Chambers 36

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Unless You Become as Little Children: TALES FOR THE CHILDLIKE

Professing to be Wise

“D

Percy H. P. Gutteridge

on’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 high-pitched 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.”

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Photo by Pete Godfrey on Unsplash

“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 38

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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.”

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“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 40

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Photo by Ian Greig via Wikimedia Commons

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.

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Book Review The Turning of the Tide. Author Linda Herbert. Available from Amazon £14.99.

Reviewed by Carol Manley.

This well-written book is about Linda’s encounter with God after she attempted to commit suicide. Linda describes her ongoing walk with Jesus after God made Himself known to her. In every aspect of her daily life she heard His promise, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Readers experiencing depression, grief, and general human frailty and struggle will be able to identify with her journey and be encouraged by how the Lord undertook for Linda day to day with tenderness, mercy, and love in all the challenges she faced.

The book emphasises the necessity of reading the Scriptures and listening to the Holy Spirit if we are to be changed into His likeness.

The Turning of the Tide has been a great help to me in my walk with God. From The Turning of the Tide: “It is important for us to recognise when the Holy Spirit is leading us — and equally important to recognise when He is not. As you walk forward with the Lord you will learn, and we are all unique in the sight of God and we learn in different ways, to recognise when it’s the Lord, when it’s yourself, or when it’s the enemy.

Sometimes you have to move forward and find you’ve made a mistake—but, amazingly, it’s all part of the learning process” (53).

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Missing Issues from The Flame Archive Every issue from July–Aug. 1938 to Jan.–Feb. 1950.

Every issue from Mar.–Apr. 1950 to Sept.–Oct. 1956.

Every issue from Nov.–Dec. 1956 to Jan.–Feb. 1967.

Every issue from Mar.–Apr. 1967 to Mar.–Apr. 1985.

May–June 1985.

Every issue from July–Aug. 1985 to July–Aug. 1988.

Sept.–Oct. 1988.

Sept.–Oct. 1992.

Mar.–Apr. 1993.

Every issue from to Nov.- Dec. 1994 to July–Aug. 1995.

Sept. – Oct. 1995.

Every issue from Mar.–Apr. 1996 to Nov.- Dec. 1996.

Jan.–Feb. 1997.

Every issue from Mar.–Apr. 1997 to Jan.–Feb. 1998.

Mar.–Apr. 1998.

Every issue from May–June 1998 to July–Sept. 1999.

Every issue from July–Sept. 2001 to Apr.–June 2002.

Every issue from July–Sept. 2003 to July–Sept. 2004.

Every issue from July–Sept. 2004 to Jan.–Mar. 2005.

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The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity

T

George MacDonald

he care that is filling your mind at this moment, or but waiting till you lay what you are reading aside to leap upon you — that need which is no need, is a demon sucking at the spring of your life.

“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

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