Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

unbroken communion with him that there were an unceasing flow of the divine life through our
souls, sin would be overborne, quenched, and destroyed. The experience of perpetual walking with
God and perpetual abiding in Christ is the one into which the Holy Ghost is seeking to bring the
believer. And it is certainly reasonable to expect that a marked indument of the Holy Ghost would
issue in definite experience of overcoming."
Dr. Gordon then quotes the following from Madame Guyon’s experience to prove that such may
be realized by us: "I found no more those troublesome faults or that reluctance to duty which
formerly characterized me. They all disappeared like chaff in a great fire." And if, after that, as Dr.
Gordon says, she "in her life shone like a seraph and obeyed like an angel," her quoted statement of
experience must have been true. For the same purpose he then quotes from the experience of St.
Theresa, of Spain: "From the time that the Lord granted me this grace, I was saved from all in faults
and my miseries [those that are spiritual]. I had power given me to become indeed free."
Now, if we yield to be led and guided by the Spirit, why may we not "have this experience of
perpetual walking with God and perpetual abiding in Christ," "into which the Holy Ghost is trying
to bring the believer"? Cannot the Spirit do this if we will let Him? And when we surrender our wills
to his, and devote our lives to the doing of his will, do we not "let him have his way with us"?
As illustrating the truth of what Drs. Fuller, Judson, and Gordon have taught, we give the
experience of two well-known and most successful Baptist ministers, the late Rev. Dr. A. B. Earle,
of Newton, Mass., and the Rev. Edgar M. Levy, D.D., of Philadelphia. Dr. Earle, "the great Baptist
evangelist, under whose ministry it is said that "one hundred and fifty-seven thousand souls were led
to Christ," and who held a most successful meeting in Raleigh in 1870, gives his experience and
testimony. We intended to give the bulk of Dr. Earle's statement, but find that lack of space forbids.
We trust, however, that the following analysis and brief extracts and comments will be sufficient to
give the reader a good idea of his rich experience and emphatic testimony.
We need hardly take space to analyze this experience further than to stress a few points in it.
1. This "rest" came years after his clear conversion, and was not the result merely of regeneration
or a recovery from a backslidden state; for he had assurance of the divine favor and was making
progress in the divine life before this instantaneous blessing came.
2. It came and was retained by faith: "This state of heart is reached only by faith, and retained only
by faith -- not by helping Christ take care of us, but by trusting him to do it all," says Dr. Earle.
3. He knew when he received this blessing: "All at once a sweet heavenly peace filled all the
vacuum in my soul, leaving no longing, no unrest, no dissatisfied feeling, in my bosom. I felt, I
knew, that I was accepted fully in Jesus." This harmonizes very markedly with the experience of the
author.
4. This blessing brought him "uninterrupted rest and peace in place of what had before been
intermittent. This record was written seven years after he came, and he says: "There has not been one