Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

The Rev. B. Carradine, D.D., is widely known both North and South as a most earnest and
successful evangelist of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Before he voluntarily left the
itinerancy and engaged in the work of an evangelist, he served most efficiently some of the leading
charges of his Church in New Orleans and St. Louis, receiving large salaries for his services. He is
a man of good culture, high character, great spirituality, and wonderful pulpit power.
On the first day of June, 1889, while he was pastor of Carondelet Street Church, New Orleans,
he received this wonderful baptism; and we give some extracts from his recorded experience, which
has been helpful to the writer and others. While the reader may not agree with all Dr. Carradine's
views and methods, it is hoped he will weigh well his testimony. After most interestingly telling how
he was brought into the experience here given, he says:
"On the morning of the third day -- may God help me to tell it as it occurred! -- the witness was
given. It was about nine o'clock in the morning. That morning had been spent from daylight in
meditation and prayer, in profound peace and love, and in the full expectancy of faith, when
suddenly I felt that the blessing was coming. By some delicate instinct or intuition of soul, I
recognized the approach and descent of the Holy Ghost. My faith arose to meet the blessing. In
another minute I was prostrated by the power of God. I called out again and again, "O my God! my
God!" and "Glory to God!" while billows of fire and glory rolled in upon my soul with steady,
increasing force. The experience was one of fire. I felt that I was being consumed. For several
minutes I thought I would certainly die. I knew it was sanctification. I knew it as though the name
was written across the face of the blessing and upon every wave of glory that rolled in upon my soul.
"I knew I was sanctified just as I knew fifteen years before that I was converted. I knew it not only
because of the work itself in my soul, but through the Worker. He, the Holy Ghost, bore witness
clearly, unmistakably, and powerfully to his own work; and, although months have passed away
since that blessed morning, yet the witness of the Holy Spirit to the work has never left me a
moment, and is as clear today as it was then."
Farther on, in speaking from experience of the results of this baptism, he says:
"When that sanctifying work occurs, sin dies in the heart. Various propensities of the body, which
regeneration subdued, but could not eradicate, are instantly corrected, arrested, or extirpated. The
craving of habit is ended, the root of bitterness is extracted, pride is lifeless, self-will is crucified,
and anger and irritability are dead. In a word, inward sin is dead. A sweet, holy calm fills the breast,
actually affects the body, steals into the face, and rules the life. The millennium has begun in the
soul."
After quoting from the experiences of others to prove that this great blessing is not merely a
recovery from backsliding, he has this to say of his own case:
"With great shrinking I mention my own experience in the same breath with such superior and
holy men. But God calls upon me to witness here, and by my tongue and pen to protest humbly, but
firmly, against this degrading definition of sanctification. God knows that I have not been a
backslider. He knows that for over twelve years the rule of my life, rarely broken, has been never to