Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

itter opposition on the part of other Methodists, as in the case of Bishop Foster, Dr. Steele, Dr.
Anderson, and others.
2. We call attention to the ability and competency of these interpreters and witnesses. And we may
apply our tests to all the elements or qualifications that go to make up thorough competency, natural
endowments, educational acquirements, spiritual attainments, long experience, and abundant
usefulness. What country or Church produced in their day more astute, learned, spiritual, and useful
men than Wesley, Fletcher, Clarke, and Watson? Where can we find four holier, more
self-sacrificing, and apostolic men than Bishops Asbury, Coke, McKendree, and Taylor? What
Church during this century has produced the mental and spiritual equals of Wilbur Fisk and Stephen
Olin, Lovick Pierce and E. M. Marvin? Have we any divines today who are superior to Summers and
McTyeire, Foster and Steele?
Did the Congregational Church ever produce four greater and more useful men than Mahan and
Upham, Finney and Moody? Do the Baptists put any discount on Judson and Gordon, on Fuller and
Spurgeon? Have they any more useful men than Murray and Meyer, than Earle and Levy? Has the
Presbyterian Church ever produced a greater man than Jonathan Edwards, or a holier woman or more
saintly Christian than his wife or young Brainerd Taylor? Who are today doing more to infuse new
life into the Church and to reach the unsaved world than Arthur T. Pierson, John McNeil, D. L.
Moody, and Beverly Carradine? What women have been more richly endowed mentally and
spiritually, have won greater fame, or have done or are still doing more for the elevation of their race
than Madame Guyon, Mary Fletcher, Phoebe Palmer, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hannah Whitall Smith,
Frances Ridley Havergal, Catherine Booth, Frances B. Willard, and Margaret Bottome?
Nearly or quite all of these give substantially the same interpretation to the Scriptures that we do
touching this doctrine, and most if not all of them have tested its truth in and given testimony to it
from experience. And a host of other names might be added to these, such as Whatcoat, Carvosso,
Hester Ann Rogers, Bramwell, the three Pecks, Hamline, Janes, Simpson, Wightman, Key, Keen,
Dunn, Lowrey, Boswell, Hannon, Morris, Mahan, Withers, and many others.
3. Most of these interpreters and witnesses arrived at their conclusion as to the truth of this
doctrine, (1) from what they regarded as a rational interpretation of God's word, given prior to their
experimental test of its truth. This seems to have been the case with such men as Wesley, Fletcher,
Clarke, Watson, Fisk, Olin, Mahan, Upham, Simpson, McTyeire, Wightman, Foster, Steele, Tigert,
and others who were and are certainly the equals of men on the other side of this question.
Suppose, as some contend, that Mr. Wesley never experienced this baptism, nor testified from
experience to the truth of this doctrine? Suppose that his profound, unshaken, and abiding conviction
of its truth came originally, as he emphatically avers that it did, from a close and prayerful study of
the Bible? And, suppose, as some contend, that he had never had the truth of his theory confirmed
by his experience -- that is, that so far as his experience had any bearing on the question at all, it was
against this theory -- is it not very remarkable that he never for a moment, even in the face of bitter
opposition, and in the presence of wild fanaticism, wavered a hair's breadth in his convictions
touching this subject? Is not his clear, uniform, steady, and persistent testimony to the day of his
death, from his interpretation of the Bible, confirmed by the experience of others, that this is one of