Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

President Finney made the same complaint. He says:
"It is painful to observe the constant tendency to substitute culture for this Holy Spirit power, or
human learning and eloquence in place of this divine induement. I fear this tendency is increasing
in the Church. The churches are calling for men of great learning and eloquence instead of men who
are deeply baptized with the Holy Ghost. The seminaries of learning are much in fault in this thing.
They do not lay half stress enough upon the possession of this induement as an essential qualification
for usefulness in the world. The manifest possession of this induement of power should be
considered an indispensable qualification for a professor in college or in a theological seminary. A
theological professor who does not believe in this induement of power, and who does not possess
it in a manifold degree, cannot fail to be a stumblingblock to his students. If he does not speak of it
as altogether indispensable, and urge it upon them as the most important of all qualifications for the
ministry, his teaching and his influence will be vitally defective."
Another most earnest Congregational minister and author has recently had this to say to the
theological professors of his Church:
"Multitudes of them [former students], after years of experience in the ministry, look back with
keen sorrow, not to say disgust, upon the impracticable training which they received at your hands,
from the evil effects of which many of them never recover. As for myself, I compress all my
complaints into this one charge: 'You did not show yourself to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and
show us how to receive the blessing, and, like the apostle Paul, with all the power of your beings,
urge us to be possessors of it.' Oh that, like Tholuck, the 'Spirit of fire' were ever upon you all, and
that, like him, you led your students to have but one passion, and that a passion for Christ and Christ
alone!"
He says elsewhere:
"That element of success was not so much as mentioned in the classroom during my three years'
course in one of the best Institutions of the land."
And he points and enforces his exhortation and appeal with the fact that under the ministry of men
trained in such seminaries there had for four successive years been over thirteen hundred
Congregational churches that did not report a single accession on profession of faith, and that in
1896 the number was fourteen hundred and eighty-three. He also quotes Mr. Moody and others as
saying "that there were over three thousand churches in the Congregational and Presbyterian bodies
of this country that did not report a single member added by profession of faith" in 1895.
Is it any wonder, then, that two ministers, graduates of leading universities and equally prominent
theological seminaries, should have recently said:
"If we were to start in the ministry again, knowing what we now know of the essentials to success,
we would rather attend Moody's institute in Chicago one year, and learn our English Bible and get
baptized with the Holy Spirit, than to have our seminary course repeated."