Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

2. What Dr. Mudge thinks was simply or chiefly Dr. Steele's receiving the witness of the Spirit,
the latter calls "a permanent spiritual exaltation and fullness." This fullness seems, from other
statements made later on, to have been threefold -- "ecstatic," "charismatic," and "ethical," especially
the last. For he had "joy" and "power in preaching, while the "vacuum in His soul was filled with a
love that was "perfect." Four years later he said:
"He [the Spirit] has unlocked every apartment of my being, and filled and flooded them all with
the light of His radiant presence. The vacuum has become a plenum ... O the indescribable sweetness
of this perfect love, after many years of love painfully imperfect and divided! What that void within
was, what that untouched core of my being -- whether it was selfishness, unbelief, original or inbred
sin -- I leave to the theologians to discuss. I aver that it was something very uncomfortable. Praise
the Lord Jesus, it is gone, never to return. Joy did not go with it, but stays behind it. The Man of
Calvary, the Son of God, treads all the avenues of my soul, filling its emptiness, melting its hardness,
cleansing its impurity, and pouring upon my head 'the blessed unction from above,' comfort, life, and
fire of love."
One year later he says:
"Another reason why continued testimonies to the mighty Healer of my soul are demanded is
because each successive year demonstrates more and more fully the completeness and permanence
of the cure. Time magnifies the keeping power of Christ."
Another year later, the seventh anniversary of His entering into this "spiritual exaltation and
fullness," he says:
"The chief characteristic of the seven past years of my Christian life is soul-rest, running through
every day and hour like a little golden thread. 'For we which have believed do enter into rest.'"
Does this look like his was merely a more thorough conversion, which brought him only or chiefly
a clearer witness of the Spirit? Such witness it did indeed bring, but that was only an accompaniment
of that "exaltation," "fullness," "rest," and "perfect love" that came with it. Dr. Steele thus speaks of
that witness:
"How changed is all this now, 'through the full assurance of understanding, the full assurance of
faith, the full assurance of hope,' the contents of which are that I am now and wholly forever the
Lord's! This assurance has not been interrupted for one moment for five years."
Two years later Dr. Steele, in speaking of his experience, calls it:
"Salvation from doubt, the disturber of the soul's peace. This is an element [not all of it] of the
uninterrupted Sabbath of love made perfect, and it differs from the ordinary witness of the Spirit in
two particulars -- it is abiding and not intermittent, and it attests purity as well as pardon."
That this blessing was bestowed on Dr. Steele after he came into the dispensation of the Son, and
had received the witness of his adoption as a son, is proved by what he says of his experience before