soul which can not be counterfeited. The preacher who appreciates
spirituality sees no sight more beautiful than the serene, calm
faces of auditors from whose souls the tempests have been cast.
Life's toils and distractions and disappointments have all been
negatived by the power of the all-conquering Christ.

A SCENE AT ALLENTOWN.

These words are being written in the city of Allentown, Pa., where
the writer is spending ten days in a series of Pentecostal
services. Last evening we saw a symbol of the rest Christ gives.
We strolled along the east bank of the Lehigh River about half an
hour after sunset. All the western sky was beautiful with an
afterglow. The water of the river, silver near the shore and
golden toward the west, was as still as the face of a mirror. The
trees on the shore leaned over perfect pictures of themselves. The
hills, which fell back gracefully from the valley, were covered
with cloaks of gold and vermillion and emerald, and not a leaf
stirred in the evening air. Far up the river the tiny bell of a
canal-mule tinkled drowsily. On the veranda of a little cottage a
young mother crooned a lullably to a slumbering child, and a
little bird in a thick grove called, "Peace! Peace!"

CALM.

If God can make so beautiful a scene in the physical world, what
can He not make in the spiritual? Thank God! He can excel anything
the natural eye ever beheld. He can hang the soul with paintings
and turn the "River of Life clear as crystal" through it, and fill
the chambers of the heart with lullabies and the song of birds
crying, "Peace!" If there are times when we are awed and charmed
by

    "All the beauty of the world"

let us remember that what we see is only a type of the grandeur
and glory and splendor He will put in our spirit-nature if we but
permit Him to sanctify us and cast out the storms and tempests.

THE PAIN OF SYMPATHY.

While we may possess and enjoy "the second rest" here and now, we
need not forget that another is promised to us. We get weary
physically sometimes here. The days frequently seem long and
trying. There are hours and hours of labor, and nights and nights
of toil, but, thank God! we can say at each sunset, "I am one day
nearer rest." For while a sanctified man is always at rest
spiritually, he can not rest physically to much satisfaction. In
his dreams he can see the white, drawn faces of the doomed, and
hear the wild uncouth shriek of the tormented. He remembers with
horror that one hundred thousand souls are rolled off into
Eternity while the earth makes one revolution! He thinks of
cheerless homes, and torn and bleeding hearts, and wives waiting
for the sound of unsteady steps, and children friendless and
hungry, and figures leaping from bridges, and shaking hands
holding poison, and maniacs behind the bars glaring with wild eye-
balls through dishevelled hair! And he leaps from the couch with
the cry, "O the pity of it all!" And he can not be still, he can
not be idle, but is constrained to do his utmost by word and pen
to save a sinking, gurgling, drowning humanity.

WHEN IT IS ALL OVER.

But one day it will all be over. Soon we shall all have preached
our last sermon and prayed our last prayer and spoken our last
word. Our lives will soon have passed into history. That blessed
hour will soon be here in which we shall "lay down the silver
trumpet of ministry and take up the golden harp of praise."
Hallelujah, it is coming! it is coming! Praise the Lord!





CHAPTER IX.

PRAYERFULNESS.


DELIGHT IN PRAYER.

The precious grace of entire sanctification brings to the heart a
prayerful spirit. Prayer becomes the normal occupation of the
soul. One is surprised to discover that while it was formerly
difficult, if not irksome, to pray at times, now one prays because
it is delightful and easy.

DE RENTY.

Many of us have been surprised to read in the biographies of pious
men and women that they frequently spent hours in prayer. But the
sanctified man understands all that now. He can readily believe
that De Renty heard not the voice of his servant, so intent was he
gazing into the Father's face. He does not doubt that Whitefield
in his college room was "prostrate upon the floor many days,
praying for the baptism with the Holy Ghost."

J.W. REDFIELD.

The writer remembers of reading when just a child the thrilling
life of John Wesley Redfield. There was nothing which struck the
boy-reader with greater force than the prayerfulness of the man.
It awed him, and made him long to enjoy such an experience as
would make prayer so delightful. In the golden experience of
sanctification he found that prayer was delightsome and blessed.
Such is the uniform testimony of all who have been cleansed from
depravity and anointed with the Holy Ghost.

PRAYER HAS ITS ANSWER.

God means true prayer to have audience. We can not understand how
God can vouchsafe to us such tremendous effects as He asserts
shall follow prayer. We can not defend prayer philosophically; but
either "he that asketh receiveth," or the Bible is misleading and
untrustworthy.

TRUE PRAYER.

But what is "true prayer"? In the first place, it is prayer which
says, "Thy will be done." If we pray selfishly, "asking amiss," we
can hope for no answer. We will get no hearing. We must ask with
the thought, "What is the Father's will? What does He consider
best?"

DESPERATION.

True prayer must be earnest. It was the IMPORTUNATE widow that was
heard, and it is the importunate seeker that never fails of an
answer. If when sinners, backsliders, or believers come to the
altar they would pray with earnestness and desperation, there
would be a far larger PER CENT. of them who would go away fully
satisfied. God never gives great blessings to indifferent people.
When He sees a man in an agony of desire and longing, then He
hastens to gladden his heart with an answer.

FAITH.

Prayer must be full of faith. James makes this clear to us. "Let
him ask in faith nothing wavering." God cannot bestow a blessing
upon us if we doubt Him. If a neighbor doubts your character, how
much of your heart do you let him see? If a fellow-preacher
imputes selfish motives to your acts, how often do you go to him
and pour your heart out to him? But those who believe in us--how
frequently we run to them, unlock our hearts and tell them all! It
is thus with God. If we believe His word, if we are sure of the
veracity of His promise, and are confidently expecting an answer,
He will not, can not disappoint us.

THE FORGIVING SPIRIT.

There must be in us a forgiving spirit if our prayers are to be
heard. Forgiveness of our enemies precedes blessing for ourselves.
"If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will
also forgive your trespasses." If I am bitter in my heart toward
any creature, God can not but be deaf to all my cries. If I
nourish hatred, or meditate revenge, or plot the downfall of any
man, my prayers are vain; yea, all my hope in Christ is futile!

GOSSIPING PREACHERS.

O that God may send us all the prayerful blessing! It is better
that we pray than that we discuss politics or talk "shop," or
gossip or jest. If we preachers and evangelists at camps and
conventions would pray more instead of getting in groups and
talking about a world of nothings, our sermons would mean full as
much to those whom we address.

UNBROKEN CONNECTION.

Sanctification makes it possible for us to "pray without ceasing."
The indwelling Paraclete keeps the heart in a constant spirit of
prayer, so that at all hours and in all places prayers ascend.
Communication is kept up between the heart and the throne of Grod.
No snows break the wires. No floods wash away the poles. From the
pulpit, from the sidewalk, from the counter, from the railway
coach, from the sick bed, an ever-steady stream of prayer is kept
up. They may befoul our names, but they can not stop our praying.
They may "cast us out as evil," and may deny us pulpit privileges,
and take away our salaries, but prayer and praise they can not
stifle nor hinder.

INCENSE AND THUNDER.

The prayers of God's people are sweet to Him. "With much incense"
burning in a golden censer (Rev. viii. 3) they float to His
throne. But notice the effect of the prayers of saints. Not only
is there a silence of an half-hour but "voices and thunderings and
lightnings and an earthquake" are observed in the earth. The
children of God, if they but pray and believe, can pull spiritual
fire and earthquakes down upon earth and effect great things for
God and His Church.





CHAPTER X.

SUCCESS.


SUCCESS INTENDED.

Nothing is clearer in the Acts of the Apostles than that the
disciples after Pentecost had success in gospel service.
Everywhere they went God rained fire upon their Word and
sanctioned the truth which they preached by tremendous moral and
spiritual upheavals.

B. T. ROBERTS.

Bishop Roberts has put the matter of success very succinctly: "If
the lawyer must win his case and the doctor cure his patient in
order to be successful, the minister and worker must save souls if
they in their calling are to be said to be successful." But alas,
saving souls is precisely what we are not doing. Thank God! there
is here and there a man who stands out as a soul-saver. But the
average minister is not distinguished for revivalism so much as
proficiency in making a church social a "blooming success."

FALLEN SAMSONS.

We all want to seem to succeed. We shun and dread the appearance
of failure. When a church begins to rot instead of grow it is
natural for us to do our utmost to find out some way of excusing
the retrogression without admitting our failure to reach men with
the gospel. There are evangelists, who in the palmy days of their
power had wonderful, heaven-gladdening revivals, who have ceased
to wield "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and, in order to
cover their spiritual nakedness, are forced to resort to finger-
raising, card-signing methods for stuffing and expanding "the big
revival." There is no more sobbing, no more desperate praying, no
more shouting; all is "decent and in order," as well it may be,
for all is dead.

QUESTION OF EVANGELISM.

Honor to soul-saving! Show us the man who wins men to our Master,
that we may clasp his hand and look into his face. Right here
hangs all the discussion about evangelism. If the evangelist gets
men soundly and scripturally converted and sanctified, let us bid
him Godspeed! If he only amuses them and deals in paltry three-
cent sensationalism, away with more of the same sort of stuff
which we already have in so many pastors!

THE DIVINE RECIPE.

One thing is certain: God intends success and only success for His
people. If, as His children, we fail, it must be because we have
not followed the divine recipe for power and accomplishment. It
was because the one hundred and twenty obeyed Christ and tarried
at Jerusalem that God used the early Church to whip the Roman
Empire.

"HOW TO SUCCEED"

"How to Succeed," used as the title for a book, will make any book
sell, though it be as dry as a patent-office report. People want
to know how to succeed in the world. How strange then that
ministers and churches who are brilliant and conspicuous failures
should shun the preaching of Pentecost--the one cure for failure
and the sole guarantee of success.

EMPTY COMFORT.

How many times some of us have sighed over our inefficiency! How
frequently, in default of apparent results, we have been forced to
console ourselves with the thought that we are "sowing seed" and
that there will be an abundant harvest at no distant date! Thank
God! there is success for us all. Pentecost will give it to us.

JOHN THE BAPTIST.

We do not mean by success financial opulence. A man may be a
success and yet as poor as John the Baptist lunching on dried
locusts and honey-comb. One may be as wealthy as Croesus and yet
be an awful failure. A church may be rich and increased with goods
and incur the Laodicean curse.

PADDED STATISTICS.

Neither does success mean a great and highly-trumpeted statistical
report to lug to conference. Some of our most inspiring
"successes" are all right on paper, but in reality they are
stuffed and padded scandalously. No, success in Christian work is
to "turn many to righteousness," save souls, and secure the
sanctification of believers. If we do not see such results
following our labor, we have either missed God's plan as to our
selection of a field or we are not living in the present enjoyment
of the Pentecostal Baptism.

THE EPOCHAL EXPERIENCE.

The preachers and evangelists who have won great successes in the
calling of sinners to repentance have almost without exception
testified to having received an "enduement" or "anointing"
subsequent to their conversion. The Caugheys, the Moodys, the
Whitefields, the Wesleys, the Foxes, the Earles, though in some
instances they have not believed in holiness according to the
Wesleyan view, have all had an epochal event after which their
work and works were effective and startling.

THE EFFECT OF PENTECOST.

Pentecost coming to a mission-worker will fill his heart with
enthusiasm and energy, and give him a host of jewels washed from
the mire and shining like meteors. The same experience coming to a
mechanic will fire him with a love for Jesus and a solicitude for
souls that will make him pray and fast and weep and work for his
fellow-laborers, for his neighbors, and for his friends. The
Spirit coming to a gifted singer will cause her to consecrate her
voice, like Rachel Winslow in Sheldon's "In His Steps," so that
with holy melody she will reach hearts hitherto hard and
untouched.

THE PASSION FOR SOULS.

One of the conditions of success in soul-saving is a passion for
the salvation of immortal men and women. Full salvation always
brings this, and as long as a worker lives in its plentitude and
enjoyment he is consumed with a burning, longing, panting thirst
for souls.

THE GIGANTIC LANDSLIDE.

The ministers of early Methodism and early Quakerism were not of
the sort who congregate in groups and discuss the relative
desirability of various appointments. They did not spend their
leisure in jesting, punning and guffawing, but in praying,
studying, and working, for even their vacations were turned into
days of toil. They spent their all in one endeavor--to save men
from a yawning Pit and a lurid Hell. Nowadays we live in perpetual
relaxation and recreation. Smooth, insipid preachers talk to
shallow, giddy audiences, and the whole thing is on a gigantic
landslide. Lord, save! or death and damnation are sure.

THE UNCERTAIN FAITH.

There can be no successful denial of the assertion that real soul-
absorbing earnestness in religion is dying out. We sometimes mock
at the Herculean labors of men like Owen, and Baxter, and Calvin,
and Edwards. But though these men were perhaps more or less
legalistic and at times a little narrow, yet one thing is sure,
they made religion the business of life, and went at it with zest,
enthusiasm, and determination. Your modern "Christian" has
"certain intellectual difficulties"; is "not fixed in belief

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