06 - Chapter 06

CHAPTER VI. The Blessings of this Baptism confers upon the Christian personally.

1st. It will vivify his consciousness of the presence of God. Why not? Since in it God says " / will dwell in them and walk in them!" And this indwelling of the Spirit is too great a matter to escape a vivid consciousness of a new source of life and power within. This consciousness of God’s presence, is of great importance in the Christian life. When we have it we are strong. When it is absent we are weak. God has put great stress upon it. Hence he has sought to impress his presence upon us by works of artistic skill, which meet us wherever we turn, saying, “Lo! God is here! behold his handiwork! “Prayer is largely an effort on our part to get near to God, in the sense of becoming more deeply impressed with a sense of His presence and love. But in spite of both, a majority of Christians complain of a lack of this abiding sense of the Divine presence. Even in closet prayer, while on their knees they often detect a forgetfulness of God, shocking and sinful. How shall this defect be remedied? We reply, the remedy is found alone in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, John 14:16-17, "I will pray the Father and He shall give you another Comforter, and He shall abide with you forever, even the spirit of truth, for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you!” And His indwelling will give vividness and constancy to our sense of His presence. And there is nothing like the sense of God’s presence and power, to give the Christain strength, confidence and peace.

2d. This baptism removes all doubts of acceptance. John says "We know that He abideth in us by the Spirit He hath given us." And Paul says, " The Spirit itself beareth witness with our Spirit, that we are the children of God." With this baptism the last doubt in regard to that great matter takes its final departure. As well could the Prodigal Son have doubted his reconciliation with his father, when clothed from his ward-robe, sitting at his table, and music and dancing filling all the house with joy. This inward witness of acceptance, received on shipboard by Wesley returning to England from Georgia, was the first token of his having been baptised by the Holy Spirit.

3d. This baptism fills the soul with love to God. Many Christians, and perhaps we may save all, before its reception are often troubled by a conscious absence of that love to God which he claims, and which they know is his proper due. They are conscious of ardent love of human beings, but alas! the barrenness of the heart on the side towards God! And they mourn over it. And they wonder how it was that David, in that far back time, could say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth I desire beside thee!" Sometimes, indeed, they are conscious of emotions of love to God, but they are so far short of what they should be, they derive little comfort there from. But when the baptism comes, and the Holy Ghost enters the home of the soul, and His train fills the earthly temple, the things of God and of Christ are so presented that the fountains of the heart are opened and love flows forth from God into the soul and ebbs back from it to Him, and the whole house is filled and flooded. So it was on the day of Pentecost, and so it ever has been, is now and ever will be, where this Great Gift is bestowed. Other means to awaken love towards God in these sin-frozen hearts of ours, it is quite proper we should use, but the chief and only effectual power which will elicit it in fulness, will be the power from on high the Holy Ghost. This is Bible teaching and this is experience an experience we all need and ail may have, and one we all shall have if we set our hearts upon it and cry mightily unto God for it. For there is not one among all His gifts He is more anxious to bestow. " If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him."

4th. It greatly quickens the conscience and enlarges the area of apprehension of right and wrong. The Holy Spirit becomes our guardian, an instant prompter when sin and Satan draw nigh. He -cannot endure to have his temple denied his ward taken captive and led astray. Accordingly, the baptised soul instantly sees the rightness or wrongness of a multitude of things not thought of as such before. Said an Apostle, “The anointing ye have received abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you, but as that same anointing teacheth you of all things and is truth." And Jesus said, “False prophets should arise after Him and deceive, if it were possible, the very elect." Implying extreme difficulty in their case, if not absolute impossibility. And that because of an inward light which would reveal to them the wolf though clad in the clothing of a sheep. There is nothing which will so effectually guard people from error as the entrance within of the Spirit of God. But if we discard Him the great Teacher and trust to human learning, and human reason, there is no telling how far we may go astray. Error will spread in our Churches in proportion as they become destitute of vital piety and the Holy Ghost. No creeds can hold them then, and of what use would it be if they could?

5th. This baptism restores dwarfed and distorted mental faculties to symmetry and balance again. Sin has wrought sad distortions among the faculties of the human soul. The ancient equilibrium is largely lost. Lost partly by inheritance from a wicked ancestry, and in part by our own wicked conduct. Men are lame, halt, blind, and paralyzed in mind as well as in body. And when the Spirit undertakes the work of re-construction, a great work indeed is before him. One is a giant in intellect, but in sensibility a dwarf. In another the sensibility is unnaturally developed and the passion of the moment carries all before it I In another the will power is abnormally developed and stubbornness is characteristic. In another carnality reigns supreme. But why enumerate, when scarce a man is found who is not conscious of some mental or moral weakness which limits his usefulness, mars his character and disturbs his peace. And the perfect symmetry of the primeval man as lie came forth fresh from the hand of God, where, Oh where shall we find it? Alas! the distortions sin has made! Thanks to God the Holy Ghost has come, to restore the balance and repair the wreck. Let me give an example : While the writer was in the Theological Seminary he had a class-mate who was a specialist in mathematics. They were his hobby in college and in the seminary his taste in that direction was scarcely diminished. And why he studied Theology, we, his class mates could scarcely divine, save that an aunt who paid his bills desired it. I remember how languidly he was wont to come into our prayer meetings and what an iceberg he was while there. If he took any part it was so formal, and so cold. As we neared the time of graduation and licensure, a great revival occurred, and in it our friend was visited by the world’s Great Healer. He saw as never before, his great defects, and prominent among them this want of sensibility towards moral and spiritual things. That part of his nature was torpid The old hymn expresses his state when it says : The rocks can rend,
The earth can quake,
The mountains to their centre shake.
Of feeling all things show some sign,
But this unfeeling heart of mine.
Others talked of love but he had none.
The Bible gave him no comfort.

He saw also that this moral torpor must be removed, or His ministry would be barren. He came to believe that the Holy Spirit could remove this defect. That it was one specialty of His mission to restore the lost balance sin had made, and repair the wreck the Devil had wrought. Earnestly he sought the assistance of the Great Helper in this matter. Importunately he prayed. For nearly a week the struggle lasted. But it ended in victory. A victory as wonderful to the writer and probably to the subject of this spirit-healing, as would have been the restoration of a paralyzed arm to its normal condition and use. And we doubt whether the subjects of the Pentecostal baptism were, on an average, changed more than he. He was filled with the Spirit. His tongue was loosed, and he praised God as the Spirit gave him utterance. In our prayer meetings he became, after this, one of the first to speak or pray, and God gave him the tongue of fire. Often his deep feeling quite choked his utterance. In the years of his subsequent service in the ministry, deep feeling on his part, and on that of his hearers, became a characteristic of his religious services. And so it was till he was not, for God took him. This example was not alone in that revival. Others in different lines of mental and moral derangement received like restoration and help.

Allow us to mention another. He was also a Theological student. In early life he had been a sailor. I believe a mid-ship man in the Navy. He had visited many ports of the world, and like many seamen, had indulged in vices of the lowest type, until his soul as well as his body had become polluted almost beyond description. In his deep degradation, the Spirit sought him out, he was converted and began a course of studies for the ministry. When I knew him he had reached the Theological Seminary. But Oh! the stains still left behind in the soul, by those sins of his youth. Oh! the pictures still unerased in the chambers of imagery. How could they be effaced? In the great revival the Pentecost in our Seminary, he came to believe that the Holy Ghost coming to abide in fullness with him could cleanse the temple and cast out these loathsome pictures. Earnestly he asked and the Spirit came and cast out those odious things and cleansed the Leper. Thenceforth he became one of the purest men in thought, in feeling and imagination I ever knew. It was to him wonderful! wonderful! wonderful! It was wonderful to us all who were intimate with him and to whom he told in confidence, what great things the Lord had done for him. He preached many years, but has gone to his home and has doubtless realized the truth of Christ’s words, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. " A Theological Professor who was very intimate with this man, said to me : " He was so thoroughly cleansed from his former foulness of thought that I came to regard him as the purest minded man I ever knew. " Brethren, may the Holy Spirit reveal to each of us our sad defects and the changes needful to give us symmetry in mental and moral traits. And in seeking restoration of the lost balance, may we not, by unbelief limit the Holy one of Israel. Is it too much to ask the Great Deliverer to do for us a thing so great? Paul says of him : " He is able to do for ns exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or even think! "

6th. This baptism of the Spirit is indispemible to an appreciation of the Sacred Scriptures. The 2d Chapter of 2d Cor. is almost wholly devoted to an elaboration of this truth. In it Paul says, "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the Spirit of Man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things which are freely given us of God. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, for they are Spiritually discerned." The Holy Spirit is the world’s Great Teacher. And while He instructs his pupils in all kinds of knowledge, His especial and most loved work is within moral and Spiritual lines. Why should it not be? Since there are laid the eternal foundations of character, of growth, of usefulness and happiness. And there our need of an instructor is great, not alone because of the superior importance of these things, but because of the error, and darkness and depravity, which Sin and Satan have brought into our world. We know it, we all know it, and feel it at times and cry out for some one to lead the blind by a way they know not. Then comes the Holy Helper, and offers us His hand. But what if we thrust Him away and proudly trust to the rush-light of human reason to guide us in these great matters, as the irreligious scientists and unbaptised teachers of Theology in Germany and America have done and are doing? What, but that our feet stumble on the dark mountains, and while we look for light he turns it into the shadow of death and makes it gross darkness. This need of the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, to enable us to understand and appreciate the Scriptures, is witnessed by human experience. There are millions of people who will testify, that before conversion the book of God had little interest to them, but after conversion became the book above all others, filled with interest and precious truth. And the more we have of the Spirit’s light, the more golden its pages, and the richer its mines of truth. Therefore it is that to appreciate this Book of books we must have the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Knowledge of the ancient languages, of Hebrew, Greek, Latin and German, can never take its place. No more can the lore of the library or the discipline of the schools. Give a man all these and base them on superior natural parts, and he will be a child in the knowledge of God’s word compared with men filled with the Spirit, like Finney, Moody and Spurgeon Standing, therefore, in the light of God’s Word, and of human experience as well, we declare no man fitted to preach the Gospel, or to interpret it to others, until he has received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Did not Christ assume this when he bade the disciples not to go out to preach till they received it, and when he said of the Holy Spirit, “When He, the Spirit of Truth is come He will lead you into all truth." And when the Spirit did come what a wonderful enlightenment the minds of Peter and his fellow-disciples received, in regard to the teachings of the Bible. Yet how largely is this Divine qualification to preach or teach theology, ignored in our Churches. For example, when our Churches, especially the larger ones and the most wealthy, want a minister, they usually look for a man learned, eloquent and attractive. One who is orthodox according to the standards of their denomination, one who has pleasing manners, and will be likely to fill their house of worship, and reduce to a minimum the financial burden. The ordinary piety, such as is deemed necessary to Church membership, of course, is required. But the question, has he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit since he believed, is never asked, or deemed of any special importance. His views regarding water baptism and its proper subjects are often closely questioned. But the baptism of the Holy Ghost, or his views regarding that, is passed over as of no account. So when we are looking for a man to fill a chair in a Theological Seminary, we inquire after some one learned in the theological lore of America, and England, and Germany; one who understands the ancient languages, has fair qualities as a lecturer or teacher, and the ordinary reputation for piety and orthodoxy* Satisfied on these points he is inducted into his office as one fully qualified for his place. When! Oh! when is the question asked, what he knows about this baptism personally, and when is the question asked even as to his views of the matter? So when candidates for license or ordination come before ecclesiastical bodies, who ever heard of their being asked, "Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" No. A hundred other questions, not a tenth part as important are asked and discussed, but that one left out entirely. But should it happen to be asked, and were the candidates to reply that they knew nothing of such baptism, where is there the council, which like the Master would remand them to the Seminary, till imbued with power from on high? True it is, we lay our hands on them according to the ancient custom. But what does it mean? Do we expect them through us to receive the holy baptism, as the Apostles did when they laid their hands On the converts in Samaria and elsewhere? No, this is not the expectation of the candidates, or of those who thus set them apart to their work. What is it but a form whose ancient power has long since departed? Alas! How can those who never received this gift impart it to others? "Such as I have give I thee," is all we can do or say.

7th. Another result of this baptism is the sanctification of the body. By this we mean a subjugation of the passions, virtually constant and complete. " He is the saviour of the body. " In this baptism the Spirit enters the body and makes it his temple in a special and larger sense than ever before. Henceforth he is to be consulted as to its use and is to be appealed unto for help in the government of its impulses and passions. And while he will never interfere with the divinely established supremacy of the will, He nevertheless assists it in bringing them into subjection to the Divine will. This is indeed a great victory, the conquest over the carnal appetites and their subjection to the rules of conscience and duty. The power of the carnal forces know all men, especially those who have made a serious effort to bring them under. This is most graphically portrayed in the seventh chapter of Romans, ending in the despairing cry, " Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" But when the Holy Spirit enters in force and takes a part in the conflict, the flesh weakens and the Spirit triumphs, and the freed soul says with Paul, " I keep my body under, " and " thanks be to God who giveth us the victory. " And since that day unnumbered witnesses have risen up and testified to the power of the indwelling Spirit, to give a victory over the flesh, they had never found feasible before.

8th. Another blessing which comes with this gift, is the sanctification of the soul and all its wonderful faculties. Because the Spirit invests it and them with influences which work to conform them to the Christlike pattern and as Paul says, " Brings into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. " Bad as is the work of sin and Satan in the body, it is worse in the soul. What a nest of foul things is there! "What rebellion, what hatred, what envy, pride and malice! How filled with unbelief, murmuring, ingratitude, selfishness and lust. The intellect imbruted! the will enslaved! The conscience seared! The imagination roving uncurbed among scenes of corruption and sin! The sensibilities clinging to things unworthy and rejecting God and all things holy " And God saw that the iniquity of man was great upon the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was evil and only evil continually! " To remedy such a condition of the human soul demands a baptism of the Spirit, rich Pentecostal and persistent. And nothing else will ever do it.

9th. There is nothing like the Baptism of the Holy Ghost to give a man dauntless courage in declaring God’s truth and standing* by the right in the face of opposition no matter how great, how relentless and cruel! If God is in the soul, enthroned there in this baptism, why should the man be afraid? David said, "Though an host should encamp against me my heart shall not fear. Though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident." The Apostles before the baptism were cowardly like other men, but no sooner did they receive this great gift, than they preached the word with all boldness a boldness that astonished the multitude and so cowed the rulers and the priesthood that when they apprehended them, they did it carefully and " without violence. " So onward, wherever they went preaching Christ and his Gospel, opposition and cruelty had no terrors to these men, for the Holy Ghost was in them. Had not Jesus told them, “When brought before kings and magistrates take no thought what ye shall say for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost that speaketh in you?” In the great anti-slavery agitation which occurred during the half century before the Civil War, how cowardly the conduct of a vast majority of the ministers and church members in the slave States! How fearful about saying a word against the slavery which surrounded them, albeit like Wesley, they knew it to be “The sum of all the villainies!” And the ministers and Church members of the North were scarcely less timid than they. Alas! the record of cowardice these men have left behind! Who of them but is ashamed today of the record then made? Had these men been baptised with the Holy Spirit, as were Peter and John at Pentecost, they would have seen with clear vision the gigantic sinfulness of slavery; they would have held it up in all its hideousness, before its patrons and their rabble following, and God would have been with them, and have given power to their words. Possibly a few of them might have been martyred. But not many. The hanging of 500 ministers in the South by proslavery mobs and politicians, would have aroused in all the South a power of conscience and sympathy with their martyred ministers, against which the nullifiers and nabobs of the South could not have stood up for an hour. If ten men of God could have saved Sodom, five hundred such men could have saved the South; saved us the horrors of the war, its carnage of 500,000 men, and its vast financial and moral losses. Indeed, slavery could never have gotten a foothold in America, had its preachers fought it with unflinching courage. But the ten men were not in Sodom, nor the 500 in all the South. A like want of courage, in the ministry and Church in the matter of temperance, is today making a like record for men and devils to sneer at half a century hence. O! for the courage and faith which says, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble! therefore we will not fear tho’ the earth be removed! though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea! tho’ the waters thereof roar and be troubled, and the mountains shake with the swelling thereof!" O! for a seeking of such courage as Peter sought and found in the baptism of the Holy Ghost! Alas! the moral cowardice which so largely pervades our pulpits, and annually comes forth from our seminaries. Once fill these men with a sense of the Infinite God in them, and Peter’s and Paul’s courage would instantly leap into the saddle all along the line, the hosts of heaven would join them, and victory and conquest be wide-spread and speedy.

10th. The baptism of the Spirit imparts a new unction and power in prayer. I have known Christians and even ministers, whose prayers seemed forced and formal, an official service they must needs go through, in obedience to the demands of custom, and one which was neither blessed to themselves or others. Some follow a round of topics, with little variation from year to year. Others supply the want of spontaneity an d the spirits promptings, by the use of a book of prayers written a century ago and abounding in antique and sonorous phrases.

Others there are, who hasten to the mercy seat, as if a great attraction drew them there! They love to pray and it is with a special unction that they sing, “Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!" They have joy and liberty in prayer. Nor they alone! Others are uplifted thereby! Often more than by the sermon which precedes or follows. I have heard people say, “That prayer was the best of all the service to-day!” Oh! the value of these prayers in the Holy Ghost, which bring people into the Audience Chamber of God! No preacher is fit for its most important work unless he knows what it is to “pray in the Holy Ghost " and have the Spirit help his infirmities. No doubt Peter and John and James and the rest could pray with an unction after the baptism they never had before. Even so it is today. In nearly all our Churches there are men and women of limited education and slow of speech, everywhere else, save at the mercy seat. There the tongue is loosed and with remarkable ability and propriety, they pour forth their wants and those of the people before God. What propriety of expression! and often a wealth of imagery, not their own but evidently of God. But more startling still is the power which attends the prayer. We are told of the dying master whose pampered pastor had tried in vain to help him in his dying struggle, who sent to the field for the slave, " Tom," to come and pray for him. When Tom came in, hat in hand, barefoot and covered with sweat and dust, the dying master grasped his hand like a drowning man and said, "Tom your master is a great sinner. God won’t hear his cry for mercy. But I have stood outside your cabin and heard you pray and I felt that God was hearing you. Can you pray for your dying master? And how the aged field hand Tom bowed and talked with God and how the Holy Ghost came down and brought salvation to the dying man. Finney in his auto-Biography, often speaks of " Father Nash " an old man who attended the great revival meetings in Western New York, whose prayers carried with them results wonderful, Divine. The prayers of John Knox have a world wide fame. Such prayers are among the gifts imparted in the Pentecostal baptism. No Christian should rest until he knows what it is to pray in the Holy Ghost. llth. this after conversion induement confirms us in the way of holiness. This is Bible testimony and experience also. Says Paul in Ephesians 1:13, " In whom (Christ) after ye believed ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. " The holy Spirit of promise refers to the promised baptism of the Holy Ghost, inaugurated at Pentecost. He came " after they believed " and His coming sealed them for God’s service and kingdom In another letter, that to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 1:22, He says, "Now he that established us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us is God, Who also hath sealed us and given us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. " In this he tells us, that not alone does that Gift of the Spirit seal, or confirm us as Children of God, but brings us a foretaste of the heavenly life. This sealing is signally set forth in the case of the Apostles and those who received its first installment. Vacillating, weak and easily turned aside before, now they move off before us with a strength of purpose and firmness of step, which shows the strengthening and healing power of the Holy Ghost. And as it was with them so it has been with thousands since, who have sought for and received the same blessing. And if we desire this sealing, this confirmation in God’s service, we must seek it in the Holy Baptism administered by that Great High Priest who alone baptises with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

12th. Finally the baptism of the Holy Ghost, creating and maintaining a high degree of spirituality in our Churches, alone will keep them from gross departures from the standards of Orthodoxy, the Bible and true religion. The spiritual man believes the Bible. It is luminous to him. The Holy Ghost has made it so. All its doctrines just fit his nature and wants. It furnishes spiritual food as plainly from heaven, as the manna that sustained Israel for forty years. He needs the Bible revelation of a heavenly Father’s love and care. He needs and must have Jesus, the God-man as his redeemer, and he cannot live without the Holy Spirit resident in his very body sanctifying it and helping him to control its turbulent passions, and his language is, " How sweet are thy words to my taste sweeter than the honey and the honey comb. " Once let him become cold in his love and remiss in duty, and skepticism begins to creep in insidiously and gain larger and larger place, till at last seven devils more wicked than the first enter in and take possession of the house where once an Orthodox life and unwavering faith walked hand in hand lovingly toward heaven Confessions of faith, iron-clad creeds, never yet kept a denomination or a Church, or an individual from wandering from the great standard of truth and falling into heresies absurd and fatal. But let the Holy Ghost enter an Apostate Church or a skeptics heart and how swift the return to the path of truth and the obvious teachings of God’s holy word.

Illustrations of this abound in the history of nearly all our revivals of religion. We will give one out of a thousand which could be given. A Unitarian lawyer of eminence, called upon Mr. Finney while engaged in revival labors in Rochester, New York, and proposed to discuss with him the question of our Lord’s Divinity. Mr. Finney said I will do so, provided, you will kneel down with me and pledge yourself to the Lord, that from this time on you will follow the light" so fast as He reveals it. The lawyer was angry, and denounced the evangelist as cowardly and ungentlemanly. A legal friend suggested that Mr. Finney’s request was rational, for said he, "Of what use would it be for him to spend his valuable time in communicating further truth to a man, who don’t follow the light he now has, and will not promise to follow the further light which may dawn upon him. " I think it was the Judge at whose bar he was wont to plead who said this. After some days of struggle between his pride of opinion and position on one side, and his conscience and the Spirit on the other, the lawyer entered his office, barred the door, and on his knees surrendered himself to the leadings of conscience and the Holy Spirit. And then, the sight of sinfulness and guilt immeasurable, a lifelong alienation from God, a rejection of infinite claims arose in gigantic proportions before him. Could such a sinner as he be pardoned? And then he saw that the Jesus of Unitarianism was not enough for him. He needed the God man to meet a case like his, and when he had found him, he rushed into the evangelist’s room and said, "Now I know that Jesus is Divine, for none but an infinite Savior could atone for such sins as mine. " "Whoever shall do my will he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." Brethren, solicitous about the orthodoxy of the Church, behold its great Conservator. It is the Holy Ghost; the Spirit of Truth. Once in the soul, the letter will not long be wanting there.