On Saturday morning about sunrise I was on a straw stack in the barnyard
with a long hay-knife cutting across the stack to loosen the straw to
feed the cattle. While thus working and in a despondent, meditative
mood, wondering what I could do, there seemed suddenly to float out
before me in the air in illuminated letters, "John three sixteen." I
began to read, "God so loved the world." I reasoned then that God so
loved me that "he gave his only begotten Son." All was clear thus
far. Then I came to that all-inclusive word, "whosoever." I stopped at
"whosoever" and recalled the story I heard of Richard Baxter, who said,
"I would rather have the word 'whosoever' in John three sixteen than
have Richard Baxter, for then I should at once be tempted to believe
it was for some other Richard Baxter."
I reasoned, "I know that my name is in that 'whosoever.'" I then
read on--"believeth on him." "Do I believe on him?" This was the next
question to be settled. During several years I had, in competition for
a Sunday-school prize, recited the whole four Gospels. In thought I ran
over what the New Testament said about Jesus and cried out, "I believe
every word of the gospel; Lord, I do believe."
Then I read on--"should not perish." Quick as a flash I saw the weak
place in my faith. I had been believing on Jesus, but feeling that I
should perish. At that point I sprang to my feet on the straw stack and
read it over again--"Should not perish, but have everlasting life." Then
I saw that through doubt I had treated the promise as though it read
"should perish and not have everlasting life." I cried out, "Lord, I
will reverse it no longer. I will believe it as it reads."
Then I seemed to have another inspiration. I had long been troubled
about understanding what it meant to believe. I had worked out a theory
that if I could for a moment forget everything else in the world and see
Jesus on the cross, that would be "exercising saving faith"; and when
praying, I would find myself trying to do that. I now asked myself this
question: "How do you believe your mother's promise?" The answer was
at once, "I believe because I believe in my mother, the promiser." The
next moment I realized that believing Mother's promises was not a mental
effort and struggle such as I had been going through for years, but a
mental rest. I just believed that her promise was true without any effort
whatever, not because I felt it, but because Mother made it. Then I
cried, "Jesus made this promise, and I believe it."
Then I waited and looked again into my heart for the feeling, but no
feeling came. I then saw clearly for the first time that I was trusting
partly in Jesus and partly to my feelings. Presently the Spirit showed
me that feeling never saves any one, that only Jesus saves. I remember
that, standing on the straw stack, I cried out, "O Jesus! I put my
all on thy promise, and I will leave all with thee." But alas! again
I waited for the feeling as a witness, and was sure it would come, but
it did not come. I was still trusting partly in Christ and partly to
feeling. At last I turned away from looking for feeling and cried aloud:
"My Jesus, I stake my all on John three sixteen. If I never have any
feeling and if I am lost, I will quote this promise before thee at the
judgment and say, 'I cast my little all upon it and trusted it, but it
failed me. It is not my fault; it is thine.'"
I had finally, after years of struggling, come where I trusted wholly
"in the word of the Lord." Then suddenly I received a definite assurance
and great heart-warming peace and joy. At last the witness of the Spirit
was mine. Leaping from the straw stack, I ran to my mother, threw my
arms around her neck, and shouted, "Mother, I am fully saved! I am fully
saved!"
Up to that time I had not had any teaching concerning an experience
of sanctification or holiness and had heard no testimonies concerning
such an experience, except the testimony of the life of Christians who
were living it and professing it under another name. There was in the
congregation where I worshiped a sweet-faced, white-haired saint whom
we called Mother Robinson. She had prayed a drunkard husband into
the kingdom, and my memory even to this day recalls her high type of
Christian experience, and I want to bear my strongest possible testimony
to the power there is in the testimony of a pure, sweet, and kind life.
Now after years of study and hearing the testimony of many, it is clear
to me that during those years as a boy I prayed myself through to the
abiding life and what I now believe to be the experience of Scriptural
holiness, which, as I understand it, is such a freedom from sin,
self-will, and selfishness, and such a passionate love for Jesus,
that the heart longs above all things for his approval, companionship,
guidance, and blessing, and that gratefully and joyfully gives Jesus
"in all things the preeminence."