GAINING THE VICTORY
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."