God is Light

 SUPPLEMENTARY STUDIES IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN - Part 2. 

But John's most effectual refutation of error is in the bold statement of the truth as verified by experience. We call the especial attention of preachers of the Gospel to this peculiarity of John. Christians, if genuine, not nominal, cannot be reminded too often that their religious life is "a matter of positive, demonstrable, realized facts," the witness of the Spirit crying in their hearts, Abba, Father, the transition from death to life consciously realized, which is the beginning of life eternal in the persevering believer who knows that he is in Christ and Christ in him, and "that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son," and is conscious of the indwelling of the Comforter and Sanctifier, making him a "habitation of God through the Spirit."

What is the Best Book of Illustrations for a Preacher?

QUESTION: What is the best book of illustrations for the pulpit?

ANSWER: The best three are: (1) the Bible, (2) Nature and (3) experience. A thorough study of those will furnish you with abundant illustrations pertinent and instructive. Cultivate the habit of seeing spiritual truths in the natural world and in the events of daily life. As for cyclopedias of illustration, the less you use them the better for your sermons and your self-respect. In my youthful ministry I cumbered my library with them, but I got rid of them so long ago that I have forgotten the names of their compilers. Become your own cyclopedia. Jesus often said, "The kingdom of heaven is like." Keep on the lookout for likes. If you wish to know what attractiveness they give to a sermon when the preacher is the discoverer of the likeness, read a volume of Rev. Louis Albert Banks, as a modern instance.

— Steele's Answers pp. 102, 103.

A Conscious Experience of the Holy Spirit

The apostles knew nothing of an unconscious incoming and indwelling of the personal Paraclete. Unconscious regeneration in water-baptism and unconscious reception of the Holy Spirit through a bishop's hands in confirmation are doctrines lacking Biblical proof, the only proof possible after the exclusion of consciousness. The philosophy of the mind seems to require that the introduction of another personality to me, a person, must be with my assured knowledge. If a human person enters my library and addresses me while writing these words, I know it. Shall I not know it if a divine person knocks at the door of my heart and, at my invitation, enters? Will not His personal presence be self-evidencing? Will not His testimony to my adoption prove that He is a Person because He has faculties responsive to my own? If He takes up his abode in me, and converses with me and inspires love in me to Him and the other Persons whom He represents, shall I not be conscious of His personal presence? Love is a spiritual energy which goes forth only toward persons, never toward things. We admire pictures and statuary, but we love persons only.

— from The Gospel of the Comforter, Chapter 22.

Theory and Experience

Never before were there so many believers, of every denomination, honestly and earnestly calling for really clear light on the subject of the higher life. Therefore, let every one who has a heaven-lit torch now lift it high, and keep it aloft, that all may see the light and rejoice therein. 'Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all tribulation, that we may be able to, comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.' Let there be laid before the Church, especially before souls panting after 'all the fullness of God,' the exact transcript of each Christian consciousness under the illumination of the Holy Ghost, so far as language can be a vehicle of that which 'passeth knowledge,' and not only will souls in trouble be comforted, but there will be accumulated a mass of facts out of which some analytic mind — some theological Sir William Hamilton — may do what all systemizers have hitherto failed to do, construct out of the Bible and experience a consistent and symmetrical science of Christian perfection.

Do We Experience God?

The subtle suggestion is sometimes presented that this whole matter of Christian experience is all illusory — a phenomenon of our own minds under the influence of causes wholly within itself. The thoughtful believer is sometimes annoyed by the thought that God has nothing to do with inward religious emotions — that what seems to come from without, and to move so marvelously within the soul, assuring of pardon and cleansing from sin, really arises from the hidden depths of our mysterious nature while intently contemplating religious ideas, and that there is no manifestation of God at all as an objective existence.

To this we have two answers.

Must We Use Scriptural Terms?

QUESTION: Must we not use Scriptural terms in order to enter into any desired state of grace?

ANSWER: God can save a person grossly ignorant of such terms as he saved an Indian squaw convicted of sin who thought she must pray in English to the white man's God. She repeated the only two English words she knew, September and October, till she was assured of forgiveness by the witness of the Spirit. But if any well instructed person is ashamed of the words of Christ descriptive of any state of Christian experience he not only cannot enter into that grace, but it is said "of him will I be ashamed." Yet when perfection, or holiness, or perfect love, is confessed we should be studiously cautious to do it in such a way as to glorify God and not ourselves. A failure to do this has brought much needless reproach upon a good cause.

— from Steele's Answers pp. 47, 48.