Godliness : being reports of a series of addresses delivered at James's Hall, London, W. during 1881Booth, Catherine Mumford
Religion
Godliness : being reports of a series of addresses delivered at James's Hall, London, W. during 1881
Booth, Catherine Mumford
Salvation Army -- Sermons; Sermons, English
I have a beautiful letter, received a short time ago from a young
lady, who wrote me soon after my former services in the West End. She
told me that she had been the bondslave, I think, for four or five
years, of a certain besetting sin, and her first letter was the very
utterance of despair. She had struggled and wrestled and prayed, and
tried to overcome the sin that had been reigning over her. Now and
then she would get the victory, and then down she went again, and she
said, "It is such a subtle thing, connected with my thoughts and
imagination, so that I do not think I ever can be saved." I answered
the letter, and tried to encourage her faith and hope in Jesus
Christ. I showed her how dishonoring this unbelief was, and that, if
she would only trust Him to come in and reign in her heart, He could
purify and cleanse the very thoughts and imagination. She made a
little advance, and wrote me another letter. I wrote her again, and
encouraged her to trust further. She said she could not come so far
as to think that He could purify her thoughts. She had got as far as
to believe that He could save her from putting them into practice,
but she could not believe that He could purify _them_. I wrote
her back once more, and tried, the Lord helping me, to show her how
Jesus, by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit, could purify the very
thoughts of our hearts, and, thank God, she did go another step. I
have had two letters from her since. She said in the first of them,
"I rejoice with trembling, for fear it should be only temporary, but
I have trusted Him to purify the source, and I must say HE HAS DONE
IT, and, instead of thinking these thoughts, I have holy thoughts,
and if Satan presents anything to my mind, it is so repulsive to me
that I cannot tell you the grief and horror with which it fills me."
I wrote her again, encouraging her, and I got another letter, in
which she said, "It is a fact that He has cleansed the thoughts of my
heart, and now I am conscious that my thoughts are pleasing to Him,
that He has saved me from this sin which has been the trouble and
torment of my life for all these years gone by."
Now, what I want to say to you, is, that what He can do for one, He
can do for another. If I am wrong here, I give up the whole question.
I am perfectly mistaken in the purpose and aim and command of the
Gospel dispensation, if God does not want His people to be pure. Not
to count themselves pure when they _are not_. Oh, no! We are
told, over and over again, that God wants His people to be pure, and
THAT PURITY IN THEIR HEARTS IS THE VERY CENTRAL IDEA AND END AND
PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST; if it is not so, I give up the
whole question--I am utterly deceived.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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