That flame of living fire

Front matter

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Other Books by CLARENCE TRUE WILSON

Foreword

We have reached a new land mark on the calendar—1g930. This year holds a world full of possibilities, but its greatest significance to me will be the nineteenth hundredth anniversary of the advent of The Holy Spirit at the Pentecost. We do not claim that the Holy Spirit was not in the world before, nor that Christ was absent from the earth before the first Christmas, but that when the Angels sang of Heaven’s good will, the Messiah made His advent manifestation; His presence became historic as an event with bounds; He had on earth a local habitation and a name. So Pentecost marked the manifestation of the Spirit as the Executive of the Godhead for our dispensation, the head of the new order, the representative of Jesus Christ, the sole source of power to win the world for Him.

Why should we celebrate that event?

/Becquse through only Him do we know God.““No man can truly say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Spirit.” Without his

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vi FOREWORD ministry we miss the Divinity of Jesus and the Fatherhood of God as well.

Because the Church has come to a loss of power through the neglect of the Spirit. The evil days of church formality and the worldward drift cannot be changed by a meager Gospel. Our Christocentric emphasis makes a beautiful story that lends itself to pulpit oratory but it needs the motive power of Pentecost. Fine music and eloquent preaching may fill the churches with unconverted people, but the power to convict of sin, of righteousness and of judgment is of the Holy Spirit. Converting power is not in the proofs of ‘Theism nor even in the life of Christ. It takes a whole ‘Trinity to save a soul. “Through Him we all have our access by one Spirit unto the Father.”

Because we are drifting as denominations _ into mere ethical cults. We have little “saving power” in our church services, our preaching, our Prayer Meetings, our Sunday Schools, or our Leagues. The cold solitude of the Unitarian God never could save sinners or sanctify believers or build a Christian Church out of heathen and wayward sinners. It creates no zeal for such work; it has nothing out of which to create zeal. The neglect of the Spirit loses the Trinity. Why throw away the key to Chris-

FOREWORD Vil tianity, when we need it now to unlock the sources of power?

Because this is the providential opportunity of the Church of Christ. If we could get a hundred thousand ministers to study anew the revelations of the Spirit from the days when He brooded over the face of the waters as the Agent in creation till the day when John the Baptist closed the Old Testament period by pointing to Jesus of Nazareth and saying: “I indeed baptize you with water, but He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with Fire;” if we could see the whole Church concentrating its attention on the promise of the Father, the command of Jesus to his Disciples

—‘‘Wait for the enduement of Pentecost’”— and then to the study of the phenomena visible and audible at that Pentecost, and finally to trace that stream of blessing as it flows through the Christian Centuries, they would learn: _

1. That the mere Pie! cultsare not models — for us; that the Pentecostal Church is our type and maybe we could turn back to the real | source of power and find life.

2. That we could stop the drift in public © morals, save our Sabbath, our home life, pro- | hibition, patriotism and civilization to the © moral standards of the Twentieth Century.

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3. That it would take a church that loses membership, drops its World Service, lets its young people drift into worldliness and sin, closes its Sunday night services because of empty pews, sells out its downtown property and moves for easier conditions, and backslides from all the aggressive leadership of Wesley, of Asbury and of Simpson, and would make that same church spiritual and mighty through God in pulling down the strongholds of Satan and building instead the Kingdom of Christ on earth. If you want to know what my greatest hope is for Prohibition and for the other reforms for which I labor and pray, and for the turning of the Church from its weakness and defeatism to its real spiritual power for the conquest of the world, it is the seeking for ourselves and for our Church the secret that made our fathers the evangelists of the world yand gave to early Methodism its swing of con- _ quest—namely, the pentecostal equipment to _ save lost souls,

4. Weare standing as a Church and as a nation on the threshold of the nineteen hundredth anniversary of the Pentecost. (This date marked the advent for special purposes of the Holy Spirit to take the place of Christ as the Executive of the Godhead, and to furnish the motive

FOREWORD ix power for Christian conquest of this world. _ The Holy Spirit has been the secret power of the Gospel ministry ever since. It has been a submerged ministry of late. The world-drift __ and the Church-chill demand the restoration ~ of His leadership and the rekindling of His fire. A whole Church giving itself to study of the Word of Promise concerning Him, the history of His coming and all the afterglow upon the Disciples and evangelists, would turn us again to the sole origin of our power. A Church-wide, then a nation-wide, and maybe a world-embracing revival of pure religion would result from such a study and consecration. That would make Prohibition successful. That would reform public morals. That would save the family life of the Republic. That would stop the selling out of the last of our down town Protestant churches. That would check the drop in our benevolent offerings. That would fill our pews. That would put the whole church on the march for world conquest again.

CLARENCE TRUE WILSON i

Introduction

Dr. Clarence True Wilson is primarily and pre-eminently a crusader. For twenty years he has been in the forefront in the strenuous fight for temperance and prohibition. He has been the very epitome of the ministerial man of action. Few voices lifted in behalf of any reform have been heard by so many hundreds of thousands, and few have so stirred the conscience of the hearers.

It may come with a touch of surprise that Dr. Wilson should present such a book as “That Flame of Living Fire.” Nevertheless on further thought there is a fitness easily perceived. Few men have the extensive knowledge of American Church life such as his extraordinary experiences have given him. Few know better than he that the streams of religious power have been like the rivers of California in a long drought—sand, pebbles, boulders, but very little water.

The chapters of this book contain the gist of certain sermons and addresses delivered in vaxi xii INTRODUCTION rious places in Oregon and at several Annual Conferences. In them he sets forth with clearness and precision his burning conviction that the Church of today sorely needs a new energizing of spiritual power; also he clearly and forcibly indicates what he conceives to be the way for the Church to throw off her lethargic weakness and to become a militant Church of God, moving like a mighty army in everything which leads to social, moral and spiritual betterment.

The concluding chapter is a dramatic setting forth of the life of Bishop Matthew Simpson, one of the most striking, most eloquent and most influential clergymen ever produced on the American continent. In the author’s view Bishop Simpson was one who solemnly enjoyed the guidance, the steady fellowship and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This unique enpowerment caused him to walk amongst his fellows as a very prince of men, and gave him a ready entrance into the souls of his auditors.

This concluding chapter is the clearest possible picture as to what may readily happen in a human life, when the heart is wholly devoted to God, and when the brain, splendidly trained for its task, reacts triumphantly to the stimuli of the Holy Spirit. Few of us will care to chal-

INTRODUCTION xill lenge Dr. Wilson’s conclusion that the ex- _ traordinary effectiveness of Bishop Simpson’s career is due in a remarkable degree to the direct presence of the Holy Spirit in his life.

“That Flame of Living Fire” is well-timed. The opening months of 1930 reveal deep heartsearching amongst thousands of ministers and tens of thousands of laymen. There is a general recognition of the fact that spiritual harvests are desperately poor and, confessedly, in many places, no harvest at all. And this in spite of the fact that the Church never had so large a force of fully-equipped ministers and highly trained assistants. We have been passing through a period when literary culture and intelléctual polish have been lifted up on high. Neverthe- “less it has been woefully sterile. Stagnant pools on every side and but little living water. It is our privilege to remind each other again of a grave fact which has been hammered out on the anvil of experience as well as written in the Word of God, that education, and civilization, lacking dynamic, spirit-inspired religion, never lead to redemption. Life lacking vibrant redemption is flat and stale, whether in the Church or the individual.

The commemoration of the nineteen hundredth anniversary of the coming of the Holy

XIV INTRODUCTION

Spirit finds the Protestant Churches of America in a state of hopeful eagerness. Increasingly ministers of large capacity and laymen of forceful character are soundly convinced that a new day of spiritual power and triumph is at hand. They are throwing aside the swaddling clothes of pale conventionality and are donning the garments of spiritual frontiersmen. Pioneers of the Spirit are finding voice in crowded cities, in secluded mountain hamlets and at the crossroads, Preachers of prophetic passion are giving themselves to the promulgation of dynamic truth, flaming, creative and curative. It is a day of hope. Under the galvanizing touch of the Holy Spirit, ordinary men will develop extraordinary powers in ability to stir deeply the conscience and to bring the convicted one to life-changing redemption.

Millions of devout Christians are giving themselves daily to praying the fervent effectual prayer which availeth much. It is the deep hope of the writer that 1930 may mark the beginning of a new period of spiritual power, so deep, so high and so far-reaching that later writers may come to refer to it as the Renaissance of the Spirit—May it be so.

Titus LOWE

CREDO “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, an everlasting personal God, the creator and upholder of all things, immanent, transcendent, in all, through.all, God our Father, blessed forever.

“And in Jesus Christ his only-begotien Son. Not in a divine exemplar merely. Not in a God-filled man merely. Not in a religious genius than whom there is none born greater among the sons of men. But in the Lord of Glory, God manifest in the flesh, co-eternal and one in Godhood with the Father, who for the redemption of the race was born as to his humanity by the power of the Most High of the Virgin Mary, and by his death upon the cross, made a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. On the third day he took his body from the grasp of death. He is the effulgence of the Father's glory. He is the express image of his Person. He is the only Mediator between God and man. He is the Redeemer of the world. He is the Giver of eternal life, the Dispenser of the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. He is the Rock and Refuge of his people, the xV xvl CREDO

Ruler of the Ages, the final and Almighty Judge of the earth, King of kings, Lord of lords, who Shall reign forever and ever. |

“In thus expressing our belief in God the Father and in his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, we no less worship and adore the Holy Spirit, the Third Person in the adorable Trinity, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son. He is not an impersonal influence radiating from the eternal ground of all being. He is not a subordinate agency called into activity by the creative will of the Omnipotent God. He is God. With the Father and the Son, he 1s, in the depths of the divine nature, the eternal ground of all existence. He is the creative spirit who broods over the abyss, who originates all life, and out of chaos and darkness in the material universe brings light and order and beauty. And to the sin-clouded souls of men he imparts spiritual illumination and power. He is the builder of the kingdom of God in men and nations. He is the soul of the church, the inspirer of prophets and apostles through all the ages, the Spirit of Truth who convicts the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment to come, and the Comforter and Guide of all who accept his gracious leadership.”

—BisHop JOSEPH F’. BERRY.

Contents

I. THE PERSONALITY AND DEITY OF THE HOLY PERERA) Sadness <5 NCO MMR KDI Seo aa

II. CuristiAN ASSURANCE "THROUGH THE

V. CHRISTIAN SERVICE THROUGH THE SPIRIT’S POV RR criti Nine say. hE TREE rE ONGC yae