A Private Prayer of Consecration

As soon as I had become established in the belief of present holiness, I felt a great increase of obligation to be holy. Many secret excuses for sin, which had formerly paralyzed my efforts, now lost their power. The logic in the case was very simple. God requires me to be holy now, and as he can require nothing unreasonable, I am under obligation to be holy now. I could not turn to the right hand nor to the left. I knew instinctively and most certainly that God did not and could not require impossibilities. I considered his command as involving an implied promise to help me to fulfill it.

I felt, moreover, that every moment's delay was adding transgression to transgression, and was exceedingly offensive in the sight of God. Accordingly, within a very few days after rejecting the common doctrine, that sanctification is fully attainable only in the article of death, and receiving the doctrine of the possibility and duty of present holiness, I consecrated my self to God, body and spirit, deliberately, voluntarily, and for ever.

I had communicated my purpose to no human being. There was nothing said; nothing written. It was a simple volition; a calm and unchangeable resolution of mind; a purpose silently but irrevocably made, and such as any Christian is capable of making. But simple as it was, I regard it as a crisis in my moral being which has, perhaps, affected my eternal destiny; I acknowledge that I took this important step in comparative darkness; that is to say; clouds were round about me, and I went by faith rather than by sight; but I had an unwavering confidence in God, that he would in his own time and way carry me through and give me the victory.

This important decision was made in the summer of 1839, and about the middle of July. Two almost immediate and marked results followed this act of consecration. The one was an immediate removal of that sense of condemnation which had followed me for many years, and had filled my mind with sorrow. The other result, which also almost immediately followed, was a great increased value and love of the Bible. It required no great effort of reasoning to perceive that, in doing the whole will of God, which had become the fixed purpose of my life, I must take the Bible for my guide. As I opened and read its pages from day to day; its great truths disclosed themselves to my mind with an impressiveness and beauty unknown before. And this result, independently of the aid implied in the biblical promise that those who do the will of God shall understand his communication, was what might have naturally and reasonably been expected. Before this time, reading every where my own condemnation, I had insensibly but voluntarily closed my eyes to the doctrine of present holiness, which shines forth so brightly and continually from the sacred pages. But now I found holiness every where, and I felt that I began to love it.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

— from Phoebe W. Palmer (editor), Pioneer Experiences or The Gift of Power Received by Faith Illustrated and Confirmed by the Testimony of Eighty Living Ministers of Various Denominations (1872).