A Life of Consecration and Trust (Rewritten)

From everything we’ve already considered, it becomes clear that the sanctification of the heart — and all the blessings that come with it — rests largely on two foundational principles. First, there must be a complete and wholehearted consecration of ourselves to God. Second, there must be a firm, steady belief that this consecration is truly accepted by Him.

We have already touched briefly on this second principle before, but it deserves further attention here.

When we consecrate ourselves to God in the way described, we take a step that is absolutely essential from every possible angle. Yet simply offering everything is not enough. In the same spirit of reliance, we must also believe — without wavering — that God has accepted that offering.

This belief is nothing less than trust in God’s faithfulness to His word. It is the confidence that God will receive — and does now receive — all who place themselves without reservation on His altar. This faith, more than anything else, secures the presence of sanctifying power in the soul. On the other hand, someone may consecrate themselves sincerely and yet dishonor God’s truth by failing to believe that their offering is accepted. In doing so, they cut themselves off from the very power that faith alone can bring, leaving themselves exposed and defenseless against the adversary.

The Unknown God

We admit the doctrine of limited manifestations. God may manifest himself to a certain extent, and he does so. He manifests the fact of his existence by the works, which he has made. He manifests also, in the same manner, some of the incidents or attributes of his existence, such as his wisdom, his power, and goodness. And it is certainly possible for him, departing from the usual method of his proceedings, to manifest himself, even at the present time, in special or supernatural sights and sounds, in displays and visions of heaven and of earth, which shall be impressive to the outward senses. But what we contend for is, that such manifestations do not constitute, and cannot constitute the real knowledge, or rather the knowledge of the nature of the I AM; but are only a sign, adapted to the nature of our capacities, that the I AM is; that he has certain attributes; and that there is yet something beyond what the eye sees and the ear hears and the intellect knows; a region of existence, vast, unmeasured, infinite, which belongs to faith. Thomas, the doubting disciple, believed, as far as he could see, and only because he could see. Jesus said to him; “Thomas because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they, that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

The love of manifestations, of that which is visible and tangible, in distinction from that, which is addressed to faith, is one of the evils of the present age. Men love visions, more than they love holiness. They would have God in their hands, rather than in their hearts. They would set him up as a thing to be looked at, and with decorated cars would transport him, if they could realize what their hearts desire, from place to place, on the precise principles of heathenism; because, being weak in faith, they find it difficult to recognize the existence, and to love and to do the will of an “unknown God.” But this was not the religion of the Apostle Paul. “As I passed by,” he says to the Athenians, “and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you.” We must be so humble, so sunk in the depths of our own nothingness, as to be willing to receive, worship, and love the God unknown; and who, because he is infinite, and man is finite, always must be unknown in a great degree; except in the MANIFESTATION OF HIS WILL. It is in his will, believing that his will is righteous, that we may meet with him, may know him, may rejoice in him, may become one with him. “BELIEVE in the Lord your God; so shall you be established.”

— edited from the Life of Faith (1852) Part 2, Chapter 1.

No Manifestantion of God Can Exclude the Principle of Faith.

There may, undoubtedly, in the proper sense of the terms, be what may be called a manifestation of God; that is to say, a manifestation, which has relation to God; a manifestation, which indicates the fact of his existence and some of the attributes of his character. But God himself, including the mode of his existence, as well as the fact of his existence, God, in the fullness and extent of his being, never can be manifested. This, we think, however repugnant it may be to our first thoughts, is self-evident.

Unbelief Seeks the Manifestation of God

Unbelief attaches itself to that, which is seen. Faith attaches itself to that, which is not seen. Accordingly those, who do not live by faith, must live by sight; that is to say, must live, not merely by what God is, but by what he manifests himself to be; not merely by the reality of God, which is one thing, but by the manifestation of God, so far as he can be comprehended by our limited faculties, which is another and a very different thing. And hence it is, that just in proportion as our faith is strong, we rest upon the reality of God, though clouds and darkness may be upon it. And just in proportion as our faith is weak, we desire a manifestation; something which we can see, something which we can touch. 

Three Classes of Christians

There are three classes of Christians, who seem to be easily distinguishable from each other.

The first class are those, who, destitute, in a considerable degree, of any marked spiritual manifestations and joys, may yet be said to possess FAITH. And in the possession of faith, they undoubtedly have the effective element of the inward life. Their faith, however, is weak. Their language is, "Lord, I believe,  help Thou mine unbelief."  They have but little strength. In general, they move feebly and slowly; and in some instances scarcely show signs of life. Some, however, exhibit a little more strength and activity than others; and God honors them by employing them in the smaller charges and duties of his Church. These cases are not without their encouragement. Such persons are often characterized by the trait of humble perseverance. They grow in grace, though not rapidly; and not unfrequently become strong in the end. As a general statement, they have not much to say in any period of their experience; but they are not wanting in sincerity, and they cling to the Cross of Christ, as the foundation of their hope. It is seldom that they make a strong impression upon the world; but their example is generally salutary. These are not those, who have been caught up to the "third heavens," and have seen wonderful things.

The second class are those, who have had striking manifestations, in the way of strong convictions and of subsequent great illuminations. From time to time, a remarkable impulse, a divine afflatus, if we may so express it, seems to come upon them, and they are borne on in a gale. Then comes a calm; and they temporarily make but little progress. Sometimes they have great darkness; but it is alternated with gleams of light. Nor is the light, which they have, always the pure and calm light, which is of a heavenly origin; but sometimes the red, meteor-like glare of an earthly fire. They may be said to have a considerable degree of faith; but they evidently have less faith than feeling. Their mental history, however, under its various changes, partakes, in no small degree, of the striking, the marvelous. These persons are generally the marked ones, the particular and bright stars in the Church. They often have great gifts; they labor for God; they attract attention. They overwhelm by their eloquence; startle by their new and sometimes heretical views; are denunciatory, argumentative, prophetic, just as the occasion may call. But their movements are not always clear of Self; and pride sometimes lurks at the bottom. They are "many men in one;" without true fixedness and simplicity of character; but exhibiting themselves in different aspects, according as the natural or the spiritual life predominates, Sometimes they are sunk deep in their own nothingness through the influence of the Spirit of God; and sometimes they are up in the "airy mind" of nature's "inflatibility." They are undoubtedly very useful; aiding themselves in the things of religion and aiding others; but it can hardly be said of them, that  their life is hid with Christ in God. They think too much of their own efforts and powers; they place too high an estimate on human instrumentality; they do not fully understand the secret of their own nothingness; nor do they know, in their own experience and to its full extent, the meaning of self-crucifixion. Hence their confusion, when, in their own view, things do not go right; hence their evident dejection, when the voice of the multitude is suddenly a little adverse to them; hence their plans, their contrivances, too much like the plans and calculations of human policy. They are not destitute of christian graces; but they need more lowliness of heart, and more faith. Nevertheless they have had much experience of the divine goodness; God owns and blesses them; and their memorial is often written in multitudes of grateful ­hearts.

A  third class are those, whose life may be said to be emphatically a LIFE OF FAITH, attended with an entire renunciation and crucifixion of Self. Faith is not perfect, until Self is crucified; and the converse is equally true, that perfect faith necessarily results in entire self-renunciation.

In the second class of persons, which has been mentioned, the spiritual life mingles more or less, and perhaps in nearly equal proportions, with the tendencies and activities of nature. The fire, which blazes up from their hearts, and which often casts a broad light upon the surrounding multitude, is a mixed fire, partly from heaven and partly from earth. The natural unholy principles are not extinct; but can only be said to be partly purified, and to be turned into a new channel. Hence they will oftentimes fight for God with the same zeal, and almost in the same manner, that worldly men fight for their temporary and worldly objects; with great earnestness, with an unquiet and turbulent indignation, and sometimes with a cruelty of attack, which vents itself in misrepresentations, and which persecutes even to prison and to death.

But the class of Christians, to whom we are now attending, having their souls fully fixed in God by FAITH, cannot consent to serve their heavenly Father with the instruments which Satan furnishes. They sow the seed; but they have faith in the God of the harvest; and they know that all will be well in the end. They are not inactive; but they move only at God's command, and in God's way; and are fully satisfied with the result, which God may see fit to give. At the command of the world or of a worldly spirit, they would not "turn upon their heel to save their life."  But  to God they hold all in subjection; and they rest calmly in the great Central Power. These are men of a grave countenance; of a retired life except when duty calls to public action; of few words, simple manners, and inflexible principle. They have renounced Self; and they naturally seek a low place, remote from public observation and unreached by human applause. When they are silent to human hearing, they are conversing with God; and when they open their lips and speak, it is the message which God gives, and is spoken with the demonstration of the Spirit. When they are apparently inactive, they are gaining strength from the Divine Fountain; drinking nourishment into the inmost soul. And when they move, although with quiet step, the heart of the multitude is shaken and troubled at their approach, because God moves with them. There is no thunder, but the "still small voice;" no smoke, but consuming fire.

These are the men, of whom martyrs are made. When the day of great tribulation comes, when dungeons are ready, and fires are burning, When God permits his children, who are weak in the faith, to stand aside. Then the illuminated Christians, those who live in the region of high emotion, rather than of quiet faith, who have been conspicuous in the world of christian activity, and have been as a pleasant and a loud song, and in many things have done nobly, will unfold to the right and the left, and let this little company, of whom the world is ignorant, and whom it cannot know, come up from their secret places to the great battle of the Lord. To them the prison is as acceptable as the throne; the place of degradation as the place of honor. They eat of the "hidden manna" and they have the secret name given them, "which no man knoweth." Ask them how they feel, and they will perhaps be startled, because their thoughts are thus turned from God to themselves. And they will answer by asking, What God wills. They have no feeling; separate from the will of God. All high and low, all joy and sorrow, all honor and dishonor, all friendship and enmity, are brought to a level; and are merged and lost in the great realization of God present in the heart. Hence chains and dungeons have no terrors; a bed of fire is as a bed of down.

It is here in this class of persons, that we find the great grace of sanctification; a word alas, too little understood in the Church. These are they, who, in the spirit of self crucifixion, live by faith, and faith only.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (2nd edition, 1844) Part 3, Chapter 14.

Consecration and Faith

The existence of the unitive state does not necessarily imply inward manifestations and raptures of an extraordinary kind. On the contrary, such manifestations, and joys and raptures of a remarkable character, which would be likely to attract attention to themselves as distinct objects of notice, and thus nourish the life of Self, would be unfavorable, rather than otherwise, to the existence of the state of mind under consideration. This state of mind implies, however, the existence, in the highest degree, of those two great elements of the religious life, to which the reader's attention has been repeatedly called, viz. Consecration, which separates us from every known sin and lays all upon the altar of God as a perpetual sacrifice; and Faith, which leaves all in God's hands, and which receives and accepts no wisdom, no goodness, no strength, but what comes from God as the true source of inward and everlasting life. Consecration renounces the ALL of the creature; faith recognizes and accepts the ALL of God. Consecration implies the rejection and hatred of all evil; faith implies the reception and love of all good. The one alienates, abhors, and tramples under foot all unsanctified natural desires, aims, and purposes; the other approves, receives, and makes a part of its own self, all the desires, aims and purposes of God; and both are implied and involved, and are carried to their highest possible exercise, in the state of divine union.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (2nd edition, 1844) Part 3, Chapter 13.

Seeing Everything as a Manifestation of God

He, that standeth in God in such a manner as to have no will but the divine will, accounts every thing which takes place as a manifestation of God. If God is not the thing itself, God is nevertheless manifested IN the thing. And thus it is with God that he first communicates through the medium of the thing in which he manifests himself. And consequently, as God is the first object which presents itself, he imputes nothing to the subordinate creatures, neither condemning nor approving, neither sorrowing nor rejoicing, without first referring whatever takes place to God, and viewing it in the clearness and truth of the divine light.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXIII.

Meeting the Methodists

In December of this year, 1839, I visited the city of New York on business, which brought me into communication with certain persons who belonged to the Methodist denomination. I was providentially led to form an acquaintance with other pious Methodists, and was exceedingly happy in attending a number of meetings which had exclusive reference to the doctrine of holiness and to personal holy experience. In these meetings I took the liberty; although comparatively a stranger, to profess myself a believer in the doctrine of holiness and a seeker after it. And I found myself greatly encouraged and aided by the judicious remarks, the prayers and the sympathies of a number of beloved Christian friends.

As I now perceive, the great difficulty at this time in the way of my victorious progress was my ignorance of the important principle, that SANCTIFICATION, as well as justification, is by FAITH. By consecrating myself to God, I had put myself into a favorable condition to exercise faith; but I had never understood and felt the imperative necessity of this exercise, viz., of FAITH as a sanctifying instrumentality. My Methodist friends, to whom this view was familiar, gave me, in the spirit of Christian kindness, much instruction and assistance here, for which I desire to be grateful to them.

I found that I must give up the system, already too long cherished, of walking by signs, and manifestations, and sensible experiences, and must commit every thing, in light and in darkness, in joy and in sorrow, into the hands of God. Realizing, accordingly, that I must have greater faith in God as the fulfiller of his promises, and as the pledged and everlasting portion of those who put their trust in him, and aided by the kindness and supplications of Christian friends, I in some degree (and perhaps I may say in a very considerable degree) gained the victory.

I shall ever recollect the time. It was early on Friday morning, the 27th of December. The evening previous had been spent in deeply interesting conversation and in prayer on the subject of holiness, and with particular reference to myself. Soon after I awoke in the morning, I found that my mind, without having experienced any very remarkable manifestations or ecstasies, had, nevertheless, undergone a great moral revolution. I was removed from the condition of a SERVANT, and adopted into that of a SON. I believed and felt, in a sense which I had never experienced before, that my sins were all blotted out, were wholly forgiven; and that Christ was not only the Savior of mankind in general, but my Christ my Savior in particular, and that God was my Father. As I have observed, I had no ecstasy, but great and abiding peace and consolation.

[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).

The Danger of Seeking Signs Before Faith

The views, which have been taken of the life of faith, will aid us in forming a proper estimate of a tendency, which is often noted among the followers of Christ, to seek for signs, tokens, and manifestations, as the basis, in part at least, of their full reconciliation with God, and of a holy life. We are aware, that this tendency arises, in some cases from ignorance; but there can be no doubt, that it has its origin chiefly in that dreadful malady of our nature, the sin of UNBELIEF. But considered in any point of view, and as originating in any cause whatever, we cannot regard it as otherwise than wrong in principle, and as exceedingly injurious in its consequences. 

The life of specific signs, testimonies, and manifestations, is not only evil by being a deviation from the way of faith; but is evil also by keeping alive and cherishing the selfish principle, instead of destroying it. He, who seeks to live in this manner, instead of living by simple faith and who thus shows a secret preference of specific experiences, modeled after his own imaginations of things, to that pearl of great price, which is found in leaving all things with God, necessarily seeks to have things in his own way. The way of faith is the way of self-renunciation; the humbling and despised way of our personal nothingness. The way of signs, testimonies, and manifestations, is the way of one's own will; and, therefore, naturally tends to keep alive and nourish the destructive principle of selfishness. The lives of those who attempt to live in this way, with some variations in particular cases, may be regarded as an evidence of the general correctness of these remarks. They seem like children brought up in an unwisely indulgent manner; not unfrequently full of themselves, when they are gratified in the possession of their particular object, and full of discouragement, peevishness, and even of hostility, which are the natural results of the workings of self, when they are disappointed.

— edited from The Interior of Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 11.

Do Not Depend Upon Signs

God does not design, that men in the present life should live by means of specific signs, testimonies, or manifestations, but by simple faith alone. The great design of the Gospel, in its practical and final result on man, seems to be to restore and firmly establish the lost principle of faith, as the true and only available basis of the religious life. And there seems to be a necessity that it should be so. From the nature of the case there never can be any true reconciliation and harmony between God and his creatures, until they can so far have confidence in him as to receive his declarations, and to draw their life, as it were, from the words, which have proceeded out of his mouth. In any other way of living, whatever may be the nature of their inward or outward experiences, they live at variance with the order and the plans of God; out of the line of his precepts, and of course in the same degree out of the range of his blessings. And hence it is, that we find the remarkable expressions of the Savior to the doubting disciple. "Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have NOT seen, and yet have believed."

And we desire here, as a matter of some importance, to lay down a practical test or rule on this subject. It is this. Whenever we desire a specific experience, whether inward or outward, whether of the intellect or the affections, [prior] to the exercise of faith, we are necessarily in so doing seeking a sign, or testimony, or something, whatever we may choose to call it, additional to the mere declaration and word of God. There is obviously a lingering distrust in the mind, which jostles us out of the line of God's order; which is not satisfied with his way of bringing the world into reconciliation with himself; and under the influence of which we are looking round for some new and additional witness for our faith to rest upon. In other words, although we may not be fully conscious of it, we desire a sign. In the language of the experienced Mr. Fletcher of Madely, "we want to see our own faith," a state of mind, which, as it requires sight to see our faith with, in other words a basis of faith additional to that which God has already given, is necessarily inconsistent with and destructive of faith. This simple test will aid very much, in revealing to us the true state of our hearts.

— The Interior of Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 11.