Godliness

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GODLINESS.

BEING

REPORTS OF A SERIES OF ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT
JAMES'S HALL, LONDON, W., During 1881,

BY

MRS. CATHERINE BOOTH.

_INTRODUCTION BY DANIEL STEELE, D.D._

PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.

In giving this volume to our American readers, we are assured that
we are doing a special favor to all the lovers of "Christianity in
earnest." "Aggressive Christianity," from the same talented author,
has met with unusual favor, and has been the means of much good. We
are confident that the present volume is in all respects equal to the
former, and that no one can read it without great spiritual profit.

The Introduction, by Dr. Daniel Steele, is a forcible presentation
of the main doctrines of the book, and is creditable to the head and
heart of the writer, and a commendation which all intelligent readers
will highly esteem.

Our object in publishing these sermons, is, that their perusal may
kindle a flame of revival in the hearts of believers, which may
result in many turning unto the Lord.

MCDONALD & GILL

BOSTON, MASS.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

In presenting another volume of reports of my Addresses, I have only
to repeat what I have said with respect to similar books before--
Read, for the sake of getting more light and more blessing to your
soul, and you will, I trust, partake of the good which many have
professed to receive at the West-End services, wherein most of these
words were first spoken.

I am well aware that, in such imperfect reports of, for the most
part, extemporaneous utterances, often most hurriedly corrected,
there may be found abundant ground for criticism; but, if this book
may be the means of leading only a few souls to devote themselves
more fully to God and to the salvation of men, I shall be more than
compensated for any unfriendly criticism with which it may meet.

I have not sought to please any but the Lord, and to His fatherly
loving-kindness I commend both the book and its readers.

CATHERINE BOOTH.

_London, Nov._ 10, 1881.

INTRODUCTION.

The sermons of Mrs. Booth already re-published under the title of
"_Aggressive Christianity_," came to American Christians as a tonic to
their weakness, and a stimulant to their inertness.

The sermons in the present volume are a much-needed prophylactic, a
safeguard against several practical errors in dealing with souls;
errors which lead them into Egyptian darkness, instead of the
marvelous light.

The sermon on _Repentance_ is a most faithful showing up of spurious
repentance, the vain substitute for a downright abandonment of every
form of sin, and right-about facing towards the Lord. In directness and
point, it is a model for earnest revival preaching,--rather, for all
preaching to unsaved souls, outside the church, or within it. All of
these will be found in some subterfuge, which must be ruthlessly torn
down, before it will be abandoned for the cleft Rock.

The sermon on _Saving Faith_ is next in order. The disastrous
consequences of what, for the want of a better description, maybe
styled an Antinomian faith, an unrepentant assent of the intellect to
the historic facts of the Gospel, which too many evangelists and
other religious teachers are calling saving faith, are clearly set
forth and plainly labeled, POISON. This spurious trust in Christ
following a superficial repentance, which has never felt the
desperate sinfulness and real misery of sin, has furnished our
churches with a numerous class of members, aptly described by the
prophet Micah: "The sin of Israel is great and unrepented of, yet
they will lean on the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us?" We
are convinced that much of the work of the faithful and pungent
preacher, who preaches with his eye fixed on the great white throne
and the descending Judge, is to dislodge professors from their
imaginary trust in a Saviour who does not save them, and probe deeply
their hearts festering with sin, which have been hastily pronounced
healed, "slightly healed." Many of us have incautiously said to
awakened souls, "Only believe," before we have thrust the heart
through and through with the sword of God's law. We have dismissed
God's schoolmaster. The law, like the slave charged with the task of
leading the boy to school, and of committing him to the teacher, we
have thought to be too harsh and severe for our sentimental age, and
have unwisely discharged, and have assumed its office of a
_paidagogos_ to Christ, and we have missed the way, and misled a
priceless soul. God have mercy on us, and give us humility, as He
gave Apollos, to be set right by an anointed woman!

After her timely correction of erroneous teachings on faith, Mrs.
Booth proceeds, pruning-knife in hand, to cut away from the tree of
modern Christianity the poisonous fungus of a "spurious charity." Her
four sermons on _Charity_ are four beacons set on the rocks of
counterfeit Christian love. She sets forth several infallible tests
by which genuine love may be distinguished from the devil's base
imitation. Like the Epistles of St. John, these sermons are full of
touchstones for testing love, that golden principle of the Christian
life. It would be very profitable for all professors of that perfect
love which casteth out all tormenting fear, to apply unflinchingly
these touch-stones to themselves. They may find the word "perfection"
taking on a meaning deeper, broader and higher than they had ever
before conceived. Why should not our conception of Christian
perfection steadily grow with the increase of our knowledge of God
and of His holy law?

The sermon on _The Conditions of Effectual Prayer_, we commend
to all Christians and to all seekers of Christ, who are mourning
because their prayers do not prevail with God. In the clear light of
this sermon they will find that the difficulty lies, either in the
lack of fellowship with Jesus Christ, or of obedience to His
commands, or in the absence from their hearts of the interceding
Spirit, or in defective faith. In the discussion of these hindrances
to prayer, the preacher lays open the heart, and with a skilful
spiritual surgery, searches it to the very bottom. The incisiveness
of her style, her courage and plain dealing with her hearers, tearing
off the masks of sin and selfishness, the various guises in which
these masquerade in many Christian hearts and obstruct their access
to a throne of grace, remind us of Dr. Finney's unsparing exposure
and condemnation of these foes to Christian holiness, and of John
Wesley's cutting up by the roots "Sin in Believers."

In this sermon Mrs. Booth turns her attention to another phase of
faith and of practical error in the guidance of souls to Christ. Her
views on this vexed question are not extreme but philosophical and
scriptural. She teaches that God has made the bestowment of salvation
simultaneous with the exercise of faith, and that "telling a person
to believe he is saved, before he is saved, is telling him to believe
a lie." But she insists that the act of faith is put forth with the
special aid of the Holy Spirit giving an assurance that the blessing
sought will be granted. This assurance, or earnest, given by the
Spirit, becomes the basis on which the final act of faith rests,
namely, "I believe that I receive." This corresponds with William
Taylor's Divine "ascertainment of the fact of the sinner's surrender
to God, and his acceptance of Christ," before justification.
[Footnote: Election of Grace, pp. 38-42.] Both teachers agree with
Wesley's analysis of faith which teaches that the fourth and last
step, "He doth it," can be taken only by the special enabling power
of the Holy Spirit, [Footnote: Sermons. Patience, Section 13; Scripture
Way of Salvation, Section 17; and Whedon on Mark xi. 24.] All three
locate the Divine efficiency before the declaration, "I believe that I
receive," or "have received" (R. V.), making that declaration rest upon
the perception of a Divine change within the consciousness. They all
insist that saving faith is not a mere humanly moral exercise, but
that power to believe with the heart descends from God, and that it
must be waited for in prayer, and that it becomes in the believer a
series of supernatural and spiritual acts, a habit of soul, at once
the seed and fruit of the Divine life-stirring, uniting in itself the
characters of penitent humility, self-renunciation, simple trust, and
absolute obedience grounded in love. These teachers magnify the
Divine element in faith. We look in vain in their writings for any
such direction to a penitent as this, "Believe that you are saved,
because, God says so in His Word," but rather believe that you are
saved when you hear His Spirit crying, Abba, Father, in your heart.

Many modern teachers fall into the error of treating saving faith as
an unaided intellectual act to be performed, at will, at any time. It
is rather a spiritual act possible only when prompted by the Holy
Spirit, who incites to faith only when He sees true repentance and a
hearty surrender to God. Then the Spirit reveals Christ and assists
to grasp Him. In the refutation of the high predestinarian doctrine
that faith is an irresistible grace sovereignly bestowed upon the
elect, there is great danger of falling into the opposite error,
called Pelagianism, which makes saving faith an exercise which the
natural man is competent to put forth without the help of the Holy
Spirit. The real guilt of unbelief lies in that voluntary
indifference toward Christ, and impenitence of heart, in which the
Holy Spirit cannot inspire saving faith.

In our introduction to "_Aggressive Christianity_," we advertised, in
behalf of the American churches, a universal want--Enthusiasm. In her
brief Exeter-Hall address, Mrs. Booth discloses the source of the
supply. Holiness is the well-spring of enthusiasm. Hence it is not a
spring freshet, but an overflowing river of power in all its possessors,
and, notably in the Salvation Army, bearing the unchurched masses of
England on its bosom. A holy enthusiasm is contagious and conquering. We
cannot touch the people with the icicle of logic; but they will not fail
to bow to the scepter of glowing and joyful love. Few men can reason;
all can feel. Enthusiasm and full salvation, like the Siamese twins,
cannot be separated and live. The error of the modern pulpit is that of
the blacksmith hammering cold steel--a faint impression and huge labor.
The baptism of fire softening our assemblies would lighten the
preacher's toil and multiply its productiveness.

The four addresses on _Holiness_ are hortatory rather than
argumentative or exegetical. They are spiritual cyclones. It is
difficult to see how any Christian could withstand these impassioned
appeals to make what Joseph Cook calls "an affectionate, total,
irreversible, eternal, self-surrender to Jesus Christ, as both
Saviour and Lord," in order to attain that "perfect similarity of
feeling with God," wherein evangelical perfection consists.

It gives me great pleasure to have some humble part in echoing
across the American continent these glowing utterances from the lips
of this modern Deborah, the Christian prophetess raised up by God for
the deliverance of His people from captivity to worldliness and
religious apathy. "Would God that all the Lord's people," men and
women, "were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon
them!"

"Shall we the Spirit's course restrain,
Or quench the heavenly fire?
Let God His messengers ordain,
And whom He will inspire!
Blow as He list, the Spirit's choice
Of instruments we bless:
We will, if Christ be preached, rejoice,
And wish the word success."

DANIEL STEELE.

_Reading, Mass., Nov._ 23, 1883.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

REPENTANCE

CHAPTER II.

SAVING FAITH

CHAPTER III.

CHARITY

CHAPTER IV.

CHARITY AND REBUKE

CHAPTER V.

CHARITY AND CONFLICT

CHAPTER VI.

CHARITY AND LONELINESS

CHAPTER VII.

CONDITIONS OF EFFECTUAL PRAYER

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PERFECT HEART

CHAPTER IX.

HOW TO WORK FOR GOD WITH SUCCESS

CHAPTER X.

ENTHUSIASM AND FULL SALVATION

CHAPTER XI.

HINDRANCES TO HOLINESS

CHAPTER XII.

ADDRESSES ON HOLINESS

CHAPTER I.

REPENTANCE,

And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of Heaven is at band.--MATT.
iii. 2.

From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.--MATT. iv. 17.

"Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly
vision: but shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and
throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Qentiles, that
they should repent and torn to God, and do works meet for
repentance."--ACTS xxvi. 19,20.

In the mouths of three witnesses--John the Baptist, Jesus Christ,
and the Apostle Paul--this word shall be established, namely, that
repentance is an _indispensable_ condition of entering the kingdom of
God.

People generally are all at sea oh this subject, as though insisting
that repentance were an arbitrary arrangement on the part of God. I
believe God has made human salvation as easy as the Almighty,
Infinite mind could make it. But there is a necessity in the case,
that we should "repent and turn to God." It is just as necessary that
my feelings be changed and brought to repentance towards God, as it
is that the wicked, disobedient boy, should have his feelings brought
back into harmony with his father before he can be forgiven.
Precisely the same laws of mind are brought into action in both
cases, and there is the same necessity in both.

If there is any father here who has a prodigal son, I ask, How is it
that you are not reconciled to your son? You love him--love him
intensely. Probably you are more conscious of your love for him than
for any other of your children. Your heart yearns over him every day;
you pray for him night and day; you dream of him by night; your
bowels yearn over your son, and you say, with David, "Absalom,
Absalom, my son, my son." Why are you not reconciled? Why not pat him
on the head, or stroke his face, and say, "My dear lad, I am well
pleased with you. I love you complacently; I give you my
approbation?" Why are you always reproving him? Why are you obliged
to hold him at arm's length? Why can you not live on amicable terms
with him? Why can you not have him come in and out, and live with you
on the same terms as the affectionate, obedient daughter? "Oh!" you
say, "the case is different; I cannot. It is not, 'I would not;' but,
'_I cannot_.' Before that can possibly be, the boy's feelings
must be changed towards me. He is at war with me; he has mistaken
notions of me; he thinks I am hard, and cruel, and exacting, and
severe. I have done all a father could do, but he sees things
differently, to what they are, and has harbored these hard feelings
against me until he hates me, and will go on in defiance of my will."
You say, "It is a necessity that, as a wise and righteous father, I
must insist on a change in him. I cannot receive him as a son, till
he comes to my feet. He must confess his sin, and ask me to forgive
him. Then, oh! how gladly will my fatherly affection gush out! How I
should run to meet him, and put my arms around his neck! but there is
a 'cannot' in the case." Just so. It is not that He does not love
you, sinner; it is not that the great, benevolent heart of God has
not, as it were, wept tears of blood over you; it is not that He
would not put His loving arms around you this moment, if you would
only come to His feet, and confess you were wrong, and seek His
pardon; but, otherwise, He may not--He _cannot_. The laws of His
universe are against Him doing so. The good, it may be, of millions
of immortal beings, is involved. He dare not, and He _cannot,_ until
there is a change of mind _in you._ You must repent. "Except ye repent,
ye shall all likewise perish."

Well, if repentance be an indispensable condition of salvation, let
us glance at it for a moment, and try to find out what repentance
really is; and, oh! how full of confusion the world and the church
are upon this subject! I say it, because I know it by converse with
hundreds of people. May the Holy Spirit help us!

Well, first, repentance is not merely conviction of sin. Oh! if it
only were, what a different world we should have to-night, for there
are tens of thousands on whose hearts God's Spirit has done His
office by convincing them of sin. I am afraid we should be perfectly
alarmed, astounded, confounded, if we had any conception of the
multitudes whom God has convinced of sin, as He did Agrippa and
Festus. Oh! I could not tell you the numbers of people, who, in our
anxious meetings, have grasped my hand, and said, "Oh! what would I
give to feel as I once felt! There was a time, fifteen, or seventeen,
or twenty years ago," and so on, "when I was so deeply convinced of
sin that I could scarcely sleep, or eat--that I could find no rest;
but, instead of going on till I found peace, I got diverted, cooled
down, and now, I feel as hard as a stone." I am afraid there are tens
of thousands in this condition--once convinced of sin.

There are thousands of others, who are convinced _now_. They say, "Yes,
it is true what the minister says. I know I ought to lay down the
weapons of my warfare against God; I know I ought to cut off this right
hand, and pluck out this right eye." They are convinced of sin, but they
go no further. That is not repentance. They live this week as they did
last. There is no response to the Spirit; they resist the Holy Ghost.

Neither is repentance mere sorrow for sin. I have seen people weep
bitterly, and writhe and struggle, but yet hug on to their idols, and
in vain you try to shake them from them. Oh! if Jesus Christ would
have saved them with those idols, they would have no objection at
all. If they could have got through the strait gate with this one
particular idol, they would have gone through long since; but to part
with that--that is another thing. Such people will weep like your
stubborn child, when you want him to do something which he does not
want to do. He will cry, and when you apply the rod he will cry
harder, but he will not yield. When he yields, he becomes a penitent;
but, until he does, he is merely a convicted sinner. When God applies
the rod of His Spirit, the rod of His providence, the rod of His
Word, sinners will cry, and wince, and whine, and make you believe
they are praying, and want to be saved, but all the while they are
holding their necks as stiff as iron. They will not _submit_.
The moment they submit, they become true penitents, and get saved.
There is no mistake more common than for people to suppose they are
penitents when they are not. There are some of you in this condition,
I know. I am afraid you are quite mistaken--you are not penitents.
God is true though every man should be a liar; and, if you had
sought, as you say you have, and perhaps, think you have; if you had
been sincere and honest with God, you would have been saved years
ago. Oh! may God, the Holy Spirit, help you to come out and be
HONEST. That is what God wants--that you be honest. "Oh," says He,
"why cover ye my altar with tears, and bring your vain oblations?
Just be honest, and I will be honest with you and bless you; but
while you come before Me and weep and profess, and bring the halt,
and the maimed, and the blind, a curse be upon you." He looks at you
afar off. Be honest. Repentance is not mere sorrow for sin. You may
be ever so sorry, and all the way down to death be hugging on to some
forbidden possession, as was the young ruler. _That_ is not repentance.

Neither is repentance a promise that you will forsake sin in the
future. Oh! if it were, there would be many penitents here to-night.
There is scarcely a poor drunkard that does not promise, in his own
mind, or to his poor wife, or somebody, that he will forsake his
cups. There is scarcely any kind of a sinner that does not
continually promise that he will give up his sin, and serve God, but
he does _not do it_.

Then what is _repentance_? _Repentance is simply renouncing
sin_--turning round from darkness to light--from the power of Satan
unto God. This is giving up sin in your heart, in purpose, in
intention, in desire, resolving that you will give up every evil
thing, and DO IT NOW. Of course, this involves sorrow, for how will
any sane man turn himself round from a given course into another, if
he does not repent having taken that course? It implies, also, hatred
of, sin. He hates the course he formerly took, and turns round from
it. He is like the prodigal, when he sat in the swine-yard amongst
the husks and the filth, he fully resolved, and at last he acts. He
went, and that was the test of his penitence! He might have sat
resolving and promising till now, if he had lived as long, and he
would never have got the father's kiss, the father's welcome, if he
had not started; but he went. He left the filth, the swine-yard, the
husks--he trampled them under his feet; he left the citizen of that
country, and gave up all his subterfuges and excuses, and went to his
father honestly, and said, "I have sinned!" which implied a great
deal more in his language then than it does in ours now. "I have
sinned against Heaven, and before thee;" and then comes the proof of
his submission, "and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me
as one of thy hired servants"--put me in a stable, or set me to clean
the boots, so that I can be in thy family and have thy smile. That is
repentance--Jesus Christ's own beautiful illustration of true
penitence. Have you done that? Have you forsaken the accursed thing?
Have you cut off that particular thing which the Holy Spirit has
revealed to you? Is the _"but"_ the hindrance that keeps you out
of the Kingdom? You know what it is, and you will never get saved
until you renounce it. Submission is the test of penitence. My child
may be willing to do a hundred and fifty other things, but, if he is
not willing to submit on the one point of controversy, he is a rebel,
and remains one until he yields.

Now, here is just the difference between a spurious and a real
repentance. I am afraid we have thousands in our churches who had a
spurious repentance: they were convinced of sin--they were sorry for
it; they wanted to live a better life, to love God in a sort of
general way; but they skipped over the real point of controversy with
God; they hid it from their pastor, perhaps, and from the deacons,
and from the people who talked with them.

Now, I say, Abraham might have been willing to have given up every
other thing that he possessed; but, if he had not been willing to
give up Isaac, all else would have been useless. It is your Isaac God
wants. You have got an Isaac, just as the young ruler had his
possessions. You have got something that you are holding on to, that
the Holy Spirit says you must let go, and you say, "I can't." Very
well; then you must stop outside the kingdom. I beseech you, do not
deceive yourselves by supposing that you repent, for you do not; but,
oh! my dear friends, let me beseech you to repent. The apostle says,
"Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men;" and this
is, I believe, the greatest work of the ministry. To do what? To
persuade men to submit. We are constantly talking to thousands of
people who know just what God wants of them. We cannot bring many of
them any new light or new Gospel. They know all about it. They used
to tell me that so often, that I longed for a congregation of
heathen, which I have found since then. Consequently, when they hear
the Gospel, like the publicans and sinners of old, they go into the
kingdom, while such as some of you who are the natural children of
the kingdom, are shut out, because when they hear they receive, and
submit, and obey, while you stand outside and hold on to your idols,
and reason, and quibble, and reject! My dear friends, let me
persuade you to trample under foot that idol, to tear down that
refuge of lies, and to come to God honestly, and say, "Lord, here I
am, to be a servant, to be nothing, to do anything, to suffer
anything. I know I shall be happier with Thy smile and Thy blessing
than all these evil things now make me without Thee." When you come
to a full surrender, my friends, you will get what you have been
seeking, some of you, for years.

But then another difficulty comes in, and people say, "I have not
the power to repent." Oh! yes, you have. That is a grand mistake. You
have the power, or God would not command it. You can repent. You can
this moment lift up your eyes to Heaven, and say, with the prodigal,
"Father, I have sinned, and I renounce my sin." You may not be able
to weep--God nowhere requires or commands that; but you are able,
this very moment, to renounce sin, in purpose, in resolution, in
intention. Mind, don't confound the renouncing of the sin, with the
power of saving yourself from it. If you renounce it, Jesus will come
and save you from it. Like the man with the withered hand--Jesus
intended to heal that man. Where was the power to come from to heal
him? From Jesus, of course. The benevolence, the love, that prompted
that healing, all came from Jesus; but Jesus wanted a condition. What
was it? The response of the man's will; and so He said, "Stretch
forth thy hand." If he had been like some of you, he would have said,
"What an unreasonable command! You know I cannot do it--I cannot."
Some of you say that; but I say you can, and you will have to do it,
or you will be lost. What did Jesus want? He wanted that, "I will,
Lord," inside the man--the response of his will. He wanted him to
say, "Yes, Lord;" and, the moment he said that, Jesus supplied
strength, and he stretched it forth, and you know what happened.

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