Wisdom of the Ages: The Old Time Religion is Good Enough for Me

The Pentecostal Herald was started by Henry Clay Morrison (pictured on left). This excerpt written by S. W. Speer, D. D. written for The Pentecostal Herald published on Wednesday, January 5, 1898.

Seventy-five or eighty years ago and earlier, the Church itinerancy was far more difficult than it is at the present time.  The doctrines which they preached were quite different from the teachings of the settled ministry.  These old-time preachers laid much stress on holiness or heart purity, as well as on ethics, or moral rectitude. 

They did not only preach the doctrine of holiness, but they carried along with them samples of holiness to exhibit to their hearers, in order to inspire them with a desire for holiness.  These samples were in the form of personal experience and a godly life.  It was not so much the name, as the thing itself, they taught by their experience and in their tempers and actions.  But as a general thing with St. John, they called it perfect love.  "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in Him" 1 John 4:16.  They realized the "love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost."  They realized that the tendency to sin was removed, and the soul was strengthened with might by the indwelling of the Spirit.  This vital force within gave force and vitality to their ministry.  Their preaching was not a formal or perfunctory service, but it came warm from the heart, filled with the love of God.

There has been much said about Mr. Wesley's experience of grace, because he did not make a formal record of it as he did of the hour in which his "heart was strangely warmed."  Yet, there were many in his day who did profess a life higher than that which all experience in the conversion.  Every Christian knows whether his supreme delight is in God or otherwise.  It is not the theory of holiness that is of such moment, but the consciousness of a pure heart and a correct life.