R. A. Torrey · 22 of 25

Chapter XX. The Baptism With the Holy Spirit. · Part 3

We must be baptised with the Holy Spirit.

Even after one has been baptized with the Holy Spirit, no matter how definite that baptism may be, he needs to be filled again and again with the Spirit. This is the clear teaching of the New Testament. We read in Acts ii. 4, They were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now one of those who was present on this occasion and who therefore was filled at this time with the Holy Spirit was Peter. Indeed, he stands forth most prominently in the chapter as a man baptized with the Holy Spirit. But we read in Acts iv. 8, Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, etc. Here we read again that Peter was filled with the Holy Ghost. Further down in the chapter we read, in the thirty-first verse, that being assembled together and praying, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the Word of God with boldness. We are expressly told in the context that two of those present were John and Peter. Here then was a third instance in which Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit. It is not enough that one be filled with the Holy Spirit once. We, need a new filling for each new emergency of Christian service. The failure to realize this need of constant refillings with the Holy Spirit has led to many a man who at one time was greatly used of God, being utterly laid aside. There are many to-day who once knew what it was to work in the power of the Holy Spirit who have lost their unction and their power. I do not say that the Holy Spirit has left them—I do not believe He has—but the manifestation of His presence and power has gone. One of the saddest sights among us to-day is that of the men and women who once toiled for the Master in the mighty power of the Holy Spirit who are now practically of no use, or even a hindrance to the work, because they are trying to go in the power of the blessing received a year or five years or twenty years ago. For each new service that is to be conducted, for each new soul that is to be dealt with, for each new work for Christ that is to be performed, for each new day and each new emergency of Christian life and service, we should seek and obtain a new filling with the Holy Spirit. We must not neglect the gift that is in us (1 Tim. iv. 14), but on the contrary kindle anew or stir into flame this gift (1 Tim. i. 6, R. V., margin). Repeated fillings with the Holy Spirit are necessary to continuance and increase of power.

The question may arise, Shall we call these new fillings with the Holy Spirit fresh baptisms with the Holy Spirit? To this we would answer, the expression baptism is never used in the Scriptures of a second experience and there is something of an initiatory character in the very thought of baptism, so if one wishes to be precisely Biblical, it would seem to be better not to use the term baptism of a second experience but to limit it to the first experience. On the other hand filled with the Holy Spirit is used in Acts ii. 4, to describe the experience promised in Acts i. 5, where the words used are Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. And it is evident from this and from other passages that the two expressions are to a large extent practically synonymous. However, if we confine the expression baptism with the Holy Spirit to our first experience, we shall be more exactly Biblical and it would be well to speak of one baptism but many fillings. But I would a great deal rather that one should speak about new or fresh baptisms with the Holy Spirit, standing for the all-important truth that we need repeated fillings with the Holy Spirit, than that he should so insist on exact phraseology that he would lose sight of the truth that repeated fillings are needed, i. e., I would rather have the right experience by a wrong name, than the wrong experience by the right name. This much is as clear as day, that we need to be filled again and again and again with the Holy Spirit. I am sometimes asked, Have you received the second blessing? Yes, and the third and the fourth and the fifth and hundreds beside, and I am looking for a new blessing to-day.

We come now to the question of first practical importance, namely, What must one do in order to obtain the baptism with the Holy Spirit? This question is answered in the plainest and most positive way in the Bible. A plain path is laid down in the Bible consisting of a few simple steps that any one can take, and it is absolutely certain that any one who takes these steps will enter into the blessing. This is, of course, a very positive statement, and we would not dare be so positive if the Bible were not equally positive. But what right have we to be uncertain when the Word of God is positive? There are seven steps in this path:

1. The first step is that we accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord. We read in Acts ii. 38, R. V., Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Is not this statement as positive as that which we made above? Peter says that if we do certain things, the result will be, Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. All seven steps are in this passage, but we shall refer later to other passages as throwing light upon this. The first two steps are in the word repent. Repent ye, said Peter. What does it mean to repent? The Greek word for repentance means an afterthought or change of mind. To repent then means to change your mind. But change your mind about what? About three things; about God, about Jesus Christ, about sin. What the change of mind is about in any given instance must be determined by the context. As determined by the context in the present case, the change of mind is primarily about Jesus Christ. Peter had just said in the thirty-sixth verse, R. V., Let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified. When they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, as well they might be, and said unto Peter and the rest of the Apostles, Brethren, what shall we do? Then it was that Peter said, Repent ye, Change your mind about Jesus, change your mind from that attitude of mind that rejected Him and crucified Him to that attitude of mind that accepts Him as Lord and King and Saviour. This then is the first step towards receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit; receive Jesus as Saviour and Lord; first of all receive Him as your Saviour. Have you done that?

What does it mean to receive Jesus as Saviour? It means to accept Him as the One who bore our sins in our place on the cross (Gal. iii. 13; 2 Cor. v. 21) and to trust God to forgive us because Jesus Christ died in our place. It means to rest all our hope of acceptance before God upon the finished work of Christ upon the cross of Calvary. There are many who profess to be Christians who have not done this. When you go to many who call themselves Christians and ask them if they are saved, they reply, Yes. Then if you put to them the question Upon what are you resting as the ground of your salvation? they will reply something like this, I go to church; I say my prayers, I read my Bible, I have been baptized, I have united with the church, I partake of the Lord's supper, I attend prayer-meeting, and I am trying to live as near right as I know how. If these things are what you are resting upon as the ground of your acceptance before God, then you are not saved, for all these things are your own works (all proper in their places but still your own works) and we are distinctly told in Rom. iii. 20, R. V., that By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight. But if you go to others and ask them if they are saved, they will reply Yes. And then if you ask them upon what they are resting as the ground of their acceptance before God, they will reply something to this effect, I am not resting upon anything I ever did, or upon anything I am ever going to do; I am resting upon what Jesus Christ did for me when He bore my sins in His own body on the cross. I am resting in His finished work of atonement. If this is what you are really resting upon, then you are saved, you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Saviour and you have taken the first step towards the baptism with the Holy Spirit.

The same thought is taught elsewhere in the Bible, for example in Gal. iii. 2. Here Paul asks of the believers in Galatia, Received ye the Holy Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Just what did he mean? On one occasion when Paul was passing through Galatia, he was detained there by some physical infirmity. We are not told what it was, but at all events, he was not so ill but that he could preach to the Galatians the Gospel, or glad tidings, that Jesus Christ had redeemed them from the curse of the law by becoming a curse in their place, by dying on the cross of Calvary. These Galatians believed this testimony; this was the hearing of faith, and God set the stamp of His endorsement upon their faith by giving them as a personal experience the Holy Spirit. But after Paul had left Galatia, certain Judaizers came down from Jerusalem, men who were substituting the law of Moses for the Gospel and taught them that it was not enough that they simply believe on Jesus Christ but in addition to this they must keep the law of Moses, especially the law of Moses regarding circumcision, and that without circumcision they could not be saved—i. e., they could not be saved by simple faith in Jesus (cf. Acts xv. 1). These young converts in Galatia became all upset. They did not know whether they were saved or not; they did not know what they ought to do, and all was confusion. It was just as when modern Judaizers come around and get after young converts and tell them that in addition to believing in Jesus Christ, they must keep the Mosaic Seventh Day Sabbath, or they cannot be saved. This is simply the old controversy breaking out at a new point. When Paul heard what had happened in Galatia, he was very indignant and wrote the Epistle to the Galatians simply for the purpose of exposing the utter error of these Judaizers. He showed them how Abraham himself was justified before he was circumcised by simply believing God (Gal. iii. 6), and how he was circumcised after he was justified as a seal of the faith which he already had while he was in uncircumcision. But in addition to this proof of the error of the Judaizers, Paul appeals to their own personal experience. He says to them, You received the Holy Spirit, did you not? Yes. How did you receive the Holy Spirit, by keeping the law of Moses, or by the hearing of faith, the simple accepting of God's testimony about Jesus Christ that your sins were laid upon Him, and that you are thus justified and saved? The Galatians had had a very definite experience of receiving the Holy Spirit and Paul appeals to it, and recalls to their mind how it was by the simple hearing of faith that they had received the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Holy Spirit is God's seal upon the simple acceptance of God's testimony about Jesus Christ, that our sins were laid upon Him, and thus trusting God to forgive us and justify us. This then is the first step towards receiving the Holy Spirit. But we must not only receive Jesus as Saviour, we must also receive Him as Lord. Of this we shall speak further in connection with another passage in the fourth step.

2. The second step in the path that leads into the blessing of being baptized with the Holy Spirit is renunciation of sin. Repentance as we have seen is a change of mind about sin as well as a change of mind about Christ; a change of mind from that attitude of mind that loves sin and indulges sin to that attitude of mind that hates sin and renounces sin. This then is the second step—renunciation of sin. The Holy Spirit is a Holy Spirit and we cannot have both Him and sin. We must make our choice between the Holy Spirit and unholy sin. We cannot have both. He that will not give up sin cannot have the Holy Spirit. It is not enough that we renounce one sin or two sins or three sins or many sins, we must renounce all sin. If we cling to one single known sin, it will shut us out of the blessing. Here we find the cause of failure in many people who are praying for the baptism with the Holy Spirit, going to conventions and hearing about the baptism with the Holy Spirit, reading books about the baptism with the Holy Spirit, perhaps spending whole nights in prayer for the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and yet obtaining nothing. Why? Because there is some sin to which they are clinging. People often say to me, or write to me, I have been praying for the baptism with the Holy Spirit for a year (five years, ten years, one man said twenty years). Why do I not receive? In many such cases, I feel led to reply, It is sin, and if I could look down into your heart this moment as God looks into your heart, I could put my finger on the specific sin. It may be what you are pleased to call a small sin, but there are no small sins. There are sins that concern small things, but every sin is an act of rebellion against God and therefore no sin is a small sin. A controversy with God about the smallest thing is sufficient to shut one out of the blessing. Mr. Finney tells of a woman who was greatly exercised about the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Every night after the meetings, she would go to her rooms and pray way into the night and her friends were afraid she would go insane, but no blessing came. One night as she prayed, some little matter of head adornment, a matter that would probably not trouble many Christians to-day, but a matter of controversy between her and God, came up (as it had often come up before) as she knelt in prayer. She put her hand to her head and took the pins out of her hair and threw them across the room and said, There go! and instantly the Holy Ghost fell upon her. It was not so much the matter of head adornment as the matter of controversy with God that had kept her out of the blessing.

If there is anything that always comes up when you get nearest to God, that is the thing to deal with. Some years ago at a convention in a Southern state, the presiding officer, a minister in the Baptist Church, called my attention to a man and said, That man is the pope of our denomination in ——; everything he says goes, but he is not at all with us in this matter, but I am glad to see him here. This minister kept attending the meetings. At the close of the last meeting where I had spoken upon the conditions of receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit, I found this man awaiting me in the vestibule. He said, I did not stand up on your invitation to-day. I replied, I saw you did not. I thought you said, he continued, that you only wanted those to stand who could say they had absolutely surrendered to God? That is what I did say, I replied. Well, I could not say that. Then you did perfectly right not to stand. I did not want you to lie to God. Say, he continued, you hit me pretty hard to-day. You said if there was anything that always comes up when you get nearest to God, that is the thing to deal with. Now there is something that always comes up when I get nearest to God. I am not going to tell you what it is. I think you know. Yes, I replied. (I could smell it.) Well, I simply wanted to say this to you. This was on Friday afternoon. I had occasion to go to another city, and returning through that city the following Tuesday morning, the minister who had presided at the meeting was at the station. I wish you could have been in our Baptist ministers' meeting yesterday morning, he said; that man I pointed out to you from the north part of the state was present. He got up in our meeting and said, Brethren, we have been all wrong about this matter, and then he told what he had done. He had settled his controversy with God, had given up the thing which had always come up when he got nearest to God, then he continued and said, Brethren, I have received a more definite experience than I had when I was converted. Just such an experience is waiting many another, both minister and layman, just as soon as he will judge his sin, just as soon as he will put away the thing that is a matter of controversy between him and God, no matter how small the thing may seem. If any one sincerely desires the baptism with the Holy Spirit, he should go alone with God and ask God to search him and bring to light anything in his heart or life that is displeasing to Him, and when He brings it to light, he should put it away. If after sincerely waiting on God, nothing is brought to light, then we may proceed to take the other steps. But there is no use praying, no use going to conventions, no use in reading books about the baptism with the Holy Spirit, no use in doing anything else, until we judge our sins.

3. The third step is an open confession of our renunciation of sin and our acceptance of Jesus Christ. After telling his hearers to repent in Acts ii. 38, Peter continues and tells them to be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins. Heart repentance alone was not enough. There must be an open confession of that repentance, and God's appointed way of confession of repentance is baptism. None of those to whom Peter spoke had ever been baptized, and, of course, what Peter meant in that case was water baptism. But suppose one has already been baptized, what then? Even in that case, there must be that for which baptism stands, namely, an open confession of our renunciation of sin and our acceptance of Jesus Christ. The baptism with the Spirit is not for the secret disciple, but for the open confessed disciple. There are many doubtless to-day who are trying to be Christians in their hearts, many who really believe that they have accepted Jesus as their Saviour and their Lord and have renounced sin, but they are not willing to make an open confession of their renunciation of sin and their acceptance of Christ. Such an one cannot have the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Some one may ask, Do not the Friends (Quakers), who do not believe in water baptism, give evidence of being baptized with the Holy Spirit? Doubtless many of them do, but this does not alter the teaching of God's Word. God doubtless condescends in many instances where people are misled as to the teaching of His Word to their ignorance, if they are sincere, but that fact does not alter His Word, and even with a member of the congregation of Friends, who sincerely does not believe in water baptism, there must be before the blessing is received that for which baptism stands, namely, the open confession of our acceptance of Christ and of our renunciation of sin.

4. The fourth step is absolute surrender to God. This comes out in what has been already said, namely, that we must accept Jesus as Lord as well as Saviour. It is stated explicitly in Acts v. 32, And we are His witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him. That is the fourth step, obey Him, obedience. But what does obedience mean? Some one will say, doing as we are told. Right, but doing how much that we are told? Not merely one thing or two things or three things or four things, but all things. The heart of obedience is in the will, the essence of obedience is the surrender of the will to God. It is going to God our heavenly Father and saying, Heavenly Father, here I am. I am Thy property. Thou hast bought me with a price. I acknowledge Thine ownership, and surrender myself and all that I am absolutely to Thee. Send me where Thou wilt; do with me what Thou wilt; use me as Thou wilt. This is in most instances the decisive step in receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament types it was when the whole burnt offering was laid upon the altar, nothing kept back within or without the sacrificial animal, that the fire came forth from the Holy Place where God dwelt and accepted and consumed the gift upon the altar. And so it is to-day, in the fulfillment of the type, when we lay ourselves, a whole burnt offering, upon the altar, keeping nothing within or without back, that the fire of God, the Holy Spirit, descends from the real Holy Place, heaven (of which the Most Holy Place in the tabernacle was simply a type), and accepts the gift upon the altar. When we can truly say, My all is on the altar, then we shall not have long to wait for the fire. The lack of this absolute surrender is shutting many out of the blessing to-day. People turn the keys of almost every closet in their heart over to God, but there is some small closet of which they wish to keep the key themselves, and the blessing does not come.

At a convention in Washington, D. C., on the last night, I had spoken on How to Receive the Baptism with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit Himself was present in mighty power that night. The chaplain of one of the houses had said to me at the close of the meeting, It almost seemed as if I could see the Holy Spirit in this place to-night. There were many to be dealt with. About two hours after the meeting closed, about eleven o'clock, a worker came to me and said, Do you see that young woman over to the right with whom Miss W—— is speaking? Yes. Well, she has been dealing with her for two hours and she is in awful agony. Won't you come and see if you can help? I went into the seat back of this woman in distress and asked her her trouble. Oh, she said, I came from Baltimore to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and I cannot go back to Baltimore until I have received Him. Is your will laid down? I asked. I am afraid not. Will you lay it down now? I cannot. Are you willing that God should lay it down for you? Yes. Ask Him to do it. She bowed her head in prayer and asked God to empty her of her will, to lay it down for her, to bring it into conformity to His will, in absolute surrender to His own. When the prayer was finished, I said, Is it laid down? She said, It must be. I have asked something according to His will. Yes, it is done. I said, Ask Him for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. She bowed her head again in brief prayer and asked God to baptize her with the Holy Spirit and in a few moments looked up with peace in her heart and in her face. Why? Because she had surrendered her will. She had met the conditions and God had given the blessing.

5. The fifth step is an intense desire for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Jesus says in John vii. 37-39, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive. Here again we have belief on Jesus as the condition of receiving the Holy Spirit but we have also this, If any man thirst. Doubtless when Jesus spake these words He had in mind the Old Testament promise in Isa. xliv. 3, For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring. In both these passages thirst is the condition of receiving the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to thirst? When a man really thirsts, it seems as if every pore in his body had just one cry, Water! Water! Water! Apply this to the matter in question; when a man thirsts spiritually, his whole being has but one cry, The Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit! As long as one fancies he can get along somehow without the baptism with the Holy Spirit, he is not going to receive that baptism. As long as one is casting about for some new kind of church, machinery, or new style of preaching, or anything else, by which he hopes to accomplish what the Holy Spirit only can accomplish, he will not receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. As long as one tries to find some subtle system of exegesis to read out of the New Testament what God has put into it, namely, the absolute necessity that each believer receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit as a definite experience, he is not going to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. As long as a man tries to persuade himself that he has received the baptism with the Holy Spirit when he really has not, he is not going to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. But when one gets to the place where he sees the absolute necessity that he be baptized with the Holy Spirit as a definite experience and desires this blessing at any cost, he is far on the way towards receiving it. At a state Young Men's Christian Association Convention, where I had spoken on the Baptism with the Holy Spirit, two ministers went out of the meeting side by side. One said to the other, That kind of teaching leads either to fanaticism or despair. He did not attempt to show that it was unscriptural. He felt condemned and was not willing to admit his lack and seek to have it supplied, and so he tried to avoid the condemnation that came from the Word by this bright remark, that kind of teaching leads either to fanaticism or despair. Such a man will not receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit until he is brought to himself and acknowledges honestly his need and intensely desires to have it supplied. How different another minister of the same denomination who came to me one Sunday morning at Northfield. I was to speak that morning on How to Receive the Baptism with the Holy Spirit. He said to me, I have come to Northfield from —— for just one purpose, to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and I would rather die than go back to my church without receiving it. I said, My brother, you are going to receive it. The following morning he came very early to my house. He said, I have to go away on the early train but I came around to tell you before I went that I have received the baptism with the Holy Spirit.

6. The sixth step is definite prayer for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Jesus says in Luke xi. 13, If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. This is very explicit. Jesus teaches us that the Holy Spirit is given in answer to definite prayer—just ask Him. There are many who tell us that we should not pray for the Holy Spirit, and they reason it out very speciously. They say that the Holy Spirit was given as an abiding gift to the church at Pentecost, and why pray for what is already given? To this the late Rev. Dr. A. J. Gordon well replied that Jesus Christ was given as an abiding gift to the world at Calvary (John iii. 16), but what was given to the world as a whole each individual in the world must appropriate to himself; and just so the Holy Spirit was given to the church as an abiding gift at Pentecost, but what was given to the church as a whole each individual in the church must appropriate to himself, and God's way of appropriation is prayer. But those who say we should not pray for the Holy Spirit go further still than this. They tell us that every believer already has the Holy Spirit (which we have already seen is true in a sense), and why pray for what we already have? To this the very simple answer is, that it is one thing to have the Holy Spirit dwelling way back of consciousness in some hidden sanctuary of the being and something quite different, and vastly more, to have Him take possession of the whole house that He inhabits. But against all these specious arguments we place the simple word of Jesus Christ, How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. It will not do to say, as has been said, that this promise was for the time of the earth life of our Lord, and to go back to the promise of Luke xi. 13 is to forget Pentecost, and to ignore the truth that now every believer has the indwelling Spirit; for we find that after Pentecost as well as before, the Holy Spirit was given to believers in answer to definite prayer. For example, we read in Acts iv. 31, R. V., When they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the Word of God with boldness. Again in Acts viii. 15, 16, we read that when Peter and John were come down and saw the believers in Samaria they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost, for as yet He was fallen upon none of them, only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Again in the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, Paul tells the believers in Ephesus that he was praying for them that they might be strengthened with power through His Spirit (Eph. iii. 16). So right through the New Testament after Pentecost, as well as before, by specific teaching and illustrative example, we are taught that the Holy Spirit is given in answer to definite prayer. At a Christian workers' convention in Boston, a brother came to me and said, I notice that you are on the program to speak on the Baptism with the Holy Spirit. Yes. I think that is the most important subject on the program. Now be sure and tell them not to pray for the Holy Spirit. I replied, My brother, I will be sure and not tell them that: for Jesus says, How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? Yes, but that was before Pentecost. How about Acts iv. 31, R. V., was that before Pentecost or after? He said, It was certainly after. Well, I said, take it and read it. And when they had prayed, the place where they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and spake the Word of God with boldness. How about Acts viii. 15, 16, was that before Pentecost or after? Certainly, it was after. Take it and read it. Who when they were come down prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for as yet He was fallen on none of them, only they were baptized in the name of Jesus. He had nothing more to say. What was there more to say? But with me, it is not a matter of mere exegesis, that the Holy Spirit is given in answer to definite prayer. It is a matter of personal and indubitable experience. I know just as well that God gives the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer as I know that water quenches thirst and food satisfies hunger. In my first experience of being baptized with the Holy Spirit, it was while I waited upon God in prayer that I was thus baptized. Since then time and again as I have waited on God in prayer, I have been definitely filled with the Holy Spirit. Often as I have knelt in prayer with others, as we prayed the Holy Spirit has fallen upon us just as perceptibly as the rain ever fell upon and fructified the earth. I shall never forget one experience in our church in Chicago. We were holding a noon prayer-meeting of the ministers at the Y. M. C. A. Auditorium, preparatory to an expected visit to Chicago of Mr. Moody. At one of these meetings a minister sprang to his feet and said, What we need in Chicago is an all-night meeting of the ministers. Very well, I said. If you will come up to Chicago Avenue Church Friday night at ten o'clock, we will have a prayer-meeting and if God keeps us all night, we will stay all night. At ten o'clock on Friday night four or five hundred people gathered in the lecture-rooms of the Chicago Avenue Church. They were not all ministers. They were not all men. Satan made a mighty attempt to ruin the meeting. First of all three men got down by the door and knelt down by chairs and pounded and shouted until some of our heads seemed almost splitting, and some felt they must retire from the meeting; and when a brother went to expostulate with them and urge them that things be done decently and in order, they swore at the brother who made the protest. Still later a man sprang up in the middle of the room and announced that he was Elijah. The poor man was insane. But these things were distracting, and there was more or less of confusion until nearly midnight, and some thought they would go home. But it is a poor meeting that the devil can spoil, and some of us were there for a blessing and determined to remain until we received it. About midnight God gave us complete victory over all the discordant elements. Then for two hours there was such praying as I have rarely heard in my life. A little after two o'clock in the morning a sudden hush fell upon the whole gathering; we were all on our knees at the time. No one could speak; no one could pray, no one could sing; all you could hear was the subdued sobbing of joy, unspeakable and full of glory. The very air seemed tremulous with the presence of the Spirit of God. It was now Saturday morning. The following morning, one of my deacons came to me and said, with bated breath, Brother Torrey, I shall never forget yesterday morning until the latest day of my life. But it was not by any means all emotion. There was solid reality that could be tested by practical tests. A man went out of that meeting in the early morning hours, took a train for Missouri. When he had transacted his business in the town that he visited, he asked the proprietor of the hotel if there was any meeting going on in the town at the time. He said, Yes, there is a protracted meeting going on at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The man was himself a Cumberland Presbyterian. He went to the church and when the meeting was opened he arose in his place and asked the minister if he could speak. Permission was granted, and with the power of the Holy Spirit upon him, he so spoke that fifty-eight or fifty-nine persons professed to accept Christ on the spot. A young man went out of the meeting in the early morning hours and took a train for a city in Wisconsin, and I soon received word from that city that thirty-eight young men and boys had been converted while he spoke. Another young man, one of our students in the Institute, went to another part of Wisconsin, and soon I began to receive letters from ministers in that neighbourhood inquiring about him and telling how he had gone into the school-houses and churches and Soldiers' Home and how there were conversions wherever he spoke. In the days that followed men and women from that meeting went out over the earth and I doubt if there was any country that I visited in my tour around the world, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, India, etc., in which I did not find some one who had gone out from that meeting with the power of God upon them. For me to doubt that God fills men with the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer would be thoroughly unscientific and irrational. I know He does. And in a matter like this, I would rather have one ounce of believing experience than ten tons of unbelieving exegesis.