SPENCER S. FINNEY
(Presbyterian)

 

SPENCER S. FINNEY
(Presbyterian)

“Hallelujah! I believe!
Now no longer on my soul
All the debt of sin is lying –
One great Friend has paid the whole!
Ice-bound fields of legal labor
I have left with all their toil;
While the fruits of love are growing
From a new and genial soul.”

My soul shall make her boast in the Lord; the humble shall hear thereof and be glad. O

magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he heard me and
delivered me from all my fears. “This poor man cried and the Lord heard him, and saved him out
of all his troubles.”

I am called upon for my personal testimony and experience respecting “Perfect love which

casteth out fear.” Gladly do I confess, as a witness of Christ’s grace and faithfulness and power,
that He has, by His Word and Spirit, given me to know in my happy experience, the blessed truth
of “perfect love” and freedom from all fear that hath torment, as the present privilege of every soul
that trusts Him fully. I had some glimpses of this fullness of salvation, under the aspect of “full
assurance of faith,” soon after my conversion, which gracious favor God gave me through the
personal experimental testimony of a dear saint, and through the perusal of that evangelical old
work, Marshall’s Gospel Mystery of Sanctification.

But it was about thirteen years afterwards, when my soul was weary, very weary, in long

and vain attempts to keep and sanctify myself by watchfulness and the means of grace, and when
God’s service seemed to become hopeless, because I knew not how to “wait on the Lord, and

 

mount up with wings as eagles, and run and not be weary, and walk and not faint,” that He revealed
His fullness to me. In the valley of affliction and humiliation the Lord visited my soul. Blessed be
His name for ever! “I will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her; and I will
give her her vineyards from thence; and the valley of Achor (trouble) for a door of hope.”

The reading of Boardman’s Higher Christian Life gave me, by the blessing of God’s Spirit,

the first glimpse of “full assurance of faith,” as an abiding blessing, in its proper connection with
the experience and state of entire sanctification to the Lord, in soul, spirit and body, in all things,
and at all times, by full consecration and full faith. This is the “adoption of sons” in its full and
constant realization. This happy experience the Lord gave me a few days afterward, by the aid of
dear saints, in the meeting for holiness held at Dr. Palmer’s, New York; the Holy Spirit using their
testimony to make His word plain, and to encourage and guide me in giving myself at once, wholly,
without reserve, and forever to Christ, and to God through Christ, a living sacrifice, and to believe
on the ground of His own word that He received me in Christ “without spot or wrinkle or any such
thing.” No tongue can tell the rest and sweetness and peace of the soul which truly and fully, and,
every moment, embraces Christ and abides in Him, “as of God made unto us, wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.”

It was but a few days until the Lord gave me a few among my own dear people, as a shares

of my joy. When in public and private my soul made her boast in the Lord, and I told what He had
done for me. And while for years the fellowship of the saints, in the meeting where first the Lord
taught me the way of holiness by simple faith in Christ, was as a foretaste of heaven, the little
band, whose hearts God opened to received the truth of full salvation, in my own church, were my
crown and my joy, amidst coldness, misrepresentation and opposition.

In my present field God has helped me; and some of my flock, some theological students,

and one or more minister, have acknowledged the truth of entire sanctification by faith, in a living,
present Saviour. Eternity alone will suffice to tell the whole story. Thanks for this and every
opportunity to witness for Jesus, as a Saviour from all sin, for it is not only an important duty, but a
delightful privilege to “boast in the Lord;” a boasting which exposes, and forever abandons self, as
utterly bankrupt and vile, and receives and enjoys and rejoices in Christ as “all in all,” not merely
in theory and doctrine but in actual, personal experience. O for this baptism of power upon all
God’s people. “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath
made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion, for ever and
ever. Amen!”

Source: “Pioneer Experiences” by Phoebe Palmer

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THE END

 

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Copyright 1994 Holiness Data Ministry

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HOW THEY ENTERED CANAAN
(A Collection of Holiness Experience Accounts)
Compiled by Duane V. Maxey

Vol. I — Named Accounts

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