FullReads

[32] Compare these three different statements of it: A. P. Call: As a Matter of Course, Boston, 1894; H. W. Dresser: Living by the Spirit, New York and London, 1900; H. W. Smith: The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, published by the Willard Tract Repository, and now in thousands of hands.

[33] T. C. Upham: Life of Madame Catharine Adorna, 3d ed., New York, 1864, pp. 158, 172-74.

The next religious symptom which I will note is what have called Purity of Life. The saintly person becomes exceedingly sensitive to inner inconsistency or discord, and mixture and confusion grow intolerable. All the mind’s objects and occupations must be ordered with reference to the special spiritual excitement which is now its keynote. Whatever is unspiritual taints the pure water of the soul and is repugnant. Mixed with this exaltation of the moral sensibilities there is also an ardor of sacrifice, for the beloved deity’s sake, of everything unworthy of him. Sometimes the spiritual ardor is so sovereign that purity is achieved at a stroke –we have seen examples. Usually it is a more gradual conquest. Billy Bray’s account of his abandonment of tobacco is a good example of the latter form of achievement.

“I had been a smoker as well as a drunkard, and I used to love my tobacco as much as I loved my meat, and I would rather go down into the mine without my dinner than without my pipe. In the days of old, the Lord spoke by the mouths of his servants, the prophets; now he speaks to us by the spirit of his Son. I had not only the feeling part of religion, but I could hear the small, still voice within speaking to me. When I took the pipe to smoke, it would be applied within, ‘It is an idol, a lust; worship the Lord with clean lips.’ So, I felt it was not right to smoke. The Lord also sent a woman to convince me. I was one day in a house, and I took out my pipe to light it at the fire, and Mary Hawke–for that was the woman’s name–said, ‘Do you not feel it is wrong to smoke?’ I said that I felt something inside telling me that it was an idol, a lust, and she said that was the Lord. Then I said, ‘Now, I must give it up, for the Lord is telling me of it inside, and the woman outside, so the tobacco must go, love it as I may.’ There and then I took the tobacco out of my pocket, and threw it into the fire, and put the pipe under my foot, ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ And I have not smoked since. I found it hard to break off old habits, but I cried to the Lord for help, and he gave me strength, for he has said, ‘Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.’ The day after I gave up smoking I had the toothache so bad that I did not know what to do. I thought this was owing to giving up the pipe, but I said I would never smoke again, if I lost every tooth in my head. I said, ‘Lord, thou hast told us My yoke is easy and my burden is light,’ and when I said that, all the pain left me. Sometimes the thought of the pipe would come back to me very strong; but the Lord strengthened me against the habit, and, bless his name, I have not smoked since.”

Bray’s biographer writes that after he had given up smoking, he thought that he would chew a little, but he conquered this dirty habit, too. “On one occasion,” Bray said, “when at a prayer- meeting at Hicks Mill, I heard the Lord say to me, ‘Worship me with clean lips.’ So, when we got up from our knees, I took the quid out of my mouth and ‘whipped ‘en’ [threw it] under the form.