Dedication
To the watchmen on the towers of Zion who are troubled by the spiritual dearth of Israel; and to the seeking souls who are hungering and thirsting for God, and are eager to obtain all that Jesus has purchased for them with His blood, not yet knowing how great is their heritage in Christ,– this book is lovingly and prayerfully dedicated, by The Author.
PREFACE
Weary with multiplied college labors, and having just completed the biography, “A Hero of Faith and Prayer,” I read last May an article in one of our popular magazines, “The World’s Work,” giving a table that shows, from the published statistics of the leading Protestant denominations in America, that there is a lamentable dearth in Zion, and that a spiritual decline is creeping like a paralysis upon the Churches. That table I reproduce in the first chapter, with comments made by denominational leaders. It aroused my inmost soul like an alarm-bell in the night. The Spirit of God instantly moved me to write a book pointing out to the pastors and editors and denominational leaders the seat of the difficulty, the nature of the disease that is preying upon the vitals of the Church of Christ. Oftentimes these leaders are reached through the people, who get the mind of God first. The real cause of our leanness is: “The Neglect of Pentecost.” The followers of Christ have ceased all too generally to repair to the sacred chamber and seek with importuning prayer for the Baptism with the Holy Ghost. The holiness which that baptism would impart is largely wanting in Christian experience; and therefore the enduement of power is so generally withheld from our Churches. The result is this awful dearth in Zion, and the consequent famine of souls. To correct the evil by pointing to the inexhaustible fountain of grace, and leading back to the “Pentecost Neglected,” this book has been written, with the hope that God will use it to His glory.
Texas Holiness University,
Greenville, Texas,
August 12, 1902