Introduction

These delightfully interesting studies come us as fresh and winsome as when they first fell from the lips of the honored servant of God, whom many of us held as the Moses who led us through the wilderness of perplexity, the Joshua who inspired us to cross the Jordan into the land of decision.

Some who stood loyally with him in the early years of his wonderful ministry, like the disciples of old, went away. A few to utter repudiation of the truth they had learned through him; others to hold it with cautious reservation. But he lived through all the heartaches which accompanied such departures, sweet and patient, trustful and loving, ever ready to receive them ; for he, himself, never varied in the conviction that healing as he was moved to present it could not be divorced from the message of salvation. If our blessed Lord is the very life of His own, that life must be related to every department of our being.

With him, the espousal of this much-disputed doctrine was not a matter of novelty that would in time wear away and be replaced by other novelties. It gripped his whole being; it compelled his entire devotion; it absorbed his heart and mind. And we who saw the workings of his methods and life could not other than confess that he was moved by a complete surrender to the Holy Spirit.

If only he could be found yielding to His behest in every turn he had to take, it was enough. The critics might pierce the atmosphere in which he lived with the arrows of poisoned unbelief; he was immune from infection. He literally was hid in God. It was this that made his messages so sacred to us.

The painful fact that teachers of Christian healing are subtly introducing psychology, that evident antagonist to the Holy Spirit, calls for the highest commendation of his manner. For he never permitted his teaching to be intinctured with any element of self-effort, selfintrospection, self-poise. To him, the truth of healing lay absolutely in the gift of God to His own, by simple acceptance and childlike following in the way of God. Faith, unalloyed was his foundation. And the death of self that Christ might live was the superstructure of his teaching and experience.

They who did not know him in the flesh, may well pursue these studies with deep appreciation. For thus they will learn to know the man as well as to accept the truth he held so precious.

Kenneth Mackenzie

↑ Back to top