Arise and shine for your light has come

Gemma Stone: Mindfulness is a powerful practice, Day after day..

Grace Bell: Appreciation is gaining in value, getting lifted up, lifted higher in worth. 

Can I do that for others, and for myself? Be Intimate With Those Who Think Badly Of You

The Golden Rule

Rev. John Salmon wrote of ‘Holy Ann’

"What Christians need is a little more of Christ's Christianity, and a little less of man's."

 “Be filled with the Spirit," as if to say, "You have the Spirit dwelling in you, but have not yet realized His full power." You have been sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise”; but there are doors to be unlocked, and rooms to be occupied, before it can be truly said that you are “filled with all the fullness of God"

As a late writer has said concerning this: " Let me illustrate: I contract with a painter to paint and decorate my house. He sends a thoroughly competent man, with all necessary materials. The workman takes possession of the house; but the work progresses slowly. Why? Well, I have locked sundry doors, and piled up lumber in the corridors, and the man cannot go on with his work. What is wanted is not that I should ask the contractor to * send the painter,' or to let me have * more of the painter ' ; not more of the painter for the house, but more of the house for the painter. Give the painter a chance. Open the barred doors clear away the obstructing lumber, and he will carry on the work to a satisfactory completion, according to contract."

A dear young Christian mother and housekeeper came to me once with a sorely grieved heart, because of her engrossing temporal life. “There seems," she said,” to be nothing spiritual about my life from one week's end to the other. My large family of little children are so engrossing that day after day passes without my having a single moment for anything but simply attendance on them and on my necessary household duties, and I go to bed night after night sick at heart because I have felt separated from my Lord all day long, and have not been able to do anything for Him." I told her of what I have written above, and assured her that all would be changed if she would only see and acknowledge God in all these homely duties, and. would recognize her utter dependence upon Him for the doing of them. Her heart received the good news with gladness, and months afterward she told me that from that moment life had become a transformed and glorified thing, with the abiding presence of the Lord, and with the sweetness of continual service to Him.

Another Christian, a young lady in a fashionable family, came to me also in similar grief that in so much of her life she was separated from God and had no sense of His presence. I told her she ought never to do anything that could cause such a separation; but she assured me that it was impossible to avoid it, as the things she meant were none of them wrong things. “For instance," she said," it is plainly my duty to pay calls with my mother, and yet nothing seems to separate me so much from God as paying calls." "But how would it be," I asked, "if you paid the calls as service to the Lord and for His glory?" "What!" she exclaimed,” pay calls for God! I never heard of such a thing." “But why not?” I asked;"if it is right to pay calls at all it ought to be done for God for we are commanded whatsoever we do to do it for His glory, and if it is not right you ought not to do it. As a Christian,'' I continued," you must not do anything that you cannot do for Him." "I see! I see!" she exclaimed, after a little pause," and it makes all life look so different! Nothing can separate me from Him that is not sin, but each act done to His glory, whatever it may be, will only draw me closer and make His presence more real.''

These two instances will illustrate my meaning. And I feel sure there are thousands of other burdened and weary lives that would be similarly transformed if these truths were but realized and acted on.

THE CHRISTIAN'S SECRET A HAPPY LIFE.

By

H.W.S.

1885

Hannah Tatum Whitall Smith ( 1832 –  1911) was a lay speaker and author in the Holiness movement in the United States and the Higher Life movement in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. She was also active in the Women’s suffrage movement and the Temperance movement.

Born in Philadelphia, Smith was from a long line of prominent and influential Quakers in New Jersey. Her most famous ancestor was Ann Cooper Whitall[2].

On November 5, 1851 Hannah married Robert Pearsall Smith, a man who also descended from a long line of prominent Quakers in the region. The Smiths settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania. They left the Quakers in 1858 after undergoing a Christian conversion. The Smiths were highly influenced firstly by the Plymouth Brethren, and then by the Methodist revivalists. They adopted the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification[1]. They were also influenced by William E. Boardman[3], who wrote The Higher Christian Life (1858).

From 1864 to 1868 Robert and Hannah Smith lived in Millville, New Jersey. Robert managed Hannah’s father’s business, the Whitall, Tatum & Company glass factories.

William Boardman[3] apparently groomed Robert and Hannah Smith to join the Holiness movement as speakers. From 1873–1874 they spoke at various places in England, including Oxford, teaching on the subjects of the "higher life" and "holiness." In 1874 Hannah helped found the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. That same year the Smiths traveled to the German Empire and Switzerland, where they preached in several major cities. In 1875, they returned to England and conducted meetings in Brighton. Due to a sexual scandal involving Robert, their visit to England came to an abrupt halt, with Hannah never becoming totally reconciled with her husband thereafter.

In 1888, the Smith family moved to England because their daughter Mary married an English barrister, Frank Costelloe. They eventually divorced, and Mary then married the critic Bernard Berenson. It was in England that Alys Pearsall Smith met and married the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Logan Pearsall Smith became an essayist and critic.

Hannah Whitall Smith had seven children in all, but only three—Mary, Alys Pearsall, and Logan Pearsall—survived to adulthood.

[1]Sanctification is the act or process of acquiring sanctity, of being made or becoming holy. "Sanctity" is an ancient concept widespread among religions, a property of a thing or person sacred or set apart within the religion, from temple vessels to days of the week, to a human believer who achieves this state. To sanctify is literally "to set apart for special use or purpose," figuratively "to make holy or sacred," and etymologically from the Latin verb sanctificare which in turn is from sanctus "holy" and facere "to make."

[2]Ann Cooper Whitall (1716–1797) was a prominent Quaker woman in early America. She was a Revolutionary War heroine and diarist. Born in Woodbury, New Jersey she married James Whitall.

During the American War for Independence, Whitall stayed in her house, even though British warships were firing cannons in that direction during the Battle of Red Bank. A cannonball did crash into the very room where Whitall sat working at a spinning wheel. She moved the spinning wheel down to the basement and kept working.

The battle was a victory for the colonists, and afterwards Whitall opened her house to wounded soldiers--American and Hessian. She gave them herbal medicines and bandaged their wounds. She is called the Heroine of Red Bank, NJ for her actions at that time.

Whitall kept a diary starting in about 1760 that contains important historical insight into the lives of people in the Red Bank area.

 [3] William Edwin Boardman (1810–1886) was an American pastor and teacher, and the author in 1858 of The Higher Christian Life, a book which as a major international success and helped ignite the Higher Life movement. Boardman's work attracted international attention, especially in England, where Boardman exercised great influence during 1873-1874.

Boardman also came to be a leader in the ministry of spiritual healing, and established Bethshan Healing Home in London. He joined with the Canadian pastor A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in the 1885 Bethshan Conference on Holiness and Healing in London. This conference is regarded by many as a turning point in the origins of the modern Pentecostal movement.

"The Man Who Believed God."

Charles Cullis, M.D. (1833-1892). Charles Cullis was born on March 7, 1833 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The son of English immigrants, he was raised in an Episcopalian church, but he rebelled against the memorization, without meaning, that he found in the Sunday school and stopped as soon as he was allowed. He was in poor health for most of his early life. He described his "years from infancy up to manhood, and of crosses and disappointments, bereavement and loneliness, and heart-heaviness". His memories of childhood included constant sickness. He had to be carried up and down stairs. His family attempted to put him in school but his health was so bad they eventually gave up. At the age of 16 he started working in a dry goods business. He later declared it was a critical period in learning about business and men's characters. When he was 19 his health collapsed once more and he had to stop working. He lost his voice and could only speak in whispers. Cullis assumed that with rest that his health would improve and he could return to work, but that door was closed forever.

Dr Orin S. Sanders, a physician friend, opened his library to Cullis and began to take him on rounds with him. Dr Landers suggested that Cullis study medicine. Initially Cullis said no because he wasn't particularly interested. Still after some thought and study he chose to do so, mostly because he felt there were no other options open to him. Although he did not have the money to complete the required coursework God opened the doors for him every step of the way. Later he was to see God's hand clearly in the process, but it was hidden from him at the time. Cullis came under conviction to know God better. He tried to do his duty in the Episcopal church as an answer these heart cries, but he described it as religion and not a personal relationship with the living Savior.

Cullis fell in love with and married Chastina, the doctor's sister-in-law, and moved into Landers' home. He cared for many who were sick with pulmonary tuberculosis (then known as consumption). He saw people exhaust all hope and resources and end up as beggars, especially women. Then his wife became ill with consumption and she died within four years of their marriage.

After his wife's death Cullis left Landers' house and started his own practice. He became successful very quickly, yet he was heartbroken and under a cloud of depression. He handed out thousands of tracts and gave money to many Christian organizations. Still for him it was a religious exercise.

In 1862 Cullis visited one of the Tuesday Meetings for the promotion of Holiness started by Phoebe Palmer. Cullis began to search the scriptures and they came alive for him in a new way. Struggling with understanding he decided "I will and do forever, by God's grace, believe every word between these two lids, whether I understand it or not." He also declared "I will take every precept and promise of the Bible just as if my own name, Charles Cullis, was written on every one of them."

One day Cullis was reading the Bible when the words "every man his work" from Mark 13:34 jumped off the page at him. Cullis began to feel that God was calling him to open a home for incurable consumptives as the "work" God had for him. This was a major step, but he felt he must act on what he was called to. Like George Mueller, he set his heart to be utterly dependent on God for the provision for the ministry. The house opened in 1864 to care for the hopeless, homeless, destitute and dying. He soon added a second house and then two more. The sign over the door simply said "Have Faith in God."

Around 1866 Cullis married a widow named Lucretia Ann Bramhall Reed, with a daughter of her own named Marie. Lucretia was a tremendous support to him in his ministry. The couple had three more children Charles, Elizabeth, and Edith.

Over the next several years Cullis added a worker's home, a cancer home, a spinal home, an orphanage, a mission, a chapel, a Faith Training College, and supported the Beacon Hill Church on Bowdoin Street in Boston.

In 1870 Charles Cullis acted in two areas, moving from the middle of Boston to an outlying rural area and praying for physical healing. Cullis published a book of hymns title "Faith Hymns" in 1870. In 1871 Cullis added a monthly children's publication called "Loving Words." In the summer of 1873 Cullis and his wife traveled to Europe to visit faith homes they had heard of.

He felt challenged to begin to pray for the sick. He showed such a gifting in this area, that his ministry swelled with people wanting to know more. Cullis, unlike some in the healing ministry, did not oppose medical help and still continued his practice during those years. In fact, the money he made from his medical practice was often expended on the poor in the homes, leaving his own family with the barest necessities.

Cullis became a controversial figure in Boston over "Faith Cure", and many denominations became antagonistic, due to cessationist theology. However, he began to receive attention from all over the world, as he taught and showed that God still healed and did miracles. In 1881 Cullis began to hold "faith-cure" meetings on a regular basis and in 1882 a "faith-cure" home was built. His Willard Tract Repository produced his own works on faith healing, and many from other healers. In 1881 he published a follow up to his earlier "Answers" titled "More Faith Cures: or Answers to Prayer in the Healing of the Sick." Then in 1885 he published "Other Faith Cures; or Answers to Prayer in the Healing of the Sick." He also published the book "Dorothea Trudel, or, The Prayer of Faith." which had his name on it as an author, but was a translation from a German work by an unidentified author.

In the mid-1880’s Cullis began holding "Faith Conventions" in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire. In fact A. B. Simpson attended one of these meetings in Old Orchard Beach, Maine and had a major healing experience.

In 1879 Cullis published "Faith Cures, or Answers to Prayer in the Healing of the Sick."

Cullis' lasting impact was his teaching on having faith in God, and the revelation that we could believe God for our salvation, provision, and healing.

Four Fold Gospel

Albert Benjamin "A.B." Simpson (1843 –1919) was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an evangelical Protestant denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism. Simpson was born in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

The young Albert was raised in a strict Calvinistic Scottish Presbyterian and Puritan tradition. His conversion of faith began under the ministry of Henry Grattan Guinness, a visiting evangelist from Ireland during the revival of 1859. Simpson spent some time in the Chatham, Ontario area, and received his theological training in Toronto at Knox College, University of Toronto. After graduating in 1865, Simpson was subsequently ordained in the Canada Presbyterian Church, the largest of the Presbyterian groups in Canada that merged after his departure for the United States. At age 21, he accepted a call to the large Knox Presbyterian Church (closed in 1971) in nearby Hamilton, Ontario.
In December 1873, at age 30, Simpson left Canada and assumed the pulpit of the largest Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky, the Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church. It was in Louisville that he first conceived of preaching the gospel to the common man by building a simple tabernacle structure for that purpose. Despite his success at the Chestnut Street Church, Simpson was frustrated by their reluctance to embrace this burden for wider evangelistic endeavor.
In 1880, Simpson was called to the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church in New York City where he immediately began reaching out to the world with the gospel. Beside active evangelistic work in the church, he published a missionary journal, The Gospel in All Lands, the first missionary journal with pictures. Simpson also founded and began publishing an illustrated magazine entitled The Word, Work, and World. By 1911, this magazine became known as The Alliance Weekly, then Alliance Life, and is now called a.life. It is the official publication of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, in the USA and Canada.

By 1881, after only two fruitful years at Thirteenth Presbyterian, he resigned in order to begin an independent gospel ministry to the many new immigrants and the neglected masses of New York City. Simpson began informal training classes in 1882 in order to reach "the neglected peoples of the world with the neglected resources of the church". By 1883, a formal program was in place and ministers and missionaries were being trained in a multi-cultural context (This school was the beginning of Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary). In 1889, Simpson and his church family moved into their new home at the corner of 44th St. and 8th Av. called the New York Tabernacle. This became the base not only of his ministry of evangelism in the city but also of his growing work of worldwide missions.
Simpson's disciplined upbringing and his natural genius made him a most effective communicator of the Word of God. His preaching brought great blessing and converts wherever he preached and his unique gospel of Jesus became known as the Four Fold Gospel: "Jesus our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King". The Four Fold Gospel is symbolized in the logo of the C&MA : the Cross, the Laver, the Pitcher and the Crown. He came to his special emphasis in ministry through his absolute Christ-centeredness in doctrine and experience.
Plagued by illness for much of his life since childhood, Simpson experienced divine healing after understanding it to be part of the blessing of abiding in Christ as Life and healing. He emphasized healing in his Four Fold Gospel and usually devoted one meeting a week for teaching, testimonies and prayer on these lines. Although such teaching isolated him (and the C&MA) from the mainline churches that either did not emphasize or outright rejected healing, Simpson's uncompromising trust in the Word and power of God kept him steadily forging ahead of his times without criticism or rancor with those who disagreed.
Simpson’s heart for evangelism was to become the driving force behind the creation of the C&MA. Initially, the Christian and Missionary Alliance was not founded as a denomination, but as an organized movement of world evangelism. Today, the C&MA plays a leadership role in global evangelism.
In his 1890 book, A Larger Christian Life, Simpson discussed his vision for the church:
“A plan for a Christian church that is much more than an association of congenial friends to listen once a week to an intellectual discourse and musical entertainment and carry on by proxy a mechanism of Christian work; but rather a church that can be at once the mother and home of every form of help and blessing which Jesus came to give to lost and suffering men, the birthplace and the home of souls, the fountain of healing and cleansing, the sheltering home for the orphan and distressed, the school for the culture and training of God's children, the armory where they are equipped for the battle of the Lord and the army which fights those battles in His name. Such a center of population in this sad and sinful world!”

A number of C&MA churches bear Simpson's name, as does
Simpson University in Redding, California,
the Albert B. Simpson school in Lima, Peru and
the A. B. Simpson Alliance School in Zamboanga City, Philippines.

A.B. Simpson and his wife, Margaret, are buried on the Rockland County Campus of Nyack College in Nyack, New York.

“A SOLEMN COVENANT: The Dedication of Myself to God.” By Albert Benjamin Simpson. Saturday, January 19, 1861.

“A SOLEMN COVENANT: The Dedication of Myself to God.” By ...

H. Emilie Cady: "In daily meditation lies the secret of power".

"Every man, every woman must take time daily for quiet and meditation. In daily meditation lies the secret of power. No one can grow in either spiritual knowledge or power without it."
H. Emilie Cady

H. Emilie Cady (1848–1941) was an American homeopathic physician and author of New Thought spiritual writings. Her 1896 book Lessons in Truth, A Course of Twelve Lessons in Practical Christianity is now considered the core text on Unity Church teachings.

Introduced to the teachings of Albert Benjamin Simpson, Cady became deeply involved in spiritual and metaphysical studies. She was inspired and influenced by Biblical teachings and the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was taught by Emma Hopkins, the New Thought "teacher of teachers".

Cady also associated with several prominent figures in the New Thought movement of the time, including: Emma Curtis Hopkins, Divine Science minister Emmet Fox, Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science, and Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, co-founders of Unity Church. Finding The Christ in Ourselves, a pamphlet she had written and sent unsolicited to Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, was published by them in the October 1891 issue of Thought.

Emma Curtis Hopkins wrote in “Scientific Christian Mental Practise”:
The five universal affirmations are:
1. My good is my God. My God is Life, Truth, Love, Substance, Intelligience – omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.
2. In God I live and move and have my being.
3. I am Spirit, Mind, Wisdom, Strength, Wholeness.
4. The I AM works inevitably through me to will and to do that which ought to be done by me.
5. I am goverened by the law of God and cannot sin or fear sin, sickness or death.
“Scientific Christian Mental Practise” Emma Curtis Hopkins 1888
In “Lessons in Truth” Cady wrote:
These, then, are the four comprehensive affirmations.
1. God is life, love, intelligence, substance, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence.
2. I am a child or manifestation of God, and every moment His life, love, wisdom, power flow into and through me. I am one with God, and am governed by His law.
3. I am Spirit, perfect, holy, harmonious. Nothing can hurt me or make me sick or afraid, for Spirit is God, and God cannot be sick or hurt or afraid. I manifest my real self through this body now.
4. God works with me to will and to do whatsoever He wishes me to do, and He cannot fail.
“Lessons in Truth” H. Emile Cady 1894 (Unity)

Sometimes the student surpasses the teacher.

Albert Benjamin Simpson (1843 – 1919) (A.B. Simpson) was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an evangelical Protestant denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism.