Pentecostal Possibilities or "The Story of My Life"
by Milton Lorenzo (M. L.) Haney
CHAPTER 62
And Yet Three Years
In the sixteenth evangelistic year I was in a part of twenty-two distinct meetings, including nine camps, the year beginning Nov. 23, 1890, and closing Oct. 19th, 1891. These meetings were held in Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio. Eight revival and camp meetings were held in Kansas alone, and, so far as I remember, the kingdom was opened in each one of them and somebody entered it. The Southwest Kansas Conference was as nearly a holiness Conference, perhaps, as any in the connection, and held its own pretty well. Many of their preachers were beautifully sanctified in the holiness meetings so widely spread over its territory. If these all remain true what a life is before them! Our young ministers in these latter days have more to hinder, and break down, their spirituality, than is even dreamed of by the mass of God's people. It will be found practically true that this experience will not be maintained without great moral courage. A minister who hides this light for fear of his people, will need to be restored in less than a year. Many dear men of God lose this wonderful power by ceasing to testify to it for fear of officials, or because of the opposition of leading men and women. Every pastor who has it will be compelled to preach it distinctly, and frequently, or soon the fine gold will become dim. Who is there who knows an exception to this rule?
The Iowa State Camp at Des Moines was a very precious service this year. The holiness work in Iowa generally has been characterized by soundness from the beginning. The solid preaching of such men as Isaiah Reid, J. W. Martin and others, has had much to do with keeping people to the line. The frequent National Camps, from Inskip on to this time, have been might factors in building up this work. The Iowa State Association has been indispensable to its healthy growth and the prevention of poisonous influence being injected into it. The strong body of evangelists which God hath raised up on this territory have gone far toward making it equal to the holiness work in any country. Of the two, the Iowa holiness people are more exposed to formalism than fanaticism, and the fear of the latter may have given a trend to the former. Real holiness, to be maintained, needs much fire.
We had a blessed meeting among the Baptists in Vincennes, Ind., this year. Many of our Baptist brethren are shining examples of holiness, and Deacon Morse is not the only deacon who knows about it. Rev. Aura Smith has for a great while, by a consistent holy life and powerful ministry, held up the standard, and but few have excelled him in the ingathering of souls. Dr. Keith of Des Moines, and Vincennes, was a polished shaft for God in the years I knew him. Dear Brother Carnahan was a strong advocate of this glorious experience and has had no regrets that he preached it, since he has been living in the world where all are holy. Brother and Sister Rhoads (now of Normal, Ills.,) have lifted up this holy lamp for many years. Deacon Gill, of Macomb, Ills., was a live herald of this grace through the early part of the movement, and Eva Axford, of the same church for years, was among our most successful evangelists. Everlasting praises to God, and to the Lamb, for these Baptist saints!
The Illinois State Camp was at Shelbyville this year. It was badly broken into by storm and was a strong battle, but we had victory right and left. John A. Wood was its leader, and his ministries have been greatly owned and blessed of God for nearly a half century. Till his health broke he was among the foremost of the holy brethren, and his book on "Perfect Love" is among the best of all holiness books. People took sides in that meeting for, and against, holiness who have since met God and have found whether holiness is needed or not. A large number of souls were saved at Shelbyville, but not so many as in several other State camps.
I had the honor to be shut in with Doctor McDonald and his helpers in the National Camp at Vermillion, Ohio. This was on the Evangelical camp ground, and was held at the time the fight was most bitter between the parties in that church. Not long after I was in a meeting with a little Evangelical body in Illinois, and at the table of my host I spoke very highly of their Bishop at Vermillion and noticed that all eyes went down and there was no response! I saw quickly that the Vermillion meeting and Bishop, were not of this party. The disciples said to Jesus, "We saw a man casting out devils in Thy name and we forbade him, because he followeth not us!"
We had some glorious times in the Vermillion camp, but the work was evidently circumscribed because of the church fight which was in progress. How patiently the Lord does bear with His people.
There was a Circuit Judge from Cleveland in that meeting whose soul was hungry for the bread of life, but for years he had been using tobacco and it had fastened itself upon him. The thought that a great Judge should submit to be a slave to stuff as filthy and loathsome as tobacco, is abhorrent. There might be a mixture of sense in being governed by a great principle, or an inferior being yielding to be a slave to a great man like Washington; but a bondman to a filthy appetite is execrable! He was at the altar crying for help, but the Lord can't do much for a man who loves to be filthy. But there came an hour one evening when he really showed God that he preferred full salvation to tobacco, and he emptied himself out of the latter, and God quickly gave him the former! There was great rejoicing as the Judge himself told the story.
We had a blessed camp at Letts, Iowa, with Brother Aura Smith as our helper, and victory at Paxton, Illinois, where he was the leader. Elsewhere, and in many places the Lord showed Himself as mighty to save. The following note was appended as we wound up at Elliott, Kansas: "A year of blessed heart experiences and glorious results. Never ending praises to the Eternal Trinity. Amen!"
The leaves missing from my diary have left me scant material for the seventeenth evangelistic year. Helping Brother Agnew at New Salem, Illinois, we had a battle for victory. We had a great time at Alexandria, Mo., with that staunch man of God, David Hand, at our back. At times it looked as though that desert would yet bloom like a garden, but it will take the thunders of the Judgment to shake loose the tangles of Alexandria!
A brief service near Edinburg, Illinois, so aroused one sinner the first night that he wished he would die if he did not wipe the ground with me before I got out of town! I had described his character, had dragged out all the meanness of his past, even described his family, so everybody must know that I meant him! Really, I had never heard of the dear man, nor did I know of his existence. Of course I got no bruises, nor was the ground seriously injured by the threatened wiping. There is in the breast of fallen men such love of sin and such hatred to its being uncovered, that a vast majority of ministers have become afraid to touch it, so we hear but little concerning it.
We had a meeting at Grand View, Illinois, where many precious souls were saved and sanctified. One merchant was brought to full salvation whose life since has been worth the labor of a half-dozen meetings. The Lord bless and keep dear Brother Wilson, whose saintly wife has since gone to glory. We also had a service with our dear Brother Nusbaum, at Hutchison, Kansas, in the beginning of his holiness experience and ministry. How God has used him in these years! Many of the camps of 1892 will bring shoutings in the judgment day, and our Father's books will then disclose what was done.
The eighteenth evangelistic year opened with a meeting in Joliet, Illinois, with my precious Brother S. F. Sheets, January 1st, 1893. His loving and able pastorate had prepared the way, and God gave us a blessed time together. Souls were converted, reclaimed and sanctified, but I have no record of numbers. Among other good things there was a lawyer sanctified, a Brother Crawford of that church. God so set his soul on fire that it drove him from the practice of law into the ministry and he is still a member of the Rock River Conference. Stopping with the pastor, whose wife was, and is, a glorious woman, and whose children were marked by good government and as members of the household of faith, I became attached to the family, especially to their little boy, who was among the finest specimens of a young American I ever saw. He was so manly and intelligent and full of life it was a luxury to be with the child. Not long after the meeting I received a telegram requesting that I preach the funeral of this child. With his playmate he was playing near the house when an electric car came by. Before it reached them his mate ran across the street in front of the car, and he, attempting to follow, was caught under the wheels, carried some rods and taken out lifeless! Dr. Cady, the Presiding Elder, and other ministers were present and the whole church was moved but the boy's father and mother were marvelously kept by the power of God in a state of wonderful victory. With the love they had for that boy, his death, as it came would have nearly wrecked them if they had been without God. Why do not the millions, in whose pathway there is coming sorrow, bereavement or disaster, get ready to be thus upheld when the evil day shall come?
Two days after closing at Joliet we opened at Pontiac, Illinois, Brother Joseph Bell being pastor. A more wide awake pastor will rarely be found and he draws a multitude towards him. He has enough tact for two common ministers, and, if thoroughly filled with the Holy Ghost would be a man of great power. There was a wide work in his church during our stay, and I think the church has been growing ever since, though she has met with some calamities. How many who then were brought into the experience of holiness have kept the faith I know not. Real holiness people, unless they have been doctored, are generally heard from afterwards, but these I have not been hearing from.
The National at Hackley Park, Mich., was not equal to expectations. Often where a great effort is made to make grounds popular, in view of an income from them afterwards, the Lord does not hasten to identify Himself with the movement. We had some good tugging in this camp. The brethren were true to holiness and much good was done. The camp at Des Moines in 1893 was esteemed as in advance of the one which preceded it; indeed it may truthfully be said, the Iowa State Camp has grown from the beginning, not spasmodically, but steadily. It was very small in its beginnings, it is now the strongest in the Middle West. I was at Louisville, and Litchfield, Ky., and found some precious saints in both places. People were converted and sanctified in each, but not in large numbers.
We reached the camp at Silver Heights, New Albany, Indiana, after it had been going some days. This camp from the beginning had been run strictly on the holiness line. Dear Brother Conner, who was its founder, had been very zealous and always insisted that such leaders be secured as would make it a strictly holiness camp, and the people had been thoroughly drilled on the subject. Dr. Keen was its leader this year, and had opened cautiously as though it was new ground where people had to be reached by gradual approaches. So he had been giving lessons on the baptism with the Holy Ghost. Among branches of that subject he had taught a baptism of peace, of rest and of joy, but had not involved sanctification in it all. Brother Conner and other were much moved because, as they thought, the standard was being lowered in the camp, and insisted that I must help bring it back to its channel, Brother Keen was as true as any of us, but he had been among Methodist preachers who had to be prepared to receive this truth!! That night we preached squarely on sanctification and Brother Keen backed up all we said and the next day we had a treat through Brother Keen preaching on the cleansing wrought in this baptism, and the work went forward graciously. The Silver Heights Camp is of God and has accomplished wonders in Jesus' name. Dear Brother Conner has been a great sufferer since then, but his heart is wondrously interwoven with the work of God on that hill.
We had services at Woodruff, Long Island, Norton and Colby, Kansas, in some of which Jehovah revealed His wondrous power to save. Also camps at Devises Kan., and Farmington, Iowa, which were made a blessing to many. The camp at Des Plaines, Illinois, was led by the National this year and was among the best ever held on those grounds. Dr. McDonald was at his best, and stood as a mighty prince in Israel. Dr. Carradine preached graciously and it was there we met Dr. C. J. Fowler for the first time and heard his wonderful sermon on Judas. Dr. McDonald had for a time insisted that his age should excuse him from the Presidency of the National, and mentioned earnestly C. J. Fowler as his successor. His brethren reluctantly accepted his resignation, and acquiesced in his choice of a successor by electing Doctor Fowler to preside over them. The wisdom of that choice each year becomes more apparent, and the National never did so wide a work as it is now doing.
This was a year of much labor and the book shows an income of $591.30, we paying our traveling expenses and house rent! We furnished pretty nearly a free Gospel and were wonderfully free ourself. Much has been said about holiness evangelists getting rich. I know one who has riches untold!