Pentecostal Possibilities or "The Story of My Life"
by Milton Lorenzo (M. L.) Haney
CHAPTER 70
In Conclusion
We have thus brought this story up to the present time. Its discrepancies because of failing memory and insufficient record of facts, will doubtless be apparent. In the end of the many years I see much to regret concerning the past, and many things which have been a grief to God. It is sixty-two years and one hundred and eighty days since He answered my cry for mercy and made me His child. The new life which came into my soul with pardon, brought with it a quenchless desire for the world's salvation which has never been absent for a day. As has been written, through a mother's prayers and covenant with God, I was set apart from the womb for a minister. I could not have followed any other vocation without violating the covenant which gave me being. I testify that from my infancy I now see that God kept His hand on me for this purpose, and some way, during my life in sin, before my conversion, I never got away from that trend of soul, and always rejoiced when sinners were converted.
That inwrought passion to save men from sin has increased with the years, and God has used it to prevent my turning to the right or to the left. My connection with Methodist preachers and people in early childhood and youth goes far toward accounting for that which may have been of value in me through these years to the cause of Christ. Had my lot been thrown in other schools of theology, no finite mind can know where I would have landed, or how soon I would have been wrecked. To the fact that my first teaching was in the Wesleyan School, I am indebted beyond expression. Sitting at the feet of John Wesley, Richard Watson, Adam Clarke, and Benson, I placed my soul where no power has ever been able to turn me from the simplicity of the gospel of Christ. The books in my Conference studies were unmixed on the subject of holiness, and the law of my church demanded that my soul go forward into the grace of perfect love as a distinct, second experience, in order to be her minister. I was thus walled in, and could not answer the demand of my conscience as a Methodist preacher, without seeking a holy heart.
Then, such was my ignorance and excessive timidity, that success in the ministry seemed impossible without it, and long ago I should have gone down had I failed to secure it. It to me is a blessed memory, that in fifty-seven years I have never preached a sermon out of harmony with the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian holiness. In all, I have given about thirty-one years to the work of an evangelist, and as compared with the pastorate, it, has been a sacrifice of more than five thousand dollars; but I believe it has added to my ministry twenty thousand souls. It has cost me the heart love of many who were very dear to me, and a thousand misunderstandings among my brethren, but God has seen to it that I should have the fellowship of ten thousand, who are closely allied to Him, and welcomed my glad soul to wondrous union with Him.
No wrong treatment I have ever received from an human being, now pains me, and the greatest agonies of my life have been turned into blessing. No feeling of enmity to any soul for whom Christ has died adheres to my spirit, but a passionate desire for the highest happiness of all, now rules me. Seventy-eight years have passed swiftly by, but I see their wonderful connection with eternity. No days of childhood, or youth, or middle years were equal to these hoary days of walking with God. This ministry of holiness is more beautiful than the light of the morning, and the chance to spread it, more desirable than heaven itself. This real gospel of God's Holy Son! O, I would gladly live yet, to proclaim it, till ten thousand young men and women were hurried out and on into its open fields! The millions who are dying without God are haunting my soul! Be it known by any who may read this story when the hand that wrote it is palsied: there was one heart which did not cease its efforts to save men, till it ceased its beating.