ters from
ministers in that neighbourhood inquiring about him and telling how he had
gone into the school-houses and churches and Soldiers' Home and how there
were conversions wherever he spoke. In the days that followed men and
women from that meeting went out over the earth and I doubt if there was
any country that I visited in my tour around the world, Japan, China,
Australia, New Zealand, India, etc., in which I did not find some one who
had gone out from that meeting with the power of God upon them. For me to
doubt that God fills men with the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer would be
thoroughly unscientific and irrational. I know He does. And in a matter
like this, I would rather have one ounce of believing experience than ten
tons of unbelieving exegesis.

7. The seventh and last step is _faith_. We read in Mark xi. 24,
"Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray,
_believe that ye receive them_ and ye shall have them." No matter how
definite God's promises are, we only realize these promises experimentally
when we believe. For example we read in James i. 5, R. V., "But if any of
you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and
upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." Now that promise is as
positive as a promise can be but we read in the following verses, "But let
him _ask in faith nothing doubting_: for he that doubteth is like the
surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. For let not that man think
that he shall receive anything of the Lord; a double-minded man, unstable
in all his ways." The baptism with the Spirit, as we have already seen, is
for those believers in Christ, who have put away all sin and surrendered
absolutely to God, who ask for it, but even though we ask there will be no
receiving if we do not believe. There are many who have met the other
conditions of receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit and yet do not
receive, simply because they do not believe. They do not expect to receive
and they do not receive. But there is a faith that goes beyond
expectation, a faith that puts out its hand and takes what it asks on the
spot. This comes out in the Revised Version of Mark xi. 24, "Therefore I
say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, _believe that ye
have received them_ and ye _shall have_ them." When we pray for the
baptism with the Holy Spirit we should believe that we have received (that
is that God has granted our prayer an