the writer's ministry when
he was led to say that he would never enter his pulpit again until he had
been definitely baptized with the Holy Spirit and knew it, or until God in
some way told him to go. I shut myself up in my study and day by day
waited upon God for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. It was a time of
struggle. The thought would arise, "Suppose you do not receive the baptism
with the Holy Spirit before Sunday. How it will look for you to refuse to
go into your pulpit," but I held fast to my resolution. I had a more or
less definite thought in my mind of what might happen when I was baptized
with the Holy Spirit, but it did not come that way at all. One morning as
I waited upon God, one of the quietest and calmest moments of my life, it
was just as if God said to me, "The blessing is yours. Now go and preach."
If I had known my Bible then as I know it now, I might have heard that
voice the very first day speaking to me through the Word, but I did not
know it and God in His infinite condescension, looking upon my weakness,
spoke it directly to my heart. There was no particular ecstasy or emotion,
simply the calm assurance that the blessing was mine. I went into my work
and God manifested His power in that work. Some time passed, I do not
remember just how long, and I was sitting in that same study. I do not
remember that I was thinking about this subject at all, but suddenly it
was just as if I had been knocked out of my chair on to the floor, and I
lay upon my face crying, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" I could not stop.
Some power, not my own, had taken possession of my lips and my whole
person. The writer is not of an excitable, hysterical or even emotional
temperament, but I lost control of myself absolutely. I had never shouted
before in my life, but I could not stop. When after a while I got control
of myself, I went to my wife and told her what had happened. I tell this
experience, not to magnify it, but to say that the time when this
wonderful experience (which I cannot really fully describe) came was not
the moment when I was baptized with the Holy Spirit. The moment when I was
baptized with the Holy Spirit was in that calm hour when God said, "It is
yours. Now go and preach."

There is an afternoon that I shall never forget. It was the eighth day of
July, 1894. It was at the Northfield Students' Convention. I had spoken
that morning in the church on How to Receive the Baptism with the Holy
Spirit. As