THE MARTYRS OF THE HOLY GHOST.

Let us notice some principles peculiarly connected with the martyrs of the Spirit of holiness.

1. Their persecutions are always received on account of their testimony to an inner and hidden work of the Holy Ghost. The word ''martyr" is a Greek word, and means a "witness;" and the term has been left untranslated, because God's servants have ever been persecuted for being witnesses. If the apostles had gone through the earth simply philosophizing and speculating as to the historic Jesus, as many preachers do now, they would never have had any persecution. But when they squarely and firmly testified to what they had seen and heard of Christ, then, and not till then, did they become the martyrs of Jesus.

Now, the very same principle transpires with reference to the Holy Spirit. No one has ever been known to be persecuted in Catholic or Protestant lands, for preaching the cold, historic facts of the Holy Ghost. Fenelon and Fox, Wesley and Whitefield, Bunyan and Bramwell, may talk of the ancient recorded facts of the Spirit, and theorize and speculate all they please of the sanctifying office of the Spirit, and the devil would not deem it worth hissing after them. But when they turn witnesses, and declare that the living, personal Holy Spirit is not locked in the tomb of sacred lore; when they solemnly aver that the lightning of Pentecost can and does flash across the intervening centuries to their bosom; that He produces a new birth, and subsequently effects an entire sanctification in the soul which can be felt and known with infallible certainty; then the kingdom of hell is shaken, and everything in alliance with Satan, rises to oppose this testimony. We may preach in every form of statement the facts of redemption that occurred thousands of years ago, and neither Catholic nor Protestant, saint nor sinner, will persecute our prophecy, for the reason that such preaching, by itself, never saves any one, and is not worth a breath of opposition. The thousands of so-called religious effusions do not sufficiently disturb Satan to make him frown. When we affirm that the volume of historic Christianity is, by the Holy Ghost, reproduced in soul and life to-day; that the advent is repeated in spirit when we are born of God; that the dove on the head of Jesus is repeated when we receive the Spirit of adoption, and inwardly hear God's voice calling us children; that Gethsemane and the cross are repeated in God's children when we undergo death of self and entire crucifixion to the world; that the burial of Christ is repeated in our souls when we sink as it were into the silent grave of our own nothingness, and in a manner enter into the life of eternity; that the resurrection of Jesus is spiritually reproduced in us when we emerge by an act of perfect sanctifying faith (Rom. vi. 4, 5,) into victory over all sin and the world; that the day of Pentecost is truly and actually repeated in us when our purified hearts receive the instantaneous incoming of the personal fullness of the Holy Spirit to abide with us forever; when we thus declare that the Holy Ghost is transporting the history of redemption across the ages into the actual present; when we go farther, and testify that these things are verily taking place in our own experiences — it is then that we bring forth the kingdom of God; it is then that we shake and enrage the kingdom of Satan; it is then that we incur persecution. And this persecution is solely against a declared inward experience of the Spirit.

For over a thousand years there has been no persecution against the historic facts of Jesus, except a few infidel books; but it has all been directed against the Holy Ghost; sometimes against His work in regeneration; but especially against His work in entire sanctification. And everything said or done against entire holiness, as to its work, experience or testimony, proceeds from carnality, and is a thrust at the personal Holy Spirit.

2. Another principle is, that the martyrs of the Holy Ghost are seldom killed outright in bodily death. True, Romanism in the. dark ages killed thousands on account of the work of the Spirit; but multitudes of others not directly murdered, were imprisoned, banished, excommunicated, etc. And as the light of God fills the earth, the modes of persecution grow milder. Those who now witness to, and press forward, the work of holiness, though not actually killed, it may be, yet they are hated, ostracized, innuendoed and caricatured, from so-called religious pulpits and newspapers; shunned in company; denied offices of trust and honor; and hounded as disturbers of a sinful repose. This is more so in some places than in others; but when holiness is not opposed in some form or degree, it is be cause it is spurious, and not worth the old lion's growl.

3. The persecutions against the work of the Holy Spirit have invariably been from some branch of the professed visible Church of Christ. Jews, infidels and pagans do not lodge their attacks against personal experiences. They are more sensible in their madness, and attack the foundation of Scripture facts. That remains for Church systems, and professed Christians who believe the Bible and the atonement, and yet wage war on their fruit in holiness. Jews and infidels deny the root, stock and fruit of redemption; but millions of professed Christians are foolish enough to admit the root and stock of salvation and then deny its fruit in the power of experience.

The persecutions against God the Father were by idolaters, either Jewish or heathenish. The persecutions against Jesus were from Jews and false religionists. But the persecutions against the work of the Holy Ghost have always proceeded from the ranks of the visible Church, both Catholic and Protestant. It is always the outward form of Christianity pitted against the inward power of it. Ecclesiastical systems, and ecclesiastical devotees, while holding the form, have in all ages been the antagonists of the in dwelling power of the Holy Ghost.

Those who have the Holy Ghost are in the visible Church, and will stay there till the second coming of Christ; and yet it is true that you can not find a saint or advocate of holiness in the last fifteen hundred years that was not persecuted by those in the very Church to which they belonged. Jesus referred to this treatment in Luke xii. 41-48. The servant that Christ makes ruler in His household, most certainly refers to those in authority in the Church; and when Church rulers and eminent preachers, and rich ruling members, lose the Holy Ghost, and oppress and antagonize the lowly men-servants and maidens who are zealous for holiness, they bring on them the curse of this Scripture; and it often occurs that eminent Church rulers, and popular ministers and worldly laymen, who. have cracked coarse jokes over sanctification, and in many ways antagonized the testimony of holiness, are unexpectedly called to a dying bed, and find themselves poorly fitted to launch into a holy heaven. Many of them find that the very sanctification which they opposed and joked over, is what they must have in death; while some of these unfaithful preachers and Church officials will wake up in hell!

Perhaps most of the professed Christians who shun, or oppose sanctification, are not aware that they persecute the Spirit; but the remains of depravity in their hearts develop an ill feeling and blind prejudice against holiness. Yea, this may be done at the very time they are panting for a clean heart; for sometimes the carnal mind, like the devils of old, makes an ugly manifestation of itself as it is being cast out.

Inasmuch, then, as all believers are infected with inbred sin until they are wholly purified, and inasmuch as this inbred sin will show less or more resistance to the perfect will of God, therefore it is inevitable that the testimony of holiness will meet with some persecution in the visible Church; and more especially when we remember that vast numbers in the Church are not re generated, nor even penitent; so that offenses must come.

4. The true martyrs of the Holy Ghost receive persecution and ill usage with the meek and patient spirit of the dove and the Iamb; and they that have any other tempers may be martyrs, but are not martyrs of the Holy Spirit. Some receive persecution and misuse in such ill sort as to prove them not perfect witnesses to the lowly Lamb and heavenly Dove. Even Martin Luther once thought "it would be a pretty sight to see the pope and all the cardinals hanging in a row;" showing that resentment was still in his heart. He and many others have had, and still may have, the martyr virus in them; and yet are not the "holy, harmless, un dented" martyrs of the Spirit.

Wesley and De Renty would not have thought, or breathed, the words of Luther. What a contrast between Calvin and Fox, when viewed from the standpoint of lowly, patient, unresenting love! The martyrs of the Spirit's Dispensation are those who count all things loss for the excellency of an indwelling Christ. They deliberately choose to be counted the filth and off scouring of the world; to bear all things, hope all things, and endure all things; they look into eternity and see the vanity of earth, and the transitoriness of all earthly sorrows; they have chosen to go out into an eternal summer of humble love and oneness with Christ, regardless of the cost. They suffer, and die if need be, like the lamb and the dove. Michael De Molinos, for teaching and witnessing to the sanctifying work of the Spirit, was thrust by his own fellow priests into a solitary dungeon, where he patient ly lingered for eleven years. Bishop La Combe, for preaching and witnessing to the indwelling Spirit, was imprisoned for twenty-seven years, until his splendid mind was eclipsed by the un bearable woes of a lonely cell. Fenelon, on the account of sanctification, was banished for life to the Diocese of Cambray, and still treated his enemies with the gentleness of a child for their con duct. Wesley was often dragged about, bruised, and having his clothes torn to pieces by mad mobs instigated by his fellow-preachers of the English Church; and yet he only exclaimed, in a mild voice: " Friends, what harm have I done to any of you? " Mr. De Renty was intensely hated by his own mother because of his extreme piety; and she tried by a long lawsuit to rob him of his inheritance. Yet he treated her with the tender and affectionate reverence due to an angel. Hester Ann Rowe (afterwards Mrs. Rogers), on account of the Spirit work in her heart, was by her mother reduced to a domestic servant; and when that mother was very ill, the young and delicate Hester would do all the housework by day, and lovingly watch and wait upon the sick mother all night, week after week, till she nearly killed her frail body. Ministers in the Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Protestant Churches, who have become clear witnesses to the baptism of fire, have in some cases been by their Church authorities ejected from their pulpits, and have gone into humbler fields, gladly singing, "Anywhere with Jesus."

The time would fail me to enumerate the illustrious company of those who, in modern times, have "overcome evil with good." The great majority of them will remain hidden from view till they come with "the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus," who will unveil the graces of their lowly lives to an admiring universe.

The martyrs of the first dispensation bore witness to God in heaven; the martyrs of the second dispensation bore witness to the God incarnate, living, dying, rising; the martyrs of the Third Dispensation bear witness to God the Comforter, as an indwelling and sanctifying Lord.