Higher Life

It was through the influence of Major Daniel Whittle and reading a book called "The Higher Christian Life" by William Boardman that A. B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, was sanctified wholly. He spoke about his sanctification in the third person while testifying in 1915 at the anniversary of his ordination:

The patient Master was pleased to begin to teach him was the all-sufficiency of Christ. Never shall he forget the morning that he spent in his church study reading an old musty book he had discovered in his library on the subject "The Higher Christian Life." He had struggled long and vainly with his own intense nature, his strong self-will, his peculiar temptations, and his spiritual life had been a constant humiliation. He had talked to his people about the deeper things of the Spirit, but there was a hollow ring, and his heart was breaking to know the Lord Jesus as a living bright reality. As he pored over this little volume, he saw new light. The Lord Jesus revealed Himself as a living all-sufficient presence, and he learned for the first time that Christ had not saved us from future peril and left us to fight the battle of life as best we could, but He who had justified us was waiting to sanctify us, to enter into our spirit and substitute His strength, His holiness, His joy, His love, His faith, His power, for all our worthlessness, helplessness, and nothingness, and make it an actual and living fact, "I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me." This was indeed a new revelation. Throwing himself at the feet of that glorious Master he claimed the mighty promise, "I will dwell in you and you in me." Across the threshold of his spirit there passed a Being as real as the Christ who came to John on Patmos, and from that moment a new secret has been the charm, and glory, and strength of his life and testimony. And he shall never forget how he longed to come back to the land of his birth and the friends of former years, and tell them that magic, marvelous secret, hid from ages and generations, but now made manifest in the saints, which is Christ in you, the Hope of glory. Henceforth it was not his struggles, his character, his ethical culture, his moral goodness, but his constant dependence upon the living One who has said, "Because I live, ye shall live also." And whatever has been accomplished these forty years in personal victory or public service, he counts it a great privilege to stand here today and say, "Not I but Christ." "I have learned the secret, I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." This is not only the secret of spirit victory, but of mental efficiency and physical strength. It is such an identification with the incarnate Christ that His intellectual force passes into our limited capacity, and we can say, "We have the mind of Christ"; and His physical vitality quickens our failing strength, lifts us above disease and infirmity, and enables us to say, "The life of Jesus is made manifest in our mortal flesh."

This is the first paragraph in the introduction of a book called "The Higher Christian Life" by William Boardman. You can read the whole book at: http://online.cbccts.ca/alliancestudies/boardman/Higher_PI_CHI.htm

"PREPARE YE THE WAY OF THE PEOPLE." — ISAIAH LXII. 10.

Some disciples of Christ live, life-long, under condemnation, and know no better. They are always doubting, and think they must always doubt. And very many live a life of ups and downs, and suppose that to be the best God has in store for them while in the body. Occasionally they gain some lookout in the mount, and then, through the swaying branches of the trees of life moved by the breath of heaven, they catch glimpses of the river of the waters of life, gleaming in the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, and are filled with gladness. But then again, soon they find themselves in the low grounds of unbelief, wrapped up in fogs of doubt, and chilled, and poisoned, by the mist and malaria of worldly cares and worldly company. To all these, a book which should bring the knowledge, as really reliable and true, that there is actually, a sunny side of the Christian life — such an experimental knowledge of Jesus, as. would place the soul, as a vineyard on the southern slope, under the sun and the rain of heaven, to blossom and ripen its luscious fruit in abundance for the glory of the Master — Ah, how such a book would be hailed as glad tidings from God!