I was happy, but I made the common mistake of our day; I did not forsake my old companions and habits, and the inevitable result followed. For fourteen years I lived the up-and-down experience so bitterly familiar to the average church member. I attended church, went to the prayer-meeting, took part in it quite frequently, spoke on religious subjects and on temperance, always from a gospel standpoint; and unquestionably I grew in grace to some extent. I never enjoyed myself so much as when I was working in Mr. Moody's inquiry-meetings in Baltimore, in 1878-9; and yet, even up to that time, I was continually slipping and falling before tempers or desires, in some form or other. Confession and prayer brought forgiveness, and I was very sure that I was God's child, so that when asked, "Are you a Christian?" I never thought of answering in any other way than, "Yes, thank the Lord."

But all this time there was a tremendous conviction of a great inward need, a cry from my soul that God would take away from my heart these internal desires toward evil. I had never read a line on the subject; had never heard a sermon on the Holy Ghost or upon the subject of sanctification; had never been to a camp-meeting nor entered a Methodist Church more than three times. But my soul cried out for complete deliverance, and God's unlimited promises stood out like stars above me. But I was not ready and willing to pay the price.  In the summer of 1879, my heart, which had been chronically diseased for seven years, resisting the remedies of the ablest physicians, and refusing to grow better even after three years spent in sheep ranching among the mountains of California, suddenly broke down so seriously as to bring me to the very verge of the grave. I had heard a little of the "prayer of faith" for healing, but I felt persuaded that it would border upon blasphemy to ask God for a strength which I did not propose to use wholly for Him; and hence, it was that this desire for health only increased the sense of the necessity for a great and entire consecration.

…

Perhaps the crucial point was passed in this way: Undervaluing the deep peace in my soul and the great hunger for the Word which continually possessed me, not seeing that these were evidences of the Spirit's presence, I yearned and cried after some great manifestation. But one night, after lying in an agony of supplication upon my floor for hours, I rose up, and, lifting my hand to heaven, said, "O, Lord, if I never feel any more than I do now to the day of judgment I will believe on Thy Word that Jesus saves me now. If the children of Israel could shout over Jericho when not one stone in its walls had fallen, I can do the same." And I began saying aloud, "Jesus saves me now! Jesus saves me now!"

God, the angels, and the devil heard it. But my audience all understood that I meant "sanctified wholly"; so the Lord got the honour of a complete work even from ignorant lips, and gradually the conviction grew in my soul that it was really true. This inward conviction or persuasion I soon recognized as the longed-for "witness of the Spirit," and then, for the first time, knew those thrills of heavenly joy which have been styled the "effusions of the Holy Ghost."