THE WITNESS OF FAITH: ITS EXPERIENCE 1 Peter 1:5,9: In whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

The witness of faith is just as conscious an experience as is the witness of the Holy Spirit. It comprises emotions of joy, peace, and gladness peculiar to itself. There is a faith-feeling just as there is a fear-feeling or a lovefeeling.

There is no true faith without feeling. Who can confide in a friend without any emotion of pleasure? Or who can accept in good faith the promise of another, and not feel a gladness of heart? As Dr. Lowrey wrote some months since, in The Divine Life: The truth is, faith is a matter of feeling. To speak of believing without feeling is very misleading; for where believing begins, feeling also begins. A man without any faith-feeling may begin to believe; but when he does so, he also begins to feel the emotions which accompany faith. Faith is all experience as well as an act of the soul, and the witness of faith is both the consciousness of all act performed and of a feeling experienced. This faith-feeling is just as real as the feeling which is concomitant to the experience of the Holy Spirits witness. And not only so, but in its own kind there is as great an intensity of emotion in the experience of faith as there is in the experience of the Holy Spirits witness.

Joy in believing and joy in the Holy Ghost, though different forms of joy, may both be alike unspeakable and full of glory. When faith is immediate, lively and unwavering, it not only brings salvation and joy in believing, but more-joy unspeakable and full of glory. The experience of the witness of faith is most precious. The following are some of its most interesting phases:

I. A sense of rest Faith always brings rest of soul. They who believe, do enter in to rest.

Faith and rest are Siamese twins; they are inseparable. When faith is wanting. rest is wanting; and when rest is wanting, faith is wanting.

President Finney used to frequently say: Whenever you get out of rest, you are out of faith. The witness of faith brings a rest to the soul from all fear as to its saving interest in Christ. Having consciously received the Lord Jesus as its Savior, it no longer fears. Faith is a complete antidote to fear. Faith is the stronger one which casts out the strong man, fear, from the soul. All fear of law, of judgment, of penalty, and of every other evil thing, departs, when faith possesses the heart. Faith emancipates from fear.

There comes also with the witness of faith a rest from the seeking or struggle for salvation. The pursuit is over; the faith that saves is realized; salvation is received; expectation is at an end; anticipation has become attainment. The impulse to weep and struggle and pray for salvation subsides. When President Finney alone, praying in great agony of soul, experienced justification by faith, there was such a cessation of mental anxiety and of the impulse to pray, that walking home, he was tempted to think that, instead of being converted, he had only fallen into indifference.

But it was the true rest of faith that always marks the end of seeking and the beginning of receiving salvation. It is such a rest that all concern for salvation vanishes. The soul that believes on the Son of God has no concern about salvation.

Moreover, this rest of faith frees the seeking soul from anxiety about the witness of the Holy Spirit; for faith commits both the saving work and the witness of the same to Christ so implicitly that it can have no restless longing for either. I read, not long since, this sentence, which is a golden spiritual axiom: In proportion as a seeking soul is anxiously concerned for the witness of the Holy Spirit, in that degree it is doubting. Sometimes, indeed most generally, the last bulwark of unbelief that surrenders to faith is to accept salvation on the Word of the Lord without the witness of the Holy Spirit, and to rejoice that the Holy Spirit in his own time and in his own way will attest the saving work that shall be wrought in us. A young man came to me in great trouble. I was just starting to my pulpit on Sabbath morning. He was weeping, and was a very picture of distress. I could only talk with him a few minutes.He told me his trouble. I said to him: I will fix matters so that your trouble will be at an end. I did not say when or how I would do it. He wiped away his tears; a restful expression took the place of the worried features he wore when he entered my door. I had done nothing; I had only promised to do something. He believed me, and rest came to his troubled heart. He left me within five minutes bright and happy. I attended to his case as soon as I could, and saved him from the trouble which threatened him, and did not see him again until two days afterward. I met him on the street. I supposed his first inquiry would be, Have you attended to my case? that he would want a witness that I had done what I had promised; but he conversed with me several minutes, and asked nothing about what I had promised, and was about to leave, when I said to him:

Your matter is all adjusted.

O, said he: I knew that was all right I had no anxiety about it, since you said you would attend to it. He had all this while been unconcerned about any assurance that I had done it; he had not worried himself about such an assurance, nor had he worried me about it. So the soul, when it accepts Gods promise of salvation by faith, rests from all concern about the witness of the Holy Spirit; it doesnt worry itself, nor does it worry the Lord about it. As long as the soul is fretting about the witness, and pestering the Lord about it, it has not yet the rest of faith; for faith brings rest from all such unnecessary anxiety, I said to a lady who had accepted Christ by faith for full salvation: Have you the witness of the Spirit? She instantly said: No, and I don’t care; for I know it will come. She had the witness of faith, and that earnest of the promised witness of the Holy Spirit was sufficient for her.

II. A sense of possession Faith is an act of claiming, of receiving. It takes what is proffered in the promises of Gods Word; so that with it there springs up in the heart a sweet sense of ownership, and the soul begins to say: Jesus is mine, I am saved.

Joshua was commanded of the Lord to say to the children of Israel: Ye shall pass over this Jordan to possess the land which the Lord thy God giveth you to possess it. Then he added: Every place where the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that I have given unto you. Wherever Judah should set his foot that should be his; where Benjamin should set his foot, that should be his. Each should get his inheritance by setting his foot upon it. Now, think you not, when either had set his foot upon a given territory, he did not instantly and instinctively feel, This is mine?

Think you not that he would have defended his proprietorship against every other contestant? And would he not have felt at once a joyful sense of ownership of the tract he had thus pre-empted? So when the soul sets the foot of its faith upon pardon or full salvation as promised to him, there does come to it immediately such a precious persuasion of possessorship as fills it with a gladness which can not be quenched by any lack of further witness, or by any temptation of the adversary to think otherwise. The instant the footfall of faith is set upon the promise, the soul begins to sing: And all its riches mine.

The witness of faith is always It is done I believe on the Son; I am saved by the blood Of the crucified One.

An old colored man, who had a marvelous experience in grace, was asked:

Daniel, why is it that you have so much peace and joy in religion? O Massa! he replied, I just fall flat on the exceeding great and precious promises, and I have all that is in them. Glory, Glory! He who falls flat on the promises, feels that all the riches embraced in them are his.

III. A sense of satisfaction.

Faith is a state of satisfaction. Persons sometimes say: I am trusting, but I am not satisfied. That is impossible for the soul that is trusting for salvation is satisfied with salvation by promise, and anticipates soon salvation by power. If your home were under order from the court to be sold tomorrow, to cancel a judgment against you for one thousand dollars, and you had no money wherewith to redeem it, and a friend should, tonight, present you with a note on the Bank of England for one thousand dollars, do you think you would say to him: I am not satisfied? Would you feel, I havent any money! Would you not rather experience the sweetest satisfaction? and would you not joyfully tell your wife and children: I have one thousand dollars; our home is saved? Yet that bank-note is only a piece of paper; it is neither silver nor gold; the judgment is still upon your home, but somehow that banknote commands so implicitly your confidence that you are most delightfully satisfied. So when the soul accepts in like faith any one of Heavens bank-notes of promise as the pledge of either pardon, purity, or power, a satisfaction takes possession of the heart that is unspeakable and full of glory; for Heavens bank of grace can not fail, and Heavens paper is payable at sight. The value of the witness of faith has been greatly underestimated in the instruction of seekers of salvation. It should be emphasized as the objective point in seeking salvation. The struggle of most seeking hearts is for the witness of the Holy Spirit, and in most cases this is so prominent in their minds as to hinder them more than any other thing in attaining it. It is the vain struggle to have God do his work, which he will certainly do without our anxiety or struggle about it. The real struggle should be for the seeking heart to do its part; that is, to believe unto salvation, and so attain the witness of faith which always brings a glorious rest and satisfaction of soul. We have seen souls come into the joy of pardon or full salvation, receiving the witness of the Holy Spirit thereto.

Then we have seen these in an hour, a day, or a week, doubting the divine work wrought in their hearts; some even casting away their confidence and forfeiting their pardon, or cleansing. The cause of this was evident. When their emotions subsided, the tempter came and said: Where is your salvation? you have no feeling; and not having clearly discerned that they were saved by faith, they concluded they were deceived, and lapsed into darkness. Suppose they had learned that only trusting they were saved; then when an abatement of the joy came which was concomitant to the witness of the Holy Spirit, they would have repelled the temptation of the adversary by simply singing, I am trusting, Lord, in thee, and they would not only have retained the rest of faith, but there would doubtless have come a renewed and more powerful witness of the Holy Spirit. Here is a spiritual axiom that is invaluable: The witness of faith attained, the witness of the Holy Spirit always follows; and the witness of faith maintained, retains and increases the power of the witness of the Holy Spirit.

A man, in a meeting I held, had been very clearly and powerfully converted. It was a wonderful conversion, such as no one should ever doubt; but within three days I found him bordering on despair, walking in darkness, and about to conclude that he was not saved. The intensity of heart emotion, and the corresponding nervous excitement, which the first realization of saving grace brought, had subsided, and he feared that it had all been excitement and no salvation. I said to him: Are you still given to God? He replied: Yes. Have you ceased to trust Jesus to save you? O! said he, that was the way I was saved, wasnt it? I just trusted. O, I will trust on! and instantly rest came again into his heart, and in a few moments the Holy Spirits witness was renewed in great power to him, and ever since he has been a stable and growing Christian, and now walks in the blessing of perfect cleansing, through the blood of the Lamb, by faith. It is said, one reason why the work of conversion and entire sanctification under Mrs.

Phoebe Palmer has such permanence in the hearts of those whom she led to Christ, was because she emphasized so constantly the faith that saves. Whosoever believeth shall not make haste.