Catherine Booth

"I do not find two standards of Christian experience at all. I do not believe God ever intended there should be a lower life and a higher life, and I am afraid that those people who rest in the lower life will find themselves awfully mistaken at the last. I believe that religion is all or nothing. God is either first or he is nowhere with us, individually. The very essence and core of religion is ‘God first’, and allegiance and obedience to him first." -- Catherine Booth

"'This is the will of God, even your sanctification,' wrote Paul to the Thessalonians. There is a sense, and an important sense, in which sanctification must be the will of man. If it is not my will the divine will can never be accomplished in me. I must will to be sanctified, as God is willing that I should be sanctified. James, in his epistle, says, 'Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.' This was said to people who had been professing to believe, but had gone back under the dominion of their fleshly appetites. There are two or three other texts which seem to sum up the whole matter as, for instance, 'Jesus Christ . . . gave Himself for us (that is, for us Christians, the whole Church of God) that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.' Then 1 Timothy 1:5 shows God's purpose and aim in the whole method of redemption: 'Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned'--cleansed and kept clean, for if it had been clean and had become dirty again it would be not a good, but a bad conscience. And again, in 1 John 3:3, 'Every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.' These are summing-up texts and there are numbers of others to show that the whole purpose of redemption is to restore us to purity; not only to purge us from the past, but to keep us purged to serve the living God. This shall be by the application of the Blood of Christ to the conscience, and by the power of the Holy Ghost keeping us in a state of purity and obedience to righteousness. If God through Christ cannot do this for me, what is my advantage at all by his coming?" -- Catherine Booth