A FORM OF GODLINESS by A. T. Pierson

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 17, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 11.

A FORM OF GODLINESS.

By A. T. Pierson

I WENT one afternoon to a cathedral. What a vast temple! A colossal organ whose plaintive whisper or pealing thunder rolled billows of sound along the arches! A choir of surpliced boys sang like larks. Then a grand sermon from a great preacher, fitly called a canon, whose velvet sermon case rested on a brazen spread-eagle. But with all these charms, there was only a handful of people, and they were staring about as though in a museum! I came away, asking myself when will the church learn that, if she will have the spirit of the world in her courts, she cannot have the Spirit of God, unless he comes, not as the shining shekinah, but as the consuming fire; not as Jesus, with the breathing of the Holy Ghost, but with the lashing scourge and the flashing eye!

—Rev. A. T. Pierson.