views on this vexed question are not extreme but philosophical and
scriptural. She teaches that God has made the bestowment of salvation
simultaneous with the exercise of faith, and that "telling a person
to believe he is saved, before he is saved, is telling him to believe
a lie." But she insists that the act of faith is put forth with the
special aid of the Holy Spirit giving an assurance that the blessing
sought will be granted. This assurance, or earnest, given by the
Spirit, becomes the basis on which the final act of faith rests,
namely, "I believe that I receive." This corresponds with William
Taylor's Divine "ascertainment of the fact of the sinner's surrender
to God, and his acceptance of Christ," before justification.
[Footnote: Election of Grace, pp. 38-42.] Both teachers agree with
Wesley's analysis of faith which teaches that the fourth and last
step, "He doth it," can be taken only by the special enabling power
of the Holy Spirit, [Footnote: Sermons. Patience, Section 13; Scripture
Way of Salvation, Section 17; and Whedon on Mark xi. 24.] All three
locate the Divine efficiency before the declaration, "I believe that I
receive," or "have received" (R. V.), making that declaration rest upon
the perception of a Divine change within the consciousness. They all
insist that saving faith is not a mere humanly moral exercise, but
that power to believe with the heart descends from God, and that it
must be waited for in prayer, and that it becomes in the believer a
series of supernatural and spiritual acts, a habit of soul, at once
the seed and fruit of the Divine life-stirring, uniting in itself the
characters of penitent humility, self-renunciation, simple trust, and
absolute obedience grounded in love. These teachers magnify the
Divine element in faith. We look in vain in their writings for any
such direction to a penitent as this, "Believe that you are saved,
because, God says so in His Word," but rather believe that you are
saved when you hear His Spirit crying, Abba, Father, in your heart.