In publishing this Colportage Series, the one purpose is to disseminate widely the pure Gospel of Christ. America is being flooded with literature that is designed to turn hearts and minds from the faith of our fathers. Much of the popular reading of the day is either shallow and irreligious or erroneous and misleading. The volumes in this series are selected because of their lucid presentation of Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient Saviour of mankind. In cheap but attractive form the cream of the writings of great preachers and teachers are offered to the public. No profits will accrue to any one through these books save the spiritual blessing that comes to the readers and the satisfaction that comes to the distributors who thus serve God and their fellowmen. Evangelical Christians everywhere may assist in broadcasting these messages with the assurance that every word will ring true to the integrity of the Scriptures, the vicarious atonement of Christ, and the world's only hope in His coming again.
THE CHRISTIAN ALLIANCE PUBLISHING COMPANY.
IN 1903 Dr. Simpson first issued a little volume under the title of "The Discovery of Divine Healing" in which he set forth the teaching regarding healing as unfolded in different Books and in the experiences of various Biblical characters. This early volume was not intended to be an exhaustive treatise of this important theme, but was rather a presentation of helpful expositions that gathered around the lives of outstanding witnesses to the possibility of supernatural life for the body. The present volume is an enlargement of the early edition. Important chapters upon "Paul and Divine Healing" and "Natural and Supernatural Healing" have been added; also one of Dr. Simpson's strongest pamphlets on "Inquiries and Answers Concerning Divine Healing" has been included. This contains clear and logical replies to questions that usually arise in the minds of sincere inquirers after the truth. We are confident that this book will prove to be one of the most illuminating and widely appreciated works from the gifted pen of Dr. Simpson.
The personal testimony of Dr. Henry Wilson, the associate and intimate friend of Dr. Simpson, has been added as an appendix. Dr. Wilson wrote this testimony when, as he states, he had come to his majority, having passed twenty-one years of glorious renewed life through the acceptance of God's provision.
Because the subject of the Lord's Healing is now so widely discussed in Christian circles, it is hard to realize that only a generation ago but few teachers ever touched upon this phase of Scriptural doctrine. Probably no one teacher of recent years has been so much used of God in this connection as Dr. Simpson. In the minds of multitudes his name is inseparably connected with teaching about Divine Healing. Yet it is well to remember that Dr. Simpson consistently maintained that he was not the founder of a healing cult, nor did he wish to place healing before spiritual blessing and the salvation of the lost. He preached Christ, the living, all-sufficient Saviour. His dominant purpose was to make Him known in all the neglected lands of earth. His heart yearned over the lost and neglected at home and abroad. While faithful to the whole truth of God, he nevertheless placed soul-saving, the instruction of believers in deeper spiritual truths, and earnest missionary efforts before any ministry of healing. His teaching is best summed up in one of his own poems.
"Once it was the blessing,
Now it is the Lord;
Once it was the feeling,
Now it is His Word;
Once His gift I wanted,
Now the Giver own ;
Once I sought for healing,
Now Himself alone.
All in all forever,
Jesus will I sing;
Everything in Jesus,
And Jesus everything."
W.M. TURNBULL.
These delightfully interesting studies come back to us as fresh and winsome as when they first fell from the lips of the honored servant of God, whom many of us held as the Moses who led us through the wilderness of perplexity, the Joshua who inspired us to cross the Jordan into the land of decision.
Some who stood loyally with him in the early years of his wonderful ministry, like the disciples of old, went away. A few to utter repudiation of the truth they had learned through him; others to hold it with cautious reservation. But he lived through all the heartaches which accompanied such departures, sweet and patient, trustful and loving, ever ready to receive them ; for he, himself, never varied in the conviction that healing as he was moved to present it could not be divorced from the message of salvation. If our blessed Lord is the very life of His own, that life must be related to every department of our being.
With him, the espousal of this much-disputed doctrine was not a matter of novelty that would in time wear away and be replaced by other novelties. It gripped his whole being; it compelled his entire devotion; it absorbed his heart and mind. And we who saw the workings of his methods and life could not other than confess that he was moved by a complete surrender to the Holy Spirit. If only he could be found yielding to His behest in every turn he had to take, it was enough. The critics might pierce the atmosphere in which he lived with the arrows of poisoned unbelief; he was immune from infection. He literally was hid in God. It was this that made his messages so sacred to us.
The painful fact that teachers of Christian healing are subtly introducing psychology, that evident antagonist to the Holy Spirit, calls for the highest commendation of his manner. For he never permitted his teaching to be intinctured with any element of self-effort, self-introspection, self-poise. To him, the truth of healing lay absolutely in the gift of God to His own, by simple acceptance and childlike following in the way of God. Faith, unalloyed was his foundation. And the death of self that Christ might live was the superstructure of his teaching and experience.
They who did not know him in the flesh, may well pursue these studies with deep appreciation. For thus they will learn to know the man as well as to accept the truth he held so precious.
KENNETH MACKENZIE