samuel logan brengle and helps for holiness

2024.01.20
My middle name comes from a Salvationist Theologian, Samuel Logan Brengle - my folks grabbed his middle name instead of making it look like we were grabbing my grandfather's name of Sam.

(As of late I sometimes daydream about dropping my last name; Logan is not prone to misspelling nor associated with the endless cauldron of violence the middle east has become)

I read his 1896 book "Helps to Holiness". I'm struck by the ecstatic nature of Christianity for him- it's an intense set of glorious feeling bestowed by God as a gift if you're fortunate and asking correctly, not so much something to be reasoned about, though I noticed he was awfully deft at quoting scripture.

The books Matthew and Mark mention Jesus talking about the unpardonable sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) which worried me as a kid- screwing up my eternal fate was much on my mind, but at least my church was usually big into the chance of forgiveness and redemption, but not with that apparently so it seemed really dangerous! Anyway my mom gave about the same argument to me then that Brengle does as an aside here:
Brother, if you have not committed the unpardonable sin -- and you have not, if you have any desire whatever to be the Lord's -- your first step is to renew your consecration to the Lord, confessing your backslidings; and then your second and only step is to cry out with Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him" (Job. xiii. 15); and this ground you must steadfastly hold, till the witness comes of your acceptance.
Finally I was kind of amused by the soft hands shade he was throwing here:
It is quite the fashion now to be "consecrated" and to talk much about "consecration." Lovely ladies, robed in silk, bedecked with jewels, gay with feathers and flowers, and gentlemen, with soft hands and raiment, and odorous with perfume, talk with honeyed words and sweet, low voices about being consecrated to the Lord.