Keswick's Authentic Voice by Herbert F. Stevenson, Editor

the Spirit of God, until God has first cleansed the man. If you say, How far cleansed? I repeat in a sentence, what has been often said: we teach no sinlessness here. We have known no sinless man. We find in the record of the Church, and in the record of God’s Book, no story of a sinless man save Jesus Christ. Understand that this is our firm position, which we defend as faithfully as any. But, on the other hand, how far the holiness of the soul may go, under the power, and the presence, and the teaching of Christ, I dare not say. I have seen no limit on God’s part. We are not straitened in Him. Alas, alas, we are straitened in ourselves.

And may I add one word? I know the humbling experience, and you know, brethren, the humbling experience, through which God leads men to higher and deeper blessing. We must kiss the dust before it is possible for God to fill us with His Holy Spirit; and if we are willing to kiss that dust which is at Jesus’ feet, then God undertakes to keep, and fill, and bless us. Are we willing to take that place? We have sung that hymn which always seems to me to be so solemn—“Oh! to be nothing, nothing.” I know not what your experience is, but I know mine has been that while one seeks honestly and sincerely to sing that hymn, yet when men treat us as if we were nothing, there is a certain movement within the soul. We ask to be nothing before God, and also to be nothing before men. Are we quite willing that God should take us at our word? Is there one of us who would feel no pang for a moment, if God took him at his word, as he sang that hymn, or offered that prayer? But it is a true prayer, and a needful prayer, and a blessed prayer, all the same. “Oh, to be nothing, nothing.” And I believe the only way that can be done is when Christ fills the soul of the man who welcomes Him and His indwelling; when Christ so fills the soul of that man and shows him the face of God, that he abhors himself in dust and ashes.