Conclusion

Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? ZECHARIAH 3:2

Ten chapters can make it look as though Julia Foote taught a number of things. She taught one thing, and everything else is that one thing lived out. The one thing is this: that Jesus Christ saves to the uttermost. He does not only pardon; He cleanses. He does not only save at death; He saves now. Conversion is a new song given, not learned. The inward foes that remain are not to be accepted as a life sentence. Sanctification is received by faith, and its mark is a heart in which every temper contrary to love has been put out. The Spirit who cleanses may send whom He will, and no discipline of men can countermand Him. A church divided at the Lord’s table has not been cleansed. A life given to the world has not been renewed. And the fire of trial is not the absence of God but the place where He walks with His people.

The danger of this book

If you have read this far, you are in some danger, and she would have named it before anyone. The danger is that you admire her. It is easy to be moved by the story of a poor Black woman who outlasted her critics and was ordained by the church that had cast her out. And it is easy to close the book exactly as you opened it.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. JAMES 1:22

She ended her own book not with a summary but with a question and an invitation: why not yield, believe, and be sanctified now, while reading? That is the proper end of this book too. Go back to the chapter that made you least comfortable, not the one you liked best. Take its application points and do them.

Two things to carry

First, expect more of God. Whatever you conclude about a second blessing, do not conclude that the Christian life is a long defeat to be endured until death. That was the counsel given to a hungry girl in Albany, and she was right to call it a delusion. Christ came to save His people from their sins. Ask Him to do it.

And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. MATTHEW 1:21

Second, let it show in love. Her definition of perfection was love with no rival, and she tested it where it is hardest to test: in the face of a minister she believed had lied about her, a church that expelled her, and a nation that refused her a seat. If holiness does not make you gentler towards those who wrong you, and braver towards those who are wronged, it is not the holiness she meant.

A last word about her

We have been honest about her limits. Her teaching that sin is destroyed at the root in the sanctified goes beyond what many careful readers find in Scripture. She read some texts loosely. She took visions and impressions as God’s voice more readily than the Bible warrants, and for a time she treated the seeking of medical help as a failure of faith. She was strict about pleasures where Scripture leaves liberty, and she was not always gentle with her opponents. None of this is said to diminish her; she would have wanted her readers to test everything by the Word of God.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:7

And the light is very bright. She learned her letters from a father who hardly knew them, and read her Bible by a dying fire. She preached for half a century with no salary, through fever and silence and grief, in churches and houses and camp meetings, to Black congregations and white. She would not speak where her own people were barred. She loved her opponents as fathers. And she lived to see the door that had been shut in her face opened by the same church, and to be called, at the last, an elder.

She wrote her book, she said, praying that it might promote the cause of holiness in the church. It still can. The question it asks is not whether she was remarkable. It is whether you believe that the Christ who reached into the fire for her can do for you all that He has promised.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name the chapter of this book that unsettled you most, and the one application point from it you have not yet done. Do it this week.

2. Ask God plainly to save you from one particular sin, not only from its guilt but from its power, and to begin now.

3. Choose one person who has wronged you and one person who is being wronged. Pray for the first, and do something practical for the second.

4. Where you disagree with her, write down why, from Scripture. Where you agree, write down what it will cost you.

5. Read her memoir through from the first page to the last, slowly, as the testimony of a sister in Christ.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You saved Julia Foote to the uttermost, and You have not changed.

Keep me from admiring her and changing nothing. Save me from my sins and not only from their penalty, and begin today.

Fill me with a love that has no rival, gentle to those who wrong me and brave for those who are wronged.

And when my course is finished, let me too be found a brand plucked from the fire, to the praise of Your grace. Amen.