Holiness: The Heart of Christian Experience

From the introduction:
It is interesting to observe that the Wesleyan revival from its outset emphasized the importance of literature. John Wesley financed and personally distributed thousands of pieces of printed matter.

Down through the years there has been no lack of holiness literature in books, pamphlets, and periodicals. It should be so. There never can be an oversupply. The field never will be saturated. The work of indoctrination and propagation must depend largely upon the printed page.

The ramifications of holiness are limited only by life itself. There is no phase of life, no corner or cranny of human experience into which holiness does not fit. In writing this book Dr. Chapman has proceeded from that very premise. He starts with his own experience, from which he goes on to comment on the prerequisites of holiness. Then he defines and differentiates holiness. Next he proves that the experience is obtainable and then points the way to get it.

The progression carries on to the application of the experience to all of life, to evangelism, to the workaday problems of everyday living, and to the Second Coming. Following this the "Holiness Catechism" anticipates just about every intelligent question that might arise in the mind of any sincere inquirer.

Holiness is an essential doctrine. It fits us for living, for death, and for heaven. It operates on the core of our nature and affects the outmost reach of our influence. The book is rightly named Holiness, the HEART of Christian Experience.

We predict that it will have the wide and effective ministry which it richly deserves.

This edition includes an Active Table of Contents, which are as follows:
Chapter 1: HOW I BECAME INTERESTED IN BIBLE HOLINESS
Chapter 2: HOLINESS IN THE TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE
Chapter 3: THE PREREQUISITES OF HOLINESS
Chapter 4: HOLINESS DEFINED
Chapter 5: HOLINESS DIFFERENTIATED
Chapter 6: HOLINESS OBTAINED
Chapter 7: THE WAY TO HOLINESS
Chapter 8: HOLINESS AS A LIFE LIVED
Chapter 9: HOLINESS AND EVANGELISM
Chapter 10: HOLINESS AND PRACTICAL LIVING
Chapter 11: HOLINESS AND THE SECOND COMING
Chapter 12: A HOLINESS CATECHISM
Chapter 13: CORRESPONDENCE ON HOLINESS

About the author (from Wikipedia):
James Blaine Chapman (1884-1947) was a minister, president of Arkansas Holiness and Peniel Colleges, editor of the Herald of Holiness, and general superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene.

Chapman was born 1884 in Yale, Illinois, the second son and fifth child in his family. The family moved to Oklahoma when he was fourteen years old, where he was converted to Christianity in 1899. Chapman's first academic instructor was his wife, a schoolteacher. When he took a pastorate at Vilonia, Arkansas in 1908, he enrolled at the Arkansas Holiness College there at age 24. After graduating in 1910, he left to pursue further study at Texas Holiness University in Peniel, Texas under president Roy T. Williams, where he received his bachelor's of divinity degree in 1913. Peniel College later awarded him an honorary doctor of divinity degree, in 1918, and Pasadena College did the same in 1927.

Chapman would later become editor of the Herald of Holiness from 1921 to 1928 and was then elected general superintendent. He joined the Nazarene community of Quincy, Massachusetts in 1930, and served as general superintendent until his death in 1947.

A residential dorm on the campus of Olivet Nazarene University is named after Chapman.

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