The Spirit-Filled Life - Couverture souple

John MacNeil was born October 19, 1854 in Scotland. His family attended the Free Church which had seceded from the Church of Scotland in 1843. In 1860, the MacNeil family including John and his younger brother moved to Ballarat, Victoria in Australia where John’s father worked constructing railroads. John too took up this vocation until he felt the call to ministry. He described his spiritual awakening as slow and gentle until an experience while he sat in the back of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Melbourne opened his eyes. In 1871, he left for university in Melbourne and supported his studies with railroad work until 1876 when he travelled to Scotland to complete his theological studies. In 1879, he returned to the dry air of Australia for health reasons and to begin his ministry. For the next four years, John travelled as an evangelist holding meetings all over Southern Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. It was during this time that he received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit which became a vital focus of his ministry going forward. Prayer meetings led to a Keswick style convention which he held with George Grubb in Geelong. In 1883, John met Hannah Thomas at a meeting he was holding in Golden Square, Bendigo. In April, 1884, they were married and over the next eleven years they had five children. In 1894, John published, The Spirit-Filled Life which sold out in four months. In 1896, John was at the end of another long campaign in Brisbane when he collapsed and died in a portmanteau shop. Hannah received the news through a friend who had been notified by telegram. Hannah’s biography of her husband’s ministry was published the following year. To follow, Hannah oversaw publications of her husband’s writings which she titled, Even So Come, Some One is Coming, and Honey Gathered and Stored.

The following is the author's introduction to this book from 1894. Many, oh! so many of God's dear children are living on the wrong side of Pentecost, living on the same plane as that on which the disciples were living before they “were filled with the Holy Ghost”; and thus by their lives practically making the sad confession, “We did not so much as hear whether the Holy Ghost was given,” or “whether there be any Holy Ghost.” The object of this little work is to call their attention to their Birthright, to the fact that the Fullness of the Spirit is the Birthright of every believer. God wants us to be living this side of Pentecost, not the other side. In “much fear and trembling,” because of its inadequateness, but with earnest and unceasing prayer to Him Who has been pleased before today to “choose the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty”—with the prayer that He would graciously do so again, I send this little messenger forth on its mission, trusting that the reading of it may be as great a blessing to every reader as the writing of it has been to the writer.