Yesterday stirred up in me a return to research on A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Here is an interesting excerpt from his magazine “Living Truths” (a magazine that ran for a few years in the early 1900’s).
Practical righteousness is a fruit of life, but it is not life, and to cultivate it apart from union with Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is just as unsatisfactory as it would be to try to cleanse a foul river by putting disinfectants into the body of the river rather than the fountain head.
Morality may exist without life, but life cannot exist without morality. There is a good deal of reform abroad today without spiritual power, just as we fear there is a good deal of religion without righteousness. Both are wrong.
Living Truths, Vol 7, No. 3, March 1907, p. 122.