Keswick is the name of a town in the lake country of England, as well as the name of a holiness convention that met annually in the town starting in 1876. A four day meeting initially, it was considered a spiritual clinic that helped attendees seek after a life of godliness. Eventually an extra day of meetings was added to focus on mission service. Murray first came to Keswick in 1879. Eventually he became a much appreciated speaker at the convention.
Let me also sound a note of praise to the glory of our blessed Lord Jesus for what He has done for me here at Keswick. It is not that the teaching has been new to me. In the distant land in which I have been working, 6,000 miles away from here, I had some years ago learnt something of the blessed life of faith for myself, and been privileged to lead others to it. But there was still a longing for something more. And even of what I had experienced the freshness and power got lost, the anointing with fresh oil was wanting. There was not that life in the perfect liberty and the continual clear leading of the Spirit to which the rest of faith was meant to be but the entrance. Self, seeking to do God's work, far more dangerous than refusing to obey, the flesh creeping in, learning spiritual truth, and doing spiritual work rendered it impossible for the life of God to reveal its full power in the soul.
Some two years ago it pleased the Lord to lay me aside from work by an affection of the throat. In His good Providence I was brought to England some six weeks ago, and led to the faith-healing home in London. I cannot say what a blessing my stay there has been to me. I was brought to see that while I only thought of healing as the first thing, and faith as the means to it, the Lord's purpose was to make the healing the secondary thing, the means to lead on to fuller faith and fellowship with Himself. I was taught what an unspeakably solemn and blessed thing it was to ask the Lord to come and by His Holy Spirit to take possession of the body as its health and strength. I saw how this could not be without a searching out and casting out of self as I had never understood before, an acknowledgment of Christ's claim to the body and an entire surrender of body, soul, and spirit to His service. Such a surrender was God's purpose in the sickness, and it was only as such a surrender was made that the healing could be given, or faith rise to receive it. All this I was led to see and thank God for. And yet it was as if the surrender I had made, and the faith in which I had accepted Christ, not only as my Healer, but as the Power of an entirely new life was still wanting its divine seal. I was holding fast the promise, but without the joy and love which must in due time follow.
On Tuesday evening, at the after-meeting, I rose with others to testify my desire, but could not rise a second time with those who could testify that they had realized that Christ was to them what they had believed. It was as if I only felt how utterly helpless every effort to grasp the blessing is, and could do nothing but bow in emptiness before the Lord. On Wednesday evening I was again in the after-meeting, and it was there the Lord revealed Himself. And as the words of the simple chorus were sung— "wonderful cleansing, wonderful filling, wonderful keeping" —I saw it all, Jesus cleansing, Jesus filling, Jesus keeping.
I had for a year back been seeing what wonderful things God's word says about the power of the blood of Christ. It was "through the blood" that the God of peace brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus. It was by His own blood He entered into the holy place. It was with the blood of the better sacrifice that the heavenly things themselves were purged. It was thus through the blood that the power of sin and death had been overcome; through the blood alone that Christ had obtained and could hold His place in heaven as our Mediator. The blood that had obtained such mighty victories in the kingdom of sin and hell, and in the kingdom of heaven, too. Surely that blood that could cleanse the soul is a power but too little known.
I believed and I received Jesus as my Cleanser. I look to Him to make the blood-sprinkling as glorious and effectual as the blood-shedding was. And I saw that the filling cannot but follow the cleansing. The vessel He hath cleansed He will not leave empty; the temple He hath cleansed, He will fill with His glory, as it is written, "The glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord." And thus what He has cleansed and filled He cannot but keep, and certainly will use. It is far too precious in His sight. For what He does to souls He not only does because it is His work, given Him by the Father, but because He loves them as Himself. He not only gives a blessing in what He does. He gives Himself. And now, since I yesterday heard the words of that beautiful chorus, it is as if they are continually whispering within me—
"Precious, gentle, holy Jesus!
Blessed Bridegroom of my heart,
In Thy secret inner chamber,
Thou wilt show me what Thou art."
I could say more, but this is enough just to give my grateful testimony to the love of our blessed Lord, and what He has done for me at Keswick. Let us all, my beloved brothers and sisters, seek to know and trust this blessed Jesus. Let Him— Jesus, cleansing, filling, keeping—be to us all in all, and let us have no desire but to live to the glory of His blessed Name. God grant that it may be so.—Andrew Murray, The Life of Faith, (London: S. W. Partridge & Co., 1882), p. 221.
This testimony was shared by Andrew Murray at the Keswick Convention of 1882 and later appeared in the Life of Faith.