(Excerpt from An Address to Ohio Yearly Meeting on the Ord...)
Excerpt from An Address to Ohio Yearly Meeting on the Ordinances: And the Position of Friends Generally in Relation to Them For himself, the writer has weighed the cost and gladly counts those things that are gain to him loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. We defer to no one in a zeal to pro claim the privilege, value and supreme necessity of the promised baptism with the Holy Ghost. For sixteen years this has been our constant theme and entreaty, that men would comply with the exact conditions which are necessary in order to receive this baptism. We are more and more impressed with these glorious realities and have not the slightest thought of relaxing our endeavor, or of lowering the standard in any way. On the contrary we propose nothing but an onward march, and the removal of every oh struction in the path of Holiness unto the Lord. We have never learned to play a retreat. We are nothing loth to reaffirm. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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clergyman editor evangelist preacher
David Brainard Updegraff was descended from the family of Op den Graeff, German Mennonites with Dutch names who settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania, with Pastorius in 1683. He was born in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, the youngest son of David and Rebecca (Taylor) Updegraff. His mother was a preacher, and on both sides of his line of ancestry there were prominent Quaker preachers, the most noted of whom was his maternal grandmother, Ann Taylor.
He was prepared for college in the local schools of Ohio and in 1851 entered Haverford College, where he remained for only one academic year.
Returning to Mount Pleasant, Updegraff entered business. Updegraff's main interest lay in religious interpretation, and he had marked gifts as an evangelist of the type which flourished in America in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.
His successful career in this field dates from 1869, when he began to have meetings for prayer in his own home. In the early stages of his public ministry he worked for the most part among his own Quaker fellowship in the Middle West, especially in Ohio. He soon, however, widened his range of service and became a noted leader in the popular summer gatherings at Mountain Lake Park, Garrett County, Md. , at Pitman Grove, N. J. , and in the great interdenominational camp-meetings then being held both in the East and the West. As his views took final shape in his preaching he became noted as the fervid exponent of a special type of religious thought, which may fitly be called "Pentecostal Christianity. "
He advocated two stages of religious experience, which he called justification and sanctification. Justification for him meant the divine act by which a sinner is absolved from the guilt and penalty of his sin; sanctification was represented as a state of baptism by the Holy Spirit, perfect peace, joy, love, and freedom from the power of sin.
Within the Society of Friends itself, to which he belonged, he was widely known as an innovator and as a leader of a transformed Quakerism. He represented an intense form of evangelical thought and a dramatic style of preaching. Midway in his career he was baptized with water in the Berean Baptist Church of Philadelphia. This brought him into sharp conflict with the leaders of the Society of Friends in America, which throughout its history had been opposed to the practice of outward baptism on the part of its members. He carried many Ohio Friends with him, and many other Friends elsewhere, influenced by his powerful personality, remained loyal to him through the controversies which followed.
From 1887 to 1893 he edited a periodical entitled the Friends' Expositor, in which he vigorously interpreted his views and defended his position. He died at his home in Mount Pleasant, May 23, 1894.
Updegraff was a famous Evangelical preacher and was very active in the Society of Friend's Church. He advocated the introduction of singing and set pastoral leadership, believed in conversion at a definite moment, and had a critical attitude toward silence in worship and toward the Quaker doctrine of the inward light. In 1892 he published a volume of sermons and addresses with the title, "Old Corn", which contained the substance of his teaching. He defended his position on baptism in two printed booklets. The more important one was printed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1885, as "An Address to the Ohio Yearly Meeting on the Ordinances"; the other was "The Ordinances: an Interview" (Richmond, Ind. , 1886).
(Excerpt from An Address to Ohio Yearly Meeting on the Ord...)
Updegraff was twice married, first, on September 23, 1852, to Rebecca B. Price and, second, on September 4, 1866, to Eliza J. C. Mitchell. There were four children by each marriage.
