[5] Holiness unto the Lord: Keswick and its Context in the Later Nineteenth Century

From the 1870s onwards Evangelicalism was deeply influenced by a new movement. Advocates of holiness teaching urged that Christians should aim for a second decisive experience beyond conversion. Afterwards they would live on a more elevated plane. No longer would they feel themselves ensnared by wrongdoing, for they would have victory over sin. They would possess holiness, enjoying ‘the higher life’. Initiates spoke ‘a new spiritual language’.1