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G.D. Watson
George Douglas Watson (1845–1924). Born on March 26, 1845, in Accomac County, Virginia, G.D. Watson was a Methodist holiness preacher, evangelist, and prolific author who became a leading voice in the late 19th-century holiness movement. Raised in a devout Methodist family with godly influences like family prayer and Sunday school, he felt convictions at age five or six, singing “Rock of Ages” with siblings, and sensed a call to preach by 12 or 13. Despite early rebellion, described as the “black sheep” among six siblings, he sought religion during revivals and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Ordained in 1868, he pastored in Kentucky but struggled spiritually until 1876, when he sought sanctification, achieving it after a Cincinnati evangelists’ conference, transforming his ministry with a focus on holiness. Watson’s evangelistic campaigns spanned the United States, England, the West Indies, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and Korea, preaching a deeper Christian life. He authored over 18 books, including Soul Food, Our Own God, Bone of His Bone, and The Heavenly Life, emphasizing sanctification, the Holy Spirit, and victory over sin, many still in print via publishers like Kingsley Press. Married to Eva, who wrote his biography, Glimpses of the Life and Work of G.D. Watson, he faced personal trials, including his wife’s illness and his lapse into tobacco use during a period of spiritual backsliding. Watson died in 1924, leaving a legacy as an “Apostle to the Sanctified.” He said, “The Holy Spirit never comes to us to make us smart, but to make us holy.”
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G.D. Watson preaches about the importance of having tenderness of spirit in our Christian walk, emphasizing that without it, even the most righteous and religious life lacks the beauty and attractiveness of God. He highlights how some Christians may appear fruitful and zealous in their faith, but lack the deep, heart-piercing love that Jesus exemplified. Watson explains that divine tenderness of spirit goes beyond outward actions, influencing behavior, speech, and interactions with others, ultimately reflecting the compassionate and forgiving nature of Jesus.
A Tender Heart
Without tenderness of spirit the most intensely righteous, religious life is like the image of God without His beauty and attractiveness. It is possible to be very religious, and stanch, and persevering in all Christian duties, even to be sanctified, and be a brave defender and preacher of holiness, to be mathematically orthodox, and blameless in outward life, and very zealous in good works, and yet to be greatly lacking in tenderness of spirit, that all-subduing, all melting love, which is the very cream of Heaven, and which streamed out from the eyes and voice of the Blessed Jesus. Many Christians seem loaded with good fruits, but the fruit tastes green; it lacks flavor and October mellowness. There is a touch of vinegar in their sanctity. Their very purity has an icy coldness to it. Their testimonies are straight and definite, but they lack the melting quality. Their prayers are intelligent and strong and pointed, but they lack the heart-piercing pathos of the dying Jesus. The summer heat in them is lacking. They preach eloquently and explain with utmost nicety what is actual and original sin and what is pardon and purity, but they lack the burning flame, that interior furnace of throbbing love, that sighs and weeps and breaks down under the shivering heat of all-consuming love. Divine tenderness of spirit has a behavior to it which is superhuman and heavenly. It instinctively avoids wounding the feelings of others by talking on unpleasant things, wrangling in an argumentative way, by referring to painful and mortifying subjects. It carries its point by ceasing to contend and wins its opponent by seeming to let him have his way. It cannot scold, or scowl, or threaten; it has lost the power of quarreling. Tenderness of spirit makes its home in the bosom of Jesus, and from that Holy Castle, looks out upon all other creatures, good and bad, through the hopeful, pleading medium of the Heart that was pierced on the cross. It feels all things from God's standpoint, and lives but to receive and transmit the spotless sympathies and affections of Jesus. It understands the words of the Holy Ghost, "Be ye tender hearted, forgiving one another." Tenderness must be in the very nature, and forgiveness is but the behavior of that nature.
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George Douglas Watson (1845–1924). Born on March 26, 1845, in Accomac County, Virginia, G.D. Watson was a Methodist holiness preacher, evangelist, and prolific author who became a leading voice in the late 19th-century holiness movement. Raised in a devout Methodist family with godly influences like family prayer and Sunday school, he felt convictions at age five or six, singing “Rock of Ages” with siblings, and sensed a call to preach by 12 or 13. Despite early rebellion, described as the “black sheep” among six siblings, he sought religion during revivals and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Ordained in 1868, he pastored in Kentucky but struggled spiritually until 1876, when he sought sanctification, achieving it after a Cincinnati evangelists’ conference, transforming his ministry with a focus on holiness. Watson’s evangelistic campaigns spanned the United States, England, the West Indies, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and Korea, preaching a deeper Christian life. He authored over 18 books, including Soul Food, Our Own God, Bone of His Bone, and The Heavenly Life, emphasizing sanctification, the Holy Spirit, and victory over sin, many still in print via publishers like Kingsley Press. Married to Eva, who wrote his biography, Glimpses of the Life and Work of G.D. Watson, he faced personal trials, including his wife’s illness and his lapse into tobacco use during a period of spiritual backsliding. Watson died in 1924, leaving a legacy as an “Apostle to the Sanctified.” He said, “The Holy Spirit never comes to us to make us smart, but to make us holy.”