THE coupling of these two words together, to be treated in close connection as though they were very much the same, will seem strange to some who have not carefully considered their signification. We have intentionally joined the terms, to indicate our deep sense of the need of a new departure in the use of the second one. As we view it, no one thing has done more to muddle Methodist theology in this matter than the turning aside of the word “holiness” from its true meaning. And until that meaning shall be restored it is idle to dream of anything like harmony and consistency.

As noted in the preliminary chapter, the universal custom has been, from the days of Wesley until now, to make “holiness,” “ perfection,” and “entire sanctification” refer to precisely the same state of grace. Very many writers expressly say that they make no distinction between any of the multitude of terms currently used; and most other writers think it needless to even mention that they entirely ignore definition, for their practice makes it at once sufficiently evident. The motives for this procedure it were, perhaps, not best to inquire into too closely; but the results are manifest and very mischievous.

One of the chief of them is that the Church in general is practically denied any share in this beautiful word and its many coordinate expressions, and that the texts of Scripture wherein these words occur are held to have no application to the mass of believers. What a state of things is here! The great majority of Christ’s true Church, who have been genuinely born again and are happy in the love of God, are branded as unholy and are classified with sinners; for there are only two classes recognized in the word, the holy and the unholy, the righteous and the sinful, the children of God and the children of the devil. This word “holy ” has been unlawfully appropriated and applied to a special class in the Church, when nothing can be plainer than that it belongs to the whole. Violent hands have been laid upon it, wrenching it from its time-honored connections and hallowed associations. Those who should have been its defenders have apparently slept at their posts, or have been so little aware of the importance of what was being done that they failed to realize in season the seriousness of the movement. By sheer persistency of claim and clamor, without shadow of warrant or reason, the point has been carried, and the supineness of the people most concerned has yielded that which ought never to have been allowed.

It is time that those who love the truth and the Church should rise up with just indignation at this high-handed procedure, and should vehemently protest against its further continuance. It is not a matter of hair-splitting technicalities, of stickling for an unimportant term, of “making a man an offender for a word.” It is something of fundamental significance, since it involves the essential elements of Christian character, calls unclean and impure those whom God hath cleansed and who are heirs of immortal life, and impliedly removes from them an obligation which it is the main business of every Gospel preacher to press continually upon their conscience — the obligation to live free from sin. That all the saved are sanctified and that there are no unholy children of God ought to be rung out so constantly from the pulpit and prayer meeting platform, and ought to be so prominently set forth in every publication touching upon this theme, that it would be impossible any longer to confuse the minds of the people about it or impose upon them this perverted nomenclature. Silence in the matter has become complicity with a most alarming and dangerous tendency.

If it is asked, how we are so sure that the current custom is wrong, we reply by referring the doubter to the New Testament. As we understand it, people determine the correct meaning of a word by reference to the usage of the best writers. We know of no other way. What such authorities instinctively, deliberately, unanimously agree upon as the true significance of a term must of necessity stand. And, since Christian theology has its roots in the Christian Scripture, the usage of the New Testament writers must be the controlling element in fixing the significance of a word of that kind.

Consulting these sources, what do we find? That the principal Greek noun rendered “ holiness’’ and “‘sanctification,’’ together with its affiliated verb and adjective rendered to “sanctify” or “make holy” and “holy ones” or ‘‘saints,’’ occurs some hundreds of times. And a careful scrutiny of these passages discloses in substance this: that they who are termed “brethren,” or “believers,” or “disciples,” or “the Church of God,” or “the elect,” “the people for God’s own possession ” and “partakers of the heavenly calling,” are also freely called “holy,” and ‘“‘sanctified,” and “saints,” these latter words being put in habitual apposition with the former expressions, so as to leave no room for doubt as to the application. It does not seem worth while to take the space to make an exhaustive examination or give extensive quotations in support of this position, for anyone possessing a New Testament and a concordance, especially a Greek concordance, can speedily verify it; nor will anyone, we are persuaded, have the hardihood to question it.

The introductions to Paul’s epistles, for one thing, can be easily consulted by all; and they tell a plain story. The first letter to the Corinthians, for example, is addressed “unto the Church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.” The second letter is similarly addressed: “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in the whole of Achaia.” Other inscriptions are “To the saints which are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus;” “To all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi;’’ “To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse;” “To all that are a Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints.’

A passage of great significance in fixing the meaning is I Cor. vi, 11, where the apostle, writing to the Corinthian Church, says, “But ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God,” making these three terms, as the connection shows, but different expressions or aspects of the work wrought upon them and for them when they passed out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God.

Another decisive passage is Eph. iv, 11-15, where the various Gospel agencies — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers — are said to be “for the perfecting of the saints [or holy ones], unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ: till we all attain . . . unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: that we may be no longer children, . . . but speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, which is the head, even Christ.” “Saints,” or holy ones, here, as in other places, means nothing else but the body of Christ, that is, the Church, whose members are to be perfected or built up in knowledge and faith by the earnest labor of those appointed over them, until they shall have passed out of the children’s class into the full maturity of growth.

It hardly seems needful to multiply special examples. The usage is practically uniform. “Holiness” is constantly linked with such terms as “godliness” and “ righteousness,” and is used interchangeably with them. (See Luke i, 75; Eph. iv, 24; 2 Peter iii, 11.) It is put in opposition to “uncleanness,” as is seen in the well-known and conclusive passage, 1 Thess. iv, 3-7: “ For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication; that each one of you know how to possess himself of his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles which know not God. . . . For God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification.” It is something which all believers, sons and daughters of the Most High,” are understood to possess, and which they must set themselves to perfect, “‘ perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. vii, 1), and to be established in, “to the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness’”’ (1 Thess. iii, 13).

From all this it appears certain that if we base our use of the word upon the Scripture, as we are in honor bound to do, we have no right to permit its exclusive employment for indicating an advanced stage of Christian experience unto which only a very small part of God's children attain. To do so would be to make hundreds of passages of Scripture meaningless and throw all interpretation of the word into confusion. Every principle of honesty and right reason demands that we employ the word in our current theological discussion in such a way as to promote, instead of preventing, the correct understanding of Holy Scripture. Hence, we are shut up to such a meaning of the term as will not exclude any portion of the Christian life or of those who are members of God’s family, washed in the blood of the Lamb and entitled to the inheritance of the saved. The Bible position unquestionably is that all who are justified are also sanctified, or made holy, clean, and pure.

The chief offenders in this matter of monopolizing a Scripture word to which they have no such exclusive right are in the habit of admitting, with quite an air of magnanimity, when pressed about their practice, that at regeneration holiness begins, and that all who are born again are initially or partially holy. But this will not suffice. It does not fully meet the case and is not an adequate expression of the fact. It is a part of the truth, but not the whole truth, and cannot be permitted to pass muster as though it were a satisfactory statement. Taken in connection with the fact that they reserve the application of the word ‘holy ” in an unqualified sense to themselves, that is, to those who have passed a second degree of grace, it conveys a false impression. It is as much as to say that others have but a touch of holiness, not enough to justify any claim to the title as properly descriptive of their state; they are still, in by far the larger part, unholy or sinful and, hence, to be ranged in that class.

This must be emphatically repudiated. They are something more than partly holy, with an implication that it is a small part. It might about as well be said that they are partly born. If they are truly born of God, which is the supposition, for we are referring to none others, they are predominantly and distinctively holy and, hence, have full title to this descriptive appellation. Just as when life begins a person is alive or living, so when holiness begins a person is holy. There may be many degrees of life or vitality; but there is, strictly speaking, no halfway condition, where a person is neither dead nor alive. So, while there are many degrees of holiness, there is no midway state between holiness and sinfulness. This is not saying that if a man is holy at all he is perfectly holy or as holy as he can be; but it is saying that if he is holy he is holy, and nothing short of it. Holiness has dominion in and over all such as are regenerate. Jesus reigns in their spirit and body. They are delivered from the rule of sin and death and Satan, under which they have groaned so long. They may be but babes in Christ and, hence in some degree carnal; but they are, for all that, in the main spiritual and saintly and sanctified, that is, set apart for the service of God. This element is the controlling one, is thoroughly in the ascendant, and has every right to give its name to the condition reached.

What, then, is holiness? It is quite time for a definition. We would frame it thus: holiness is that condition of human nature wherein the love of God rules. Of course this brief statement might be indefinitely expanded, and many other things might be included. Many other things will of necessity follow, and so are fairly implied. If the love of God rules, the will of God, so far as known, will certainly be done; and every effort will be made to know it, as well as to do it. The inner will govern the outer; conduct will conform to character. They who love God will not knowingly or willfully, with intention or deliberation, violate his law or transgress his commandments.

There can, of course, be but one kind of holiness; just as there is but one kind of sinfulness. The two terms stand over against each other in absolute opposition. Sinfulness is a state of departure from the will of God; holiness is a state of conformity to that will. Holiness is wholeness or health; sinfulness is disease, a moral malady, resulting, if continued, in death. In sinfulness self is the center of interest, the ultimate end of activity, and the object of supreme love; in holiness, God.

Methodist writers quite generally, beginning with John Wesley himself, have assented to this position. Its importance is sufficient to justify a few quotations. Wesley affirmed it repeatedly. Perhaps the most significant passage is in his sermon ‘On Patience” (Sermons, vol. ii, pp. 221, 222), where he says, “Many persons . . . . have not spoken warily upon this head, not according to the oracles of God. They have spoken of the work of sanctification, taking the word in its full sense, as if it were quite of another kind, as if it differed entirely from that which is wrought in justification. But this is a great and dangerous mistake, and has a natural tendency to make us undervalue that glorious work of God which was wrought in us when we were justified.... there is in that hour, a general change from inward sinfulness to inward holiness. The love of the creature is changed to the love of the Creator, the love of the world into the love of God. Earthly desires . . . are, in that instant, changed, by the mighty power of God, into heavenly desires. .. . It [entire sanctification] does not imply any new kind of holiness; let no man imagine thus. . . . Love is the sum of Christian sanctification; it is the one kind of holiness, which is found only in various degrees, in the believers, who are distinguished by St. John into ‘little children, young men, and fathers.’ . . . In the same proportion as he [the babe in Christ] grows in faith he grows in holiness, he increases in love, lowliness, meekness, in every part of the image of God.”

Of modern authors who say the same thing, many might be mentioned. It is sufficient, perhaps, to specify a few. Dr. A. Lowrey (Possibilities of Grace, p 204) says, “The work of entire holiness, then, is subsequent to initial holiness and essentially the same in quality, but widely different in measure and completeness.” So Bishop Foster, in his Christian Purity (pp. 181, 182): “It has been the universal teaching of the Church that regeneration is a degree of holiness; that entire sanctification is complete holiness has been as universally the creed of the Church. They are, then, the same in kind... . They are evidently different in degree.”

All this seems clear; and we would naturally expect from such a position that perfection in degree would be the only thing that could legitimately be claimed, as distinguishing entire from initial or partial sanctification. But, when they arrive at that point, to our amazement these same writers turn about and say something quite otherwise. For example, Bishop Foster, on page 76 of Christian Purity, describing entire holiness, says: ‘‘We believe it to include, in the second place, ... the spiritual graces, as love, meekness, humility, and such like, in perfection—perfection, not of measure, but of kind. ... We do mean that these graces exist, in the entirely sanctified soul, without alloy, without mixture, in simplicity.’’ This would go to show that the difference was one, not merely of quantity, but of quality. The Rev. Dr. L. R. Dunn also says, in the Methodist Quarterly Review for October, 1867, speaking of the wholly sanctified, “These graces of the Spirit are not perfect in degree, but only in their nature or character.” But, since they were, by general admission, perfect in their nature or character or kind before, even when first implanted, and are not perfect at any subsequent time in any other sense, the inquirer after truth does not feel that he has made much headway in getting at an adequate explanation of the difference. So far as we can see, the theory most generally accepted furnishes no adequate explanation of this puzzle. Our own explanation will appear more fully in a subsequent chapter.

It is also important to notice, in this connection, that there is but one kind of love with which a discussion like this concerns itself. That is, putting aside earthly loves, such as love between the sexes, love between relations, and such like, which do not come under treatment in theology, and confining our thought to the heavenly or divine love, we find it to be always of the same quality. The quantity of it no doubt greatly varies. The rule of love may be more or less emphatic, comprehensive, pervasive. Inferior elements may still have some footing in the soul, so that the total outcome may be more or less mixed and marred; but the divine love, which is the leading, controlling element, is not in itself subject to deterioration or adulteration. God, as it were, takes a portion of himself and infuses it into our being, thereby making us, as Peter says, “partakers of the divine nature.” And this nature is always love, for ‘‘God is love;” it is always the same, pure, and perfect. Hence, divine love and perfect love are but different expressions for the same thing; and to ask a person if he possesses perfect love is to ask him if he possesses divine love.

That this is not the meaning commonly put upon the term “perfect love” in Methodist circles we are well aware. But we hold, nevertheless, that it is the proper meaning; and we appeal, as before, in confirmation of our use of the term, to the Holy Scriptures. There is but one book in the Bible where the phrase “perfect love,” or its equivalent, is used — the first Epistle of John; and we see not how any candid person can critically examine the three passages in this epistle where the phrase occurs without being convinced that John used it in the sense we have indicated. The first place is in the fourth and fifth verses of the second chapter: “‘He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him: but whoso keepeth his word, in him verily hath the love of God been perfected.” The apostle here, as in other places, makes it very clear that to know God and to keep his word or commandments are the same thing. And in this position he does but follow his Master, who declared (John xiv, 21), “ He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.” To know and love God, then, or, in other words, to be his child, is to keep his word; and whosoever keeps his word, John says, has perfect love, which is precisely the same as to say that every child of God, in having God’s love, has perfect love.

The other passages, which are in the fourth chapter, are of precisely similar import. In the twelfth verse we read, “If we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us.’ So a second synonym for perfect love, or test of its possession, is loving one another. And certainly all Christians, all who love God, do this; for Jesus says (John xiii, 35), “\By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.’’ And John himself, in the twentieth verse of this very fourth chapter, declares, “ He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen.” No demonstration, then, could be stronger, that all who have any of God’s love have perfect love.

The seventeenth and eighteenth verses, the remaining passage of the three which must settle the significance of this term, speak to the same purport. They read thus: “ Herein is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, even so are we in this world. There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment; and he. that feareth is not made perfect in love.” Here “love” and “ perfect love” are distinctly used as exact synonyms in parallel clauses, which must be decisive. Furthermore, the test of having divine love or perfect love is declared to be freedom from fear of punishment, such fear as would prevent boldness in the day of judgment. It ought not to require many words to show that every genuine child of God has precisely this fearlessness and is not in dread of torment, like a guilty sinner. No, indeed. Knowing his sins forgiven through the blood of the Lamb and having Jesus for his advocate with the Father, he is confident and joyful in view of death and all beyond. John Wesley well wrote:

Bold shall I stand in thy great day,
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through these I am,
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.

And Charles Wesley, describing the jays of the young convert whose chains have just fallen off, similarly sings:

No condemnation now I dread ;
Jesus, with all in him, is mine.
Alive in him, my living Head,
And clothed with righteousness divine,
Bold I approach the eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ, my own.

It is, then, entirely plain that in John’s estimation all who are born again into the kingdom of God are born into God’s perfect love and have his pure love perfected, or effected and accomplished, in them. And we are greatly at a loss to comprehend how so totally different an understanding of the word has become so widely prevalent. It seems to us to furnish a strong illustration of how little careful and really independent thought has been given to this theme, in spite of the multitudes of volumes that have been written upon it. And it especially shows that the whole terminology of the doctrine needs a thorough overhauling.

Now that we have shown that there is but one kind of holiness, which is love, and but one kind of love, which is perfect, it will be readily perceived why we put holiness and regeneration in such close juxtaposition. Regeneration must be defined as that radical change in human nature, wrought by the Holy Spirit, whereby the divine love is imparted and made, to a greater or less degree, predominant. In other words, regeneration is a process; holiness, the resulting state. Regeneration may be described as a partial restoration of that original balance or harmony of the powers which was disturbed at the fall, a partial reproduction of the divine image, the initiation of that process which will be completed when the full restoration and reproduction shall be accomplished ; as is indicated in Col. iii, 10: “And have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him.” The same thought is found in 2 Cor. iii, 18, and iv, 16, where the thought is brought out that, while we are looking at the things which are not seen, beholding as in a mirror the “ glory of the Lord,” our light afflictions are working for us an exceeding weight of glory, and we are being changed or transformed into the image of the Lord, from glory to glory; yea, day by day our inward man is being renewed.

Regeneration, then, is that change which God effects in us when we repent of our sins and by faith take Christ to be our personal Saviour. He accepts the offering of ourselves that we sincerely make, and qualifies us for his service by giving us, as we say, a new heart, that is, by such an impartation of his love, revealed to us in Jesus, that the old love of sin is largely taken away and the new love for righteousness more or less completely takes its place. In this way our spiritual part is strengthened, our animal part is weakened, to a greater or less degree, according to circumstances, but in all cases, to such a degree that the Spirit now predominates and holds the animal in subjection, so that sin no longer has dominion over us, no longer reigns in our mortal body, that we should obey the lusts thereof; but we are made free from the rule of sin, becoming “servants of righteousness,” “servants to God,” as Paul so well explains in the sixth chapter of Romans saying, “\Our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin.” In other words, the trend of our life is radically changed. It is switched over to another track ‘and put on the up grade instead of the down grade. The movement is reversed. The controlling influence is now heavenly, instead of earthly; the preponderant tendencies are toward God.

The qualifying words “more or less completely,” which we have felt obliged to insert in the description of the change wrought at the new birth, are imperatively called for by the manifest fact that very great differences are constantly seen in the amount of change wrought at conversion. All have noticed that in some cases a very much greater transformation is wrought than in others, very much less of self lingers, very much more of Christ is taken on. How is this, and why? Why is not the same work wrought in every case, since it is the same divine agent who operates; and why is not an absolutely complete work wrought in the soul of the penitent sinner, all of self being driven out and the perfect image of Christ formed within? It certainly would be if God could fully have his way and if he were the single agent concerned. But he is not. His method of salvation for men, since they are responsible beings, endowed with freedom of will and put in charge of their own destiny, requires in all its parts the cooperation of two factors, the divine and the human. Hence, in order that there should be a perfect work it is not enough that the divine factor be perfect. God is limited and restricted by the imperfect capacities and powers of the human factor with whom, as well as upon whom, he operates. God is not able to do what he would like for man, because of the latter’s weakness and disability.

This disability greatly varies in different individuals; and from this fact arises the great variety of results obtained at conversion — the different stages of moral and spiritual advancement, or moral purity, reached at that point. Some are more greatly changed than others and are more thoroughly purified; not, of course, because they have a more powerful Saviour, but because they prove more responsive to his power and are more successful in adjusting themselves to the conditions of his grace. Some, far more clearly and fully than others, apprehend the love of God; and the effect thus produced, by the revelation of God’s Son in them, is just in proportion to the clearness and fullness with which they apprehend that revelation or take in and lay hold of that wonderful, wonderful love. If the sinner’s powers were such that he could perfectly apprehend the love of God, even as Christ, of course, apprehended it, then he would become a little Christ, that is, a perfect representative of Christ, at once. The celestial influences would so continuously and mightily flood his entire being that he would have no more trouble with sin and self; the old derangement and disorder, introduced into human nature when Adam departed from God, would be at an end; the perfect balance of powers, lost at the fall, would be restored; and heavenly harmony would perpetually reign.

But the sinner cannot do this. He has no such power, no power sufficient for anything like a perfect apprehension of what the Father longs to bestow. So God has to content himself with bestowing simply what the sinner is able to receive. It may be little, it may be much; in no case is it all. The penitent soul means well and does well — does as well as it can, as well as it knows how. Otherwise, it would not be accepted. But because of its necessarily imperfect enlightenment and empowerment its consecration and faith are but imperfect and partial. Hence, the work which God does for it at that time is, of necessity, correspondingly partial.

The fact is, we are so made that God is obliged to proceed in this gradual way with us, leading us along, step by step, as we are able to bear it and to give the intelligent cooperation of our own will to the work of grace. Where a person, through exceptional advantages of one kind or another, is fitted to receive powerful enlightenment by the divine Spirit, and that enlightenment, being given, is followed by correspondingly thorough consecration, faith easily grasps large things, and a greater work is done than where these conditions are not met. But in no case is an absolutely complete work done, for the simple reason that in no case is it possible that there should be an absolutely complete enlightenment, together with an absolutely complete apprehension of the divine love.

It is evident, then, that the holiness into which regeneration introduces us is a matter of many degrees. And the word should always be used with this thought in view; not as though it stood for some one exact condition, with clearly marked bounds, but as covering a very large extent of territory, nothing less, indeed, than the entire Christian life from beginning to end.

We hesitate, however, to speak of regeneration as having degrees. It is true that the word has been taken by a few as embracing all that we mean by holiness, not only the impartation of spiritual life and divine love, but the complete development of it until the moral image of God, lost at the fall, is perfectly recovered. But we fail to see that anything is gained by this attempt to broaden the word. It seems to us that only confusion could result. It would be in the teeth of what is practically the uniform usage of Scripture; and this of itself is a fatal objection. The biblical writers speak of it as something that has occurred in the experience of believers, at a definite point in the past when they believed, not as something which is still going on. John, speaking of ‘‘them that believe on his name,” who have become “children of God,” says (i, 13) that they “were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” So Paul, in Eph. ii, 1: ‘“You did he quicken, when ye were dead.” He also calls the change a “new creation.” The very figure of the new birth, which underlies the word, shuts us up to the initiation of life, and becomes distorted and grotesque if it be too much expanded. Let us keep, therefore, to the generally received and everywhere understood meaning of the word “regeneration” as the mysterious initial process whereby we pass from spiritual death to spiritual life, resulting in a state of holiness or divine love, which may be stronger or weaker, fuller or feebler, according to circumstances.

Sanctification, as being one of the principal terms employed, needs a little attention. It is somewhat ambiguous in that it has both an active and a passive meaning; it signifies, both the act of making holy, and the state of being made holy or the result of the action. The latter is, we believe, the exclusive meaning of the word in the New Testament, and is decidedly the correct translation of ἁγιασμός, a verbal noun from ἁγιάζω, to sanctify, denoting the effect of the action of the verb. In King James’s version it is translated five times by “sanctification,’ and five times by “holiness.” The Revised Version has, in the interest of uniformity, very properly changed these latter five to make them agree with the others. In this passive meaning it expresses very nearly the same thing as “holiness,” which denotes the state of being holy; but the latter lacks something of the flavor which the former has by reason of its direct derivation from an active verb. There is carried over into it a tone, so to speak, which the nicely trained ear will readily recognize. One could hardly say, for example, of angels or of God, that they possessed sanctification, because in their case the sanctifying or purifying process is not to be thought of. We would speak of their holiness, using thus the abstract, instead of the verbal, noun. But we can speak of men as being in a state of sanctification, because they have reached their condition by the purifying process. The New Testament revisers have heeded this distinction, translating the two Greek abstracts, ἁγιωσύνη and ἁγιότης, by “holiness,” but the two Greek verbal nouns, ἁγιασμός and ἁγνισμός, by “sanctification’’ and “purification” respectively.

Practically, however, in all ordinary speech, “sanctification,” in its passive meaning, is taken as the exact equivalent of “holiness.” In its active meaning, it comes very close to “regeneration,” in that both signify to make holy or produce the state wherein the love of God rules. Every person that is regenerated is also sanctified by the same act. Just as that which is born of the flesh is flesh, so that which is born of the Holy Spirit is a holy spirit, is possessed of a holy nature, is made holy or brought into a state of holiness. But, while every regeneration is a sanctification, all sanctifications are not regenerations. A man is born again only once; he is sanctified or purified a great many times, just as many as may be needful for the completion of the work which, as we have already seen, is never completed at the beginning, because of the weakness of the human factor. Regeneration is not repeated. Sanctification is repeated again and again, each succeeding time bringing us into closer likeness to Christ and giving us a larger measure of the divine image. Regeneration is a finished work; sanctification is a progressive one.

Another term, very closely connected with those which in this chapter we are trying to make plain, is “cleansing.” This, of course, is purely figurative; and we are disposed to think that the failure to recognize this fact and to discriminate between the figure and the thing really signified has done about as much to mix up people’s ideas on this subject as any one thing that can be mentioned. To be washed in blood, and thereby cleansed from sin, is preeminently a Jewish form of expression, drawn from the bloody sacrifices which, through the preparatory ages, pointed forward to the Lamb to be slain on Calvary as a propitiation for the sins of the world. Nothing could be more natural or appropriate than for the disciples of Jesus, who were brought up as Jews and steeped in all these associations, having trod the reeking temple courts and thus participated in the paschal ceremonies, to employ the figure of blood cleansing to signify the change wrought by the Holy Spirit when, through faith in the saving efficacy of Christ’s death, sinners were freed from sin and made holy. But any figure too persistently and exclusively used, under such circumstances that its origination is wholly lost sight of, is pretty sure to make mischief and lead to misconception. That has emphatically been the fate of this. The undiscriminating common mind, hearing through hymns and prayer meeting testimonies a ceaseless round of declaration that we have been cleansed with blood, has come to think, if not, indeed, of a strictly literal application of the life fluid of the Saviour, at least of a process whereby something is taken away from the soul.

A similar wrong turn has been given to the ideas of a great many by a misapprehension of another figure, found in Heb. xii, 15, 16, where mention is made of a “root of bitterness.” Taken wholly out of its connection and used as a detached expression, it has been made to bear a meaning entirely foreign to that manifestly intended by its author and fraught with no little harm. The idea of the apostle is readily manifest when the two verses are read together, especially if taken with Dean Alford’s rendering and punctuation, which bring out the sense more clearly, and are closer to the original. He gives it thus: “Looking diligently lest any man falling short of the grace of God — lest any root of bitterness springing up — trouble you, and thereby the greater number be defiled; lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one meal sold his own birthright.” The root of bitterness here spoken of is unquestionably a person. We know of no commentator who holds otherwise; and we see not how any ordinary reader, if he have intelligence enough to comprehend the simple rule, that the context must decide the sense in which an author uses a word, can come to any other conclusion.

What makes the matter doubly sure is the fact that the phrase is probably taken from, or suggested by, the passage in Deut. xxix, 18, 20, which reads as follows: “Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; ... the Lord will not pardon him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man.” The exhortation in Hebrews to separate from the congregation any troubler or disturber of the peace, any man who fails, through slothfulness, of running and who lags behind, lest others might be contaminated by his evil example, is in no way calculated to suggest or support the thought, that the heart of the child of God who has not received the “second blessing ” is full of roots of bitterness which must be eradicated, his conversion having only broken off the tops.

Both the cleansing and the eradicating figures, if much employed, are almost sure to put the person on the wrong track, and lead him to unwarrantable conclusions. When he begins to talk about something being taken away from the human heart, as by rubbing or digging, he is pretty sure to be thinking of depravity as though it were something brought into or added to man’s nature, some foreign substance infused into his being, which divine grace can instantaneously remove. This is quite wrong. At the fall of Adam no additional powers, faculties, appetites, passions, or propensities were given him, and none of the constituents of his being before possessed were taken away. There was a disarrangement, that is all — a change in the relative order of strength, a disturbance of the equilibrium, a different combination of the same things.

Hence, for us to become restored to our pristine condition and walk once more in the full image of God no addition or subtraction, strictly speaking, is required, only a restoration of harmony. And, this harmony will come, as we have already explained, just in the degree that the spiritual part regains its lost ascendency over the animal. The ease and completeness of the subjugation of the latter to the former marks the degree of our moral purity or deliverance from depravity; in other words, the degree of our restoration to that perfect normal relation of things possessed by man before the fall, when there had been no derangement.

The destruction, either partial or total, of depravity does not imply the destruction of any of the powers or susceptibilities of the soul. The unreasoning impulses, instincts, and passions of human nature are in no case to be uprooted or destroyed, but to be restrained, regulated, and properly disciplined. They existed in man’s state of innocency. Their existence, therefore, now cannot be regarded as sinful; but they become sinful when, and only when, unduly excited or improperly indulged. The power of resentment, for example, is a component part of the mind; but it is to be reduced to its proper proportions and made to act in subordination to the judgment and to obey the smallest monitions of the conscience. So the appetite for food is to be indulged only for the glory of God and according to the dictates of duty. And the same may be said of all the desires and affections. They all have their place and use; not one could be spared; if a single one were to be removed it would leave us less than man — maimed, crippled, and unfitted to do a full man’s work.

So long as these things are firmly ruled, held down, and kept in their proper relations they are innocent and pure. It is only when they break out of bounds that they become tendencies to evil and incitements to sin. Nor can there ever come a time, in this world, at least, when they will not be liable to break out, when they will not need to be kept under by watchfulness and prayer. If we were as pure as Adam we should certainly fall, as did he, unless we stood guard with a great deal more diligence than he manifested; for our surroundings would be less favorable.

From all this it will be seen that the figure of a rebel accords far more nearly with the facts of the case than the figure of a root. Certain things must remain within us, integral parts of our human nature, which contain in their purest condition an inevitable tendency to pass beyond due limits and so to bring us into sin. There will always remain, no matter what height of grace we may reach, the need for firmly repressing these tendencies. They cannot be extirpated; they can and must be kept in their proper places and maintained in rightful action by vigilant control. This is not saying but that every evil tendency may be destroyed; for these natural tendencies, which lead to evil unless looked after, are not evil in themselves, but in every way good, being an essential part of the nature with which God has endowed us, with which he endowed humanity at the beginning. They are not, strictly speaking, tendencies to evil, but only tendencies to gratification, irrespective of the moral quality of the action to which they urge. Hunger, for instance, is a blind instinct and craves gratification, without the slightest reference to whether it can be gratified innocently or not; that is for the judgment to decide in each particular case. Hunger simply urges to action as a blind impulsive force; and this action must be refused by the will except at those times when it is perceived to be right. But the urging will be felt, whether it should be yielded to or not, and, hence, often calls, and will call to the end, for resistance.

Instead of cleansing, then, we would suggest that “empowering” is a much better term to use, and one less liable to mislead, for the effect of God’s incoming to the heart of man. We are convinced that this entirely satisfies the requirements of the Scripture passages where the former word appears, and simply puts in more modern and intelligible guise the thought of the inspired writer. It meets the needs, as we understand it, of the famous passage in the first chapter of 1 John, where so many have mistakenly found reference to the “second blessing” that should entirely deliver from depravity. We fail to see that John had anything of this sort in mind. As in the texts of the same writer, above examined, concerning perfect love, so here, we think he was simply referring to the privileges and possessions of all Christians or genuine believers, without distinction. What does he say? Merely this, that “if we confess our sins” and “walk in the light,’’ that is, if we do God’s will, as far as it is revealed to us, and keep whatsoever commandments come within our knowledge and power, turning away from sin to the Saviour, as all true disciples do, then God, on his part, will be faithful to his plighted word, will be just in recognizing the atonement that has made satisfaction for sin, and will not fail to “ forgive us our sins;” we shall have “fellowship one with another,” loving the other members of the one blessed family; ‘and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” The significance of this last must be that, just as to the Jew sprinkled blood cleansed, that is, brought into harmony with God, so the blood of Jesus, that is, the manifestation of the love of Jesus in his death for us on the cross, does this for us, empowers us against temptation, and enables us to keep from all sin.

We have this power continually from the moment we confess our sins and enter the kingdom of light. It is not something finished in the past and left behind; but a perpetual, present, “cleanseth,” empowereth now. It is not something that applies to the perfection of God’s children, but to all who walk in the light and love each other, as his true children, according to John, invariably do. For if “we walk in the darkness” or fail to love one another, and yet say we know God and “have fellowship with him,” “we lie, and do not the truth.” The cleansing from all sin, then, is being delivered from its guilt and power and practice, so that no blameworthiness remains and we are free from all condemnation and admitted into the liberty and purity of the sons and daughters of the Most High. This empowering is manifestly a matter of more or less, as already explained. According to the fullness of the power will be the degree of sanctification. And this blamelessness, it cannot be too much emphasized, is the distinguishing characteristic of all loyal lovers of the Lord.

This latter point deserves attention, because it has come to be too much the custom of writers committed to what we deem a wrong view of holiness to assume, if not assert, that a blameless life is the exclusive possession of those who have passed on beyond what they often term “mere justification.” This position is the more remarkable, in that the very word “justification ”’ should be of itself a corrective of the error. He who is justified is certainly not condemned; and he who is in a state of justification, that is, who steadily and permanently maintains the same attitude toward God that was his when his sins were forgiven, cannot be in a state of condemnation, or, in other words, must be in a state of blamelessness or guiltlessness. It is true that he cannot be in a state of complete acceptance with God, entirely without blame at his hands, unless he is constantly pressing on to know more of God, to conform more closely to his will, to walk in the light and live up to the light which has been given him. But this is included in thorough loyalty and taken for granted as one of the marks of the true Christian. Ability to do this, to maintain his justification undiminished, is given him when he becomes a child of God.

This is the empowering referred to above, which is one of the inseparable accompaniments of the forgiveness of sin, and is, in fact, sanctification — the birthright of all God’s children. And this, it should be observed, is the only normal Christian life according to the New Testament standard. Nothing short of this is regarded as genuine. Nothing less than this is recognized as worthy of the name. This is what Christians are expected to be, considered to be, and are, so far as they conform to the meaning of the word. This is their prescribed character, more or less fully realized. Definite and uniform victory over evil is the regular type of religion which the Scripture writers have continually in their mind. Anything different from this is decidedly abnormal. Though it is provided that “if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,” yet it is regarded as a sort of backsliding, a degeneration, a going over temporarily in some measure to the territory of the adversary. ‘ Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not.” “He that doeth sin is of the devil.’’ It must, at least, be admitted by all that they who have not retained their full justification, even if they cannot be set down in the class that we usually call backsliders, have, without question, retrograded relatively to their light, and do not stand in quite the same attitude with relation to God that they did in the moment when he pardoned their sins. For then nothing whatever, so far as their light disclosed it, was kept back. The unvarying condition of admittance into the kingdom is unreserved submission. No one can become a babe in Christ without giving himself to God as best he knows how, without making a consecration that is complete up to his knowledge. If anything is willfully retained the witness of approval will be withheld.

Such is the high level on which the Christian life starts out. God means that it should stay on that level and makes provision accordingly. But somehow, as men enter practical life and encounter the fierce temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, they almost always, sooner or later, drop down below that level. They do not remain consecrated up to their light! The light is continually increasing. New revelations are made to them day by day. Experience teaches, observation teaches, the Bible teaches, the pulpit teaches, the prayer meeting teaches, affliction teaches. They are coming to know more and more all the while as to the requirements of God’s law and the inclusions of God’s service. But while their knowledge thus grows it comes to pass that their practice does not keep pace with it. Their life has fallen below their light.

No one can question, we think, but that this is the condition of the great mass of church members, yes, of the large majority, even of those who are not members of the visible Church only, but of the invisible, entitled to be counted in with the children of God, not having yet forfeited by absolute apostasy their gift of adoption. They are not as loyal to God as they ought to be or as they once were. They give evidence to the contrary. They accuse themselves. They freely confess their delinquencies. What they ought to do is at once to bring their consecration up to date. There was no need of their letting it get behind. They must now take a new start, and inaugurate a different order of things. They have been letting themselves drift. Now they must seize the helm with vigor and put the vessel on her true course. They have let themselves get becalmed in the shallows. They are perilously near the mud banks and rocks of ruin. Their only safety is to call all hands to duty, square away the yards, spread every inch of canvas, and make for deep water. Then they will emerge into the regular, normal Christian life, where having believed, they enter into rest; having surrendered to God so far as they know, other things to surrender will be revealed to them as fast as they are fitted to take advantage of the disclosure; and these being, in turn, surrendered, they will go steadily, grandly on all the time. And so the attitude of conversion is perpetuated right along through the whole life.

If the definitions and distinctions which we have sought to establish in this chapter hold good, as we believe they must and will, if all the saved are sanctified, and all who are born of the Holy Spirit are holy, sinners alone being unholy, and if all who are justified are purified or empowered against sin, then it will require no argument to show the glaring impropriety, to use no harsher term, of which those are guilty who have sequestered this beautiful Scripture word “holiness” and striven to make it the exclusive property of a small, and not always lovely, class. The appointing of a special “ holiness” meeting casts a slur upon the regular meetings of the church, as if they, forsooth, were for the promotion of unholiness, or, at least, of something quite different from the advancement of believers in the love of God. We hear, also, frequent mention of “holiness” papers and “holiness” ministers and “holiness” leagues. We claim that the Church itself, unless it have become essentially apostate and hopelessly corrupt (as the Methodist Episcopal Church certainly has not, although the “holiness” writers do their best to make it appear so), is always and everywhere a holiness league; that all Christian meetings and ministers and literature are for the promotion of true Scripture holiness. Holiness is not a special department of church work, like temperance or education. It is so fundamental, so interwoven with the very fiber of our religion, that it can never be separated for a moment from it. Take this away, and nothing of any importance is left. The world, the flesh, and the devil promote unholiness, or sin. God and his people, without exception, stand always and everywhere for holiness, which is righteousness and the rule of love divine. The place to which the holy are bound is heaven; the unholy will be cast into hell.

One of the chief perennial perplexities with which, ever and anon, they wrestle who, by their theory and terminology, shut nearly all the children of God out from holiness, is what to say to the very natural charge that they also and consequently shut out all but a very few from heaven; for without holiness “no man shall see the Lord.” They are driven generally to the most desperate expedients to escape this grave difficulty; for not many are brazen-faced enough to declare, in so many words, that only those of their own special set and shibboleth, out of all the millions of God’s professed followers, are likely to see the inside of the pearly gates. Bishop Jesse T. Peck takes the bull by the horns in a very emphatic manner, and boldly asserts (Central Idea of Christianity, p. 59) his firm belief that no truly converted man can die while possessed of any remaining depravity. As he says, he answers the question, What is the fate of the truly converted man who dies before he is entirely sanctified? “by destroying it.” But this kind of bald assumption is precisely of a piece with the kindred and equally baseless assumption of the Calvinist, that no truly converted person can possibly fall away and be lost. Both declarations fly straight in the face of such a multitude of clearly ascertained facts, that they are entirely rejected by all those who are not committed to the theories which they are obliged so to bolster up. It is scarcely worth while to attempt thus to be wise above what is written or clearly revealed.

It seems plain that all God’s children, all who, having been once taken into his family, do not forfeit that birthright by apostasy, will be admitted freely to his home of bliss on high, and that the sanctification, or holiness, needful as a passport there is the holiness which all who are born of the Holy Spirit necessarily receive. It seems evident that good people, true believers, die in all stages of maturity and go thus, for all we know, to paradise. It seems also plain that deliverance from the earthly body gives to the most mature, as well as the least mature, an additional qualification for paradise; while the being clothed upon with the heavenly body gives also an additional qualification for the heavenly place.

What more do we know? Is it not best to leave it here and cease vain speculations and rash assertions, which only serve to confuse and depress? Are we not fully warranted in assuring the weakest believer, who comes to the close of his sadly imperfect life conscious, perhaps, that not a single day has been really immaculate, that if he has a humble, genuine, loving trust in Jesus, the merciful Saviour, in spite of all his faults and sins, will present even his worthless name before the Father’s face and in the New Jerusalem assign his soul a place?

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