CHRISTIAN growth, increase, advancement, progress (we shall make no discrimination between these terms), has been, of course, more or less touched upon in the previous chapters. But several important questions having close connection with this general topic still remain to be treated, and it seems convenient to arrange them under this general heading.

Probably everybody believes that there is no time in our Christian life when we should not give heed to the command of the apostle, ‘‘Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” A stopping place where there is no more beyond, where we can simply rest content with past attainments and give ourselves up to spiritual ease, does not, we suppose, definitely enter into the arrangements of any intelligent Christian. But some theories of the Christian life do seem, in practice, to promote the feeling that about everything of consequence has been obtained and that self-congratulation is the main thing in order for the rest of one’s days.

This weakness of what has come to be called the “second blessing” theory has impressed very many. It makes no suitable provision for perpetual advance, it offers no goal of attainment, no clearly marked line of progress beyond the easily grasped joys of the “blessing;” and in circles where this doctrine mostly prevails one is speedily conscious of a very great lack as to sturdy, intelligent grappling with the marked defects of character that stand out on every side. As one of the foremost minds of our Church has expressed it, ‘There is a good deal that is artificial in our popular Methodist notions of religious experience. When they originated they were intelligible through the errors they were meant to deny; but when taken by themselves as an expression of unsophisticated experience they leave much to be desired. They are about equally out in both psychology and in exegesis. Religion, which ought of all things to be real and sincere, is befogged with words and phrases and artificial prescriptions; and there is real danger that our adherence to traditional forms, in oversight of the essential thing, will lead to our falling behind the other Churches in genuine, natural piety.” The conviction that this is literal and solemn truth has led to the preparation of the present volume, with the hope that some light might thus be given to the many honest, earnest souls who have taken up with the popular notions because there seemed to be nothing better and they promise much, but have found the promise not wholly fulfilled, and so are now groping in a good deal of darkness.

What is the truth, what the error, concerning the second blessing theory of entire sanctification, as commonly taught? We are not of those who deem it altogether erroneous or altogether correct. And the errors spring, we imagine, more from a careless, unintelligent, wholly heterogeneous use of terms than from any other source. We wholly agree with the good brethren who are leading in this movement, that the great mass of the members of our Churches are in a very unsatisfactory condition and need a further work of purification wrought upon their hearts; that it is their privilege and duty to be living, day by day, a life without conscious condemnation and with the fullness of love governing all their words and actions. We further agree that, in order for them to reach this most desirable state, a crisis must in most cases be brought on, very similar to what they went through at conversion. In other words, as they “received Christ Jesus the Lord” they must “walk in him.” They must repent of their sins; for sins they have certainly been committing in living so far below their acknowledged privilege and refusing so many of their admitted duties. They must make a complete confession of everything they know. It is true, they did this when their sins were first pardoned; but they are in a position now to do it much more thoroughly and effectually. They know a great deal more than they did then; the daily discipline of life has shown them their weaknesses; the heights and depths, the lengths and breadths of the law of God have become much more fully revealed to them; light from a hundred sources has been thrown upon the depravities of their heart. So their consecration now can be a great deal more detailed and complete. The territory was, in a sense, all made over to God originally; but it has now been better explored, its resources are more largely known, and hence a renewed transference of the title deeds has much more significance.

This deeper consecration being thus most carefully and solemnly made, it only remains, as in the beginning, to believe that God accepts that which is given, receives the penitent offerer, who is at the same time the offering, into a new and tenderer relation, and fully empowers him for all the service to which the eager suppliant will certainly be called. Thus resting in this comfortable assurance, all his anxieties, which were inseparable from a partial consecration and an imperfect faith, being at an end, he has perfect peace, abiding joy, and meetness for the Master’s use. This will be a momentous era in his life, an epoch from which he will very naturally date as being almost a fresh conversion. It will be a new start, a strong departure, which will put an end, for a while at least, to the old zigzaggery, the perpetual ups and downs, which have been so humiliating or, at any rate, so disgraceful to himself and so painful to his Lord.

In the promotion of such new departures as this, and in the insistence that nothing short of this can be considered a normal Christian life, we think a good work is being done. And if this were all, the very serious evils referred to in the first chapter as attending the movement would not exist. The fact that they do exist and call for strenuous opposition is proof that other elements have entered into the movement which should not receive our sanction. What are they? The main trouble is that, through lack of comprehending what it is which gives occasion for the second blessing, the received teaching is that this blessing is a finality entirely removing all of depravity left after regeneration. For this there is not a particle of proof, either in Scripture or reason. The passages usually quoted from the Bible do not bear upon the subject. The straining and twisting which they are put through to make it appear as though they had some relevancy and were, indeed, thoroughly conclusive is one of the worst features of this theory, and begets a habit of “handling the word of God deceitfully,” than which nothing can be more mischievous. We have already mentioned the prevalent misapprehensions regarding some of these passages. A few other common and prominent examples may be given.

Perhaps no verse is more frequently quoted and with an air of greater triumph in this discussion than the one in 1 Thess. iv, 3, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification.” Here a full pause is made, although there is only a comma in the Bible. And thus there is an effort to conceal the fact, perfectly obvious to him who reads the whole paragraph, that the sanctification referred to, as the rest of the sentence shows, is “that ye abstain from fornication ’’ and wrong not your brethren by meddling lewdly with their wives; “for God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification.” What, pray, has this to do with deliverance by a second blessing from the least and last remains of depravity, or the carnal mind? The brethren addressed in this exhortation would have to advance a long way before they would be in a condition to comprehend much about so lofty a theme. But this is a very fair specimen of the proofs that are given us from the Scripture, even in standard books by very eminent authors. It would seem as if they must have deliberately taken leave, for the time, of their intellects, deeming it improper to use them on so spiritual a subject.

To quote one other text, as a fair specimen out of many (for we have no room to take up a large number), perhaps none is more frequently thundered in the ears of congregations, as if settling everything beyond dispute, than the words of the apostle in Heb. xii, 14, “ Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification [or holiness] without which no man shall see the Lord.” Here also, as in several other places, the connection shows that fornication was in the mind of the author as the opposite of sanctification; and there is no ground whatever for supposing that the sanctification referred to is any other than that general cleansing or empowering which all the Church of God receive when they are born of the Holy Spirit, and which makes them heirs of heaven and fits them to “see the Lord.” Jesus says that the pure in heart “shall see God,” using precisely the same word for “pure” which is found in John xv, 3, with reference to the disciples when he declares, “Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you.” It is plainly a general term, perfectly applicable to all believers who do already see God in a measure proportionate to the purity already attained, and who shall increasingly see him as they become increasingly pure. There is not the remotest hint in it of a second blessing that shall take away all depravity. The “follow” or “follow after” is used; of course, in a metaphorical sense, and means simply to continue to pursue the course indicated in the words succeeding. It is the same expression precisely as is found in Rom. xiv, Io, “Let us follow after things which make for peace;” 1 Cor, xiv, 1, “ Follows after love; 1 Tim. vi, 11, “Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness ;” 2 Tim. ii, 22, ‘‘Follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart’’ — where no one, we presume, would think of suggesting that Timothy and the rest were directed to seek something which they had not previously possessed.

The other passages usually quoted — such as “Ye therefore shall be perfect,” Be ye yourselves also holy,” “Sanctify yourselves,” “The God of peace himself sanctify you wholly,” “Sanctify them in the truth,” “To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil,” “Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit,” “Let us .. . press on unto perfection” —are, like the ones already mentioned, purely general, with no notes of time whatever, and not the slightest suggestion in them of the peculiar doctrine to maintain which they have been so strenuously laid hold of. The command to love God with all the heart, usually considered conclusive as to the truth of the “second blessing” theory, manifestly means that we must love him with all our present powers. This, at least, is all that can be made out of it if it is to be considered as enjoining present duty. If it means with all the powers of the primitive man, then, like some other commands, it must be intended for future fulfillment. The Lord is never so unreasonable as to urge upon us the immediate attainment of that which necessarily requires time. The command, “In mind be men,” for example, does not apply as a present obligation to boys. In short, the whole “second blessing” experience, as commonly taught, had no place or trace in the Bible. The attempts to make out the time, for example, when Paul went through what is assumed to be the necessary regulation process are extremely ludicrous. The New Testament churches are nowhere separated by the apostles into the two distinct classes into which it is endeavored to separate all modern churches — classes known as the “merely justified” and the “sanctified.”

Two truths greatly need emphasizing in this connection. Their general acceptance and practical recognition would go far to correct the mistakes that have been made and to counteract or prevent the evils that have arisen. One is, that the whole necessity for the second blessing, so far as there is a necessity for it, arises from a failure to maintain the complete justification gained at the first blessing, by proceeding straight forward in a thoroughly regular, normal development of the Christian powers. If one should do this from the beginning — and who can say it is impossible and has not been done? — pressing rapidly forward without break, the depravity which remained with him when born again would be diminished as fast as God plans it to be, as fast as is compatible with the constitution of his being, and he will come under no condemnation at all as the weeks and months and years roll by. Every duty as soon as presented will be done, and there will be no arrears accumulating which will need to be brought up with a struggle. Having given himself up to God at conversion as best he knew then, he will maintain that attitude of entire surrender; and as fast as anything further is revealed to him he will promptly give up that also. God will see to it that he is shown the further depths of his depravity as fast as his soul can bear, as fast as he is prepared to take advantage of the knowledge. All was not revealed at the start, because it would have simply overwhelmed and stunned, perplexed and paralyzed him; so only a portion was made manifest, larger or smaller according to circumstances, and this governs the degree of sanctification at that time imparted. He had sufficient to make a perfect start. Now all he needs is to go on walking in the light as it comes, maintaining from day to day full fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost and being continually cleansed from all unrighteousness.

This is what the directions of the apostle clearly contemplated. And in it is found no place for, or mention of, a second blessing. This is called for only when there is a failure, as no doubt there generally is, to carry out this program, when the light advances faster than the convert follows, and when obedience does not keep pace with privilege. Though the justification or adoption into God’s family is not actually forfeited by deliberately transgressing a plain command, a multitude of little omissions and doubtful indulgences bring a cloud over one’s spiritual sky and dim the brightness of his testimony.

And it is precisely this unfaithfulness to a greater or less degree — present and at least vaguely recognized, though not always put in these words — this lack of sufficient prayerfulness and watchfulness, which gives occasion for the crisis and struggle known as the second blessing. It is simply a getting back to the first love and a doing of the first works. It is recovering the ground which had been lost by not pressing on with might and main before. It brings one again into the normal Christian life in which he was at the beginning — the Christian life rather than a higher life — in which it is his business now to make speedy advance, and out from which he will certainly fall again unless they thus steadily advance. Dr. Daniel Steele, in one place at least, fully indorses this view. Speaking of those who have entered upon the higher Christian life as passing out of servitude into the joyous freedom of sonship, he says: “It is true that all who are born into the divine family are sons by adoption; but many forget their sonship and begin to work for wages. They become legal in spirit, trusting to the merit of their works, and thus put a yoke upon their necks” (Love Enthroned, p. 359). It is this becoming legal, this going back to work for wages, and this putting on a yoke, all of which contravene the true idea of the Christian life with which, it may be assumed, they started in at first, which have made the overturning necessary.

The other truth referred to above is, that the very same reasons which made it impossible for God to sanctify the soul with an absolute entireness, that is, to remove all depravity, at conversion, continue to make it equally impossible for him to do this absolutely complete work at the second blessing. As we explained in chapter third, only a partial work was done at regeneration, because of the imperfection of the powers of the human factor, which permitted only a partial enlightenment and empowerment at that time. This same imperfection remains. Why this has been so generally overlooked or ignored we are at a loss to understand. It is hardly too much to say that it is the key of the whole situation.

But all the standard writers seem sublimely unaware that it exists. Can it be that they deliberately choose to forget it? Bishop Peck is a fair representative of them all. In his Central Idea of Christianity (pp. 157-162), he argues that entire deliverance from the “lowest degree of impurity” and the least “remains of the carnal mind” is a privilege of all Christians in this life, because God must be both able and willing to do it; because “there are no limits to his power;”’ because ‘he abhors all sin;”’ because the plan of redemption, if a partial one, would be unworthy of God; because, if the spirit of man utterly loathes its inward depravity, there can be no “obstacle in the nature of man to the full triumph of Christ in the soul.” Very similarly, Dr. Miley says (Systematic Theology, vol. ii, p. 357) that the grace which, in regeneration, “so largely purifies our nature surely can wholly cleanse it. Hence, there is place for the doctrine of entire sanctification as an attainable blessing in the present life.”

But it will be readily perceived that all these arguments, which turn exclusively on the power of God and ignore man’s weakness, can be easily utilized by those who claim that a partial work at conversion is unworthy of God, since he hates sin and has all power, and since the soul at that point puts itself completely in God’s hands to be dealt with as he pleases, longing to be brought into harmony at all points with him. The soul can be no more willing at any subsequent time than it was then; and God of course can be no more powerful. But the same limitations to his power which prevented him from sweeping away all depravity then will continue to prevent him from sweeping it away. The same lack of perfect enlightenment will interpose its hindrance to the absolute completion of the work at the second blessing which prevented it at the first blessing. In the year after conversion, or in the tenth or twentieth year, as the case may be, a man is somewhat more able to apprehend his needs and to take in the complete requirements of God’s law, but not yet perfectly able. And we can intelligently and effectively consecrate only that which we know. In proportion to the immaturity and incompleteness of our knowledge will be the incompleteness of our consecration, measured by the absolute standard, and, hence, also the incompleteness of our sanctification. God’s revelations to us have to be gradual. And a large part of these revelations comes usually through the school of suffering and the daily discipline of life’s trials. The holiest of men have not hesitated to bear testimony to this. Alfred Cookman, in the last days of his life, said (The Life of Alfred Cookman, pp. 443, 406): “I used to maintain that the blood was sufficient, but I am coming to know that tribulation brings us to the blood that cleanseth.” “After the washing, or purifying, there are other processes used by the power or Spirit of God in smoothing and adorning and perfecting our characters.”

It is surely a very great error to maintain, as so many do, that the highest Christian experiences can be attained at any time by mere faith, and that he is derelict in duty, in other words, commits sin, who fails to exercise such faith or refuses to attempt to exercise it. Trial is necessary to develop the Christian. Patient endurance of that which the Father sends upon us gives a sweetness and depth to the character which no amount of mere faith can bestow, and brings upon us, not so much a second blessing, as repeated blessings that wonderfully increase our likeness to that Master who “learned obedience by the things which he suffered” and became “perfect through sufferings.” As men are constituted, the utmost possible death of self can only come as the final result of a very long process, a process for which life itself is not found too extended.

Hence, to prematurely conclude that there is an absolutely complete consecration and sanctification at the second blessing, as is so often done, can but work harm in exaggerated professions and the cessation of endeavor after further purifications. A far better way is to take the second blessing as simply a further installment, not a finality, and keep looking for many repetitions of the process, many supplementary works on and on through life. The second might very naturally, very probably, be greater and more conspicuous than those which should follow; but these latter would be just as essential to the further perfecting of the soul and to the bringing on of the time when, without “spot or wrinkle or any such thing,” the bride should be presented to her Lord. It is a fatal weakness of the common theory that it has no place for these supplementary cleansings, insists that everything must always be done in a cast-iron way, by precisely two applications of the blood, and no more. We do not find that this is God’s method. It is not borne out by experience, any more than by Scripture. It finds no analogy in his other operations. And it works much mischief practically, in that, the sanctification having been decreed to be absolutely complete at the second blessing, whatever comes up in heart or life after this that does not seem to be quite right is glossed over and soothingly called ‘‘mere temptation,” so as to keep the theory intact. Thus, progress is prevented, and declarations of sinlessness are made that the conduct does not indorse.

As to the confident assertion, heard on every hand, that the work of sanctification is absolutely complete at the second blessing because, forsooth, the Holy Spirit tells the people so or witnesses with them that the work is wrought, that claim may be summarily dismissed as one of the most baseless ever fabricated. Not a single text of Scripture can be legitimately quoted in proof of it. It is an assumption wholly groundless. What is commonly mistaken for this witness is a mere feeling of peace or joy, which shows, perhaps, that we are fully accepted of God and without condemnation; but it is evident that in the absence of Scripture authorization we have no right whatever to interpret this feeling as evidence that all depravity has been removed. The imparting of such information would be nothing less than a miraculous revelation wholly foreign to God’s present order of proceeding. The claiming of this miraculous manifestation leads straight to fanaticism, as is constantly seen in the case of a great number who, though plainly lacking in the fruits that spring from the perfect reign of love, defy reproof by the assertion that God tells them they have perfect love in their breasts, whatever their life may appear to be. Wesley had much trouble with such; and almost every Methodist pastor has had. The feeling of peace or joy called the witness simply shows that a man is living up to his light; but it says nothing as to the degree of his light or of his holiness. It is his special theological theory, a purely human thing, which bids him interpret his feelings as conclusive proof that he is free from all depravity.

The only text of Scripture that is commonly quoted as having any special bearing on this theme, or as authorizing the assertion that there is a direct witness of the Holy Ghost to the removal of all depravity, is found in 1 Cor. ii, 12, and reads thus: "But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God.” This deliverance from all depravity, it is said, is one of the things freely given to us by God; therefore, the Holy Spirit directly imparts to us the information that at such and such a time we individually received this gift. It seems to us that such reasoning as this is far from creditable to its authors, and simply shows the desperate straits to which they are pushed. For, in the first place, they assume as true the very thing which we deny and which we declare they have not proved, namely, that the removal of all depravity in this life is one of the gifts of God to us. In the second place, they assume, what is by no means clear, and what it seems to us the whole context of the passage is against, that the imparting of the knowledge referred to is by direct supernatural communication to each individual, instead of through the regular general channels of revelation and inspiration which we have in the apostles and the writers of the biblical books.

The text is clearly connected with verse 9, as Alford, Whedon, and commentators generally point out. Alford says, “That we may know the things freely given to us by God, that is, the treasures of wisdom and of felicity which are the free gifts of the Gospel dispensation, ‘the things which God hath prepared for them that love him,’ verse 9.” And those things, it is declared in verse 10, God revealed unto us “through the Spirit.’’ But how? How have the free gifts of the Gospel dispensation, so widely differing from the previous limitations of the law, been revealed to us? By Christ and his apostles and other chosen instruments. It is in this way, by studying the written word, that we chiefly know what things are freely given to us by God. And this written word nowhere says that all depravity is to be removed from human nature, and that nature restored to its pristine purity in this life. Still less does it convey such information with reference to any individual in particular.

Hence, we call the claim that the Spirit witnesses to our entire sanctification, in the higher sense, a baseless one, that can stand no sort of close and critical examination. Drs. Pope, Whedon, Curry, and other high Methodist authorities pronounce distinctly against it as a groundless and unscriptural assumption. And even Richard Watson is totally silent upon the question, probably because he could not assent to it and did not care to directly antagonize Wesley. Dr. Whedon said: “The Spirit testifies solely to this one fact — our being children of God. This special testimony cannot be quoted for other facts than our sonship.” All history shows that, when this limitation of Scripture as to the Spirit’s direct revelation is once broken down, the door is open for any fanatic to claim that whatsoever facts he pleases to imagine have been directly revealed to him. Unlimited evil has resulted from this error. As already intimated, the Spirit.may perhaps, in a sort of way, witness to our perfection, in the lower sense; but even this is doubtful and dangerous if it be meant that we are authorized by the Spirit to assert, positively and unreservedly, that for so many weeks and months and years we have not, in a single instance, deviated from duty. Even if “our heart condemn us not,” it may be that this is simply because of some hardness in that heart, some blindness and carelessness that is itself a fault. “Who can discern his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults.”

Since very many people whose word would be considered of weight in ordinary matters testify that they have the witness of the Spirit to their entire sanctification, it may be well at this point to inquire what value should be assigned to such testimony. In the opinion of the present writer, very little indeed, for the good and sufficient reason that they never define the terms they use in such a way that we can be sure we know precisely what they are talking about. They use the language of the class meeting and the pulpit. Their expressions are exceedingly ambiguous, being wholly of the indefinite, popular sort. Their words may mean much or little; but nobody can tell how much or how little, because there is no opportunity to cross-examine them. They generally employ Scripture phrases which may be understood very variously, and there is usually nothing in the context of their testimony to show with certainty how they understood them. Furthermore, it is the simple truth that every man’s experience, and hence his testimony, is colored and shaped by his theory. He puts his profession in the particular form that his special doctrine tells him it ought to be put in; so that two men of widely differing theologies, though of practically the same experience, will by no means phrase their feelings in the same way.

What is said, then, even by men of eminence can be easily explained without, on the one hand, calling in question either their competence or honesty, or, on the other hand, admitting the absolute correctness of the special theory in whose behalf they are quoted. Doctrines are to be settled by Scripture and reason, rather than by experience or testimony. A man may testify to his “ conscious deliverance from all remaining corruption.” But, in the first place, consciousness is a valid witness only to the active operations of the mind, not to its quiescent states. In the second place, what he means by “corruption” — a very vague and somewhat objectionable figure of speech — is altogether likely to be something very different from what we mean by depravity. So his testimony carries no special weight on the point in dispute. His testimony proves that he obtained a great blessing, and he is competent, also, to bear witness to various beneficent changes in the feelings which he finds aroused within him by the impact of temptation — changes in the ease and heartiness with. which he responds to calls of previously unwelcomed duty. If testimony were confined to things of this sort — plain, unmistakable things expressed in simple, untechnical language — it would do far more good than does the more or less mechanical repetition of certain shibboleths learned by rote, and neither understood by those who utter them nor by those who hear.

John Wesley’s advice regarding this matter of testimony, in one part of his Plain Account (pp. 150, 151), is marvelously good and should be heeded: ‘‘Give no offense which can possibly be avoided; see that your practice be in all things suitable to your profession, adorning the doctrine of God our Saviour. Be particularly careful in speaking of yourself. You may not, indeed, deny the work of God; but speak of it when you are called thereto, in the most inoffensive manner possible. Avoid all magnificent, pompous words. Indeed, you need give it no general name, neither perfection, sanctification, the second blessing, nor the having attained. Rather speak of the particulars which God has wrought for you.” When people do this, and this only, their testimony will be golden. But when they say, “I am perfectly holy,” “I live without sin,’’ or, what is substantially the equivalent of these boastful sounding phrases, “I am entirely sanctified,” “I am cleansed from all sin,” then their testimony sends a shiver down the spines of the judicious, however much it may delight those who are chiefly anxious for the exploitation and glorification of a special hobby.

As to our need of forgiveness for things which are not sins, which are simply “ involuntary deviations from rectitude,” violations of the Adamic law which has been repealed and replaced as a rule of duty, although such need is taught by very high and authoritative names, we must totally repudiate it as contrary to the tenets of common sense and of true Arminian theology. There is no fault or blame for what we cannot help. And if we are not in fault there is nothing to be forgiven for. Sin is always voluntary. To talk about “involuntary sins,” as many people have done, is to perpetrate an absolute contradiction. This wholly fictitious, unreal, unnatural business of imagining an atonement necessary to expiate the guilt of perfectly innocent infirmities should be summarily dismissed to the limbo whence it came. There can be no penitence where there is no guilt. We cannot be penitent for the simple existence of depravity which we are striving against and doing our utmost to put away as rapidly as possible. We do not need to be forgiven for a misfortune which has come upon us by somebody else’s act and which remains with us in spite of all that we can do. Unavoidable infirmities and ignorances need no expiation. They do need the infinite patience and love of our Heavenly Father, just as similar acts from an earthly son would need similar treatment from an earthly father. He and we together work them out until the perfect image is restored. Since God is just these things, which are entirely beyond our power to help, are in no sense imputed to us as culpable or criminal, and any attempt to make them appear so springs from a remnant of Calvinism which should be repudiated. It lands the attempter in an endless maze of contradictions.

To our mind a fatal flaw in the theory under criticism is that it makes no adequate place for the very important distinction, already briefly alluded to in the second chapter, between actions that conform to absolute rightness and mere good intentions such as secure the actor from blame. Sincerity, or meaning well, seems to be all that is covered by the usual phrases about loving God with the whole heart and having every action spring from love, which appears to be the popular modern synonym for Christian perfection, or entire sanctification. But good intentions are certainly not enough to constitute a perfect character such as we should set before ourselves and others for a model. Professor Borden P. Bowne brings out these points, in his Principles of Ethics, better than any other writer with whom we are acquainted. He well says: “The will to do right in no way implies the perfection of the moral life, but only its central element and its indispensable condition. The will must be realized in fitting forms and the entire life be made an expression of right reason before that which is perfect can come”’ (p. 132). “Ignorance, weakness, narrowness, dullness, can never be consecrated or elevated by any amount of good intentions” (p. 68). “It is, then, by no means sufficient that one be formally right, that is, true to his convictions of duty; he must also be materially right, that is, in harmony with reality and its laws” (p. 40). “The great need of our time in practical ethics is the serious and thoughtful application of our intellect and our knowledge to the problems of conduct. Moral progress can be made only as the good will is informed with high ideals, and is guarded by the critical reason” (p. 152). He, then, who simply does the best he knows may be doing a great many wrong things; that is, he may fail to do the things that are called for by the circumstances in which he is put; the things which would be followed by the best consequences, measured by the good of all concerned; the things which accord with God’s perfect will and which Jesus, the perfect man, would do in his place, He will not get good results from his life, any more than the blundering farmer will get good crops or the uninstructed, unpracticed mechanic will turn out a good job. He may be saved himself,“‘so as through fire;’’ but he shall suffer loss, and his work, not abiding the test, shall be burned. The child that tries to help its mother in sewing, but, through lack of skill, only makes a botch, may win a smile or a caress because the bungling attempt sprang from love; but the work will have to be picked out, the garment possibly has been spoiled, and the child for many a year will not be classed as a perfect seamstress. In the same way, a child cannot be a perfect Christian, in the higher sense of that term. Christianity has positive contents, just as farming or tailoring has. It is made up of certain virtues, which virtues were perfectly exemplified in the Founder of the religion, Jesus Christ; and a perfect Christian, in the fullest sense, is one who perfectly exhibits these virtues.

This is the New Testament standard of perfection. To what extent can an ordinary boy or girl from thirteen to seventeen years of age exemplify this kind of perfection, or entire sanctification? They may have most thoroughly and sincerely, up to their light, consecrated themselves to God; and God, of course, has correspondingly taken possession of their hearts. But how little, after all, in the nature of the case, can they really know of the length and breadth and depth and height of his mighty law and of its practical application to the endlessly diversified and complicated circumstances of daily life! What that law demands of us, in the different relations of life in which we are to take a part, is the study of saints and sages all their days; and then there remain points on which they speak with hesitancy. What, for example, does the command “Humble yourselves’? mean? What does perfect humility include? If, as Mr. Wesley says, and we think says rightly, “It is pride, not only to ascribe anything we have to ourselves, but to think we have what we really have not,” if it is pride to think we have more knowledge, or virtue, or ability than we actually possess, how is it possible that these children of fifteen should be wholly free from pride, or know, without having had more opportunity for measurement and testing in a variety of positions, just what they are? How natural and practically inevitable is it that they should think more highly of themselves at some point than they ought?

Take, as another illustration, the grace of simplicity, which touches motive. We are commanded to do all to the glory of God. Perfect obedience to that command is perfect simplicity, or perfect purity of intention. It means that we are actuated in all our doings and dealings simply by love to God and a desire for his praise; that there is only one end and aim in everything we attempt, namely, to please him; that we refer everything absolutely to his approval, and his alone. Can a child of fifteen even understand what this means? Of course not. The same might be said of perfect patience, perfect meekness, perfect gentleness, perfect contentment, perfect prayerfulness, perfect watchfulness, perfect temperance, that is, self-control or balance. These things are not for children. Why? Because they imply more knowledge and discipline and development than are possible at that age, with their slight experience of life.

And is it not equally clear that this incapacity for the highest things is not a matter entirely or peculiarly of age? Some are more developed at fifteen than most are at twenty-five. Some are more mature at twenty than others at forty. Many people are always children, so far as their mental stature goes. And all people, we might say, as long as they live are so far children that their knowledge will be somewhat defective as to what is comprised in an absolute conformity to the will or nature of God. There will always be something for them to learn as to what is comprised in the reproduction of the life of Jesus — as to just what he would do if he were in their place. For this reason they cannot be perfect in the higher sense. But all the while they may be perfect in the lower sense — perfectly loyal to the duty that is shown them, not voluntarily transgressing any known will of God, hence, not sinning, in the correct acceptation of the word.

Many writers on this theme, perhaps most, freely admit that far more of consecration — because we see more to consecrate — succeeds the act of perfect faith and perfect sanctification than precedes it; which conclusively shows that they reduce entire sanctification to mere good will or right intention, something which every child of God has at conversion. And yet these very writers repudiate most strongly, and sometimes with very intense adjectives, the idea that a person is entirely sanctified when he is converted. From all which it is easy to see, what crops out at every turn in our discussion, that no consistency or clearness on this subject can be secured until the two kinds of perfection are steadily discriminated.

One of the main defects in very many people’s apprehension of this subject of Christian perfection lies in their failure to trace the close connection between love and knowledge. That “love is conditioned upon knowledge,” and that “man’s ability to love depends on the extent and correctness of his antecedent knowledge,’’ as Dr. Miner Raymond has fitly said in his Systematic Theology, we are fully persuaded. Dr. T. C. Upham, a high proficient both in mental philosophy and spiritual experience, also declared: “Love is based in part upon knowledge, and is necessarily based upon it, It is the privilege, therefore, of the holy person to increase in holiness in exact proportion with his increase in knowledge.” Certainly a man cannot love that of which he knows nothing. There must be adequate knowledge of whatever is included in love. In order to a perfect knowledge of God there must be a knowledge of God’s law, including its requirements and provisions. There must, also, be a knowledge of self and its needs, before we are prepared to take the requisite steps for obtaining a supply for those needs. We cannot do our duty until we know what that duty is. We cannot do the right, except by accident, until we know what that right is. Will anybody claim, either for himself or another, that in this world he can always know precisely what the absolute and abstract right is — that right which lies calmly behind all the blunders and partial knowledges of the creature, as the infinite blue lies back of the floating clouds and the changing planets? It would be an infallibility greater than that to which any pope ever pretended. It would put all who differed from him, either on points of Church government or doctrine or discipline, straightway in the wrong. He could settle, not only his own duty, but everybody else’s duty, off-hand. This is manifestly impossible.

There must, then, be more or less of ignorance concerning God’s will, more or less of mistakes about it, in this life, at least, whatever may be the case in the other of which we know so little. Hence, our perfection can only be of that imperfect sort which is compatible with a good deal of blundering. And hence, furthermore, the wisdom of that phrase, which some have objected to, but only we think through misconception of its meaning — “saved up to light.” It has been supposed that this meant that sin, or condemnation, must remain upon the soul so long as it was ignorant of anything ; which would, of course, be absurd. Sin is deviation from duty, and duty is strictly limited by knowledge attained or attainable. Therefore, we may be entirely free from condemnation all the way along, while our advancing intelligence is taking on ever new refinements of moral distinctions, and thus making us to be more fully assimilated to the divine model and procuring for us an ever closer approximation to the largest and fullest conceivable life.

And if one should say that this must be “an eternal travel toward an ever receding boundary’ we do not know that we should enter any protest or feel any disappointment. For mathematicians show, in what they call an asymptote, that a curve may be drawn of such a nature that a straight line lying in the same plane may forever approach and yet never touch it. They show, also, that the sum of the vulgar fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc., though forever approaching unity, will never reach it; as is the case, also, with the decimal series .99999999 indefinitely extended. Thus, perhaps, it may be with us in our approaches to the absolutely perfect purity and absolute holiness of God. If so, will it not minister to our endless joy that we are endlessly drawing nearer to him? He, alone, is the standard of the highest holiness. Our being sanctified up to our present knowledge, as we may and should be at any and every moment, all our conscious needs being met in Christ, is a delightful and glorious thing. But people must be told very plainly that this is by no means enough, and that it must not be regarded as in any sense a stopping place. They must turn their attention straightway to that unconscious selfishness, unknown depths of which both observation and experience teach are still within them, which they are gradually to come to the knowledge of and then get rid of, thus growing up into a complete likeness to Christ.

It is easy to see, from the illustrations given above, how growth in grace toward perfection must proceed and in what particular directions it will take place. On the supposition that a person is really holy, set apart for God, loving God with all his present powers, and doing the divine will so far as it has been made known to him, his progress will consist in a steadily increasing mastery of the contents of this will, with an exactly corresponding conformation of his conduct to this perpetually enlarging grasp of the right. It is well known that the power of moral discrimination in matters whose good or evil nature is doubtful — referred to by the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, where he speaks of those who “by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil” (v, 14)—has a practically unlimited capacity of improvement. The child in intelligence and spiritual experience, whether ten years or forty years old, knows very little of the nicer distinctions and finer points in morals. The first principles or rudiments of Christianity are all that he is acquainted with. Milk, and not solid food, has been his diet. He is conceited, without knowing it. He is obstinate and willful, but calls it by an entirely different, and much more honorable, name. He is full of faults, plain to the more discerning eye of the better instructed, but he is wholly ignorant of them, perhaps even considers them virtues, and so makes no effort whatever for their removal. He is, thus, a reproach and an offense, doing much harm, though very likely deeming himself a “pattern of good works.” If his eyes become open to the true state of the case, or if he begin even to suspect his deficiencies, he will set himself to studying things and will begin to grow in a way before impossible. His moral discernment will become keener and keener, and he will recognize more and more things in his past life as not being in accordance with the standard of perfect righteousness, though hitherto he has thought them right. And, as he goes on, many of the thoughts and feelings and actions which, even now, with his present increased light, seem to call for no change will begin to show their defects under the more powerful illumination to which they will be subjected.

Thus the ideal advances ever, the standard grows greater and higher all the time. To be entirely like Jesus means more to us this year than it did last if we are progressing; and it will mean more next year than it does this. And we shall see more and more clearly as we go on that, however largely we have been saved hitherto, there is a still larger salvation opening before us. For there is no stopping place in this matter, in this life, at least. As to the other, we know too little to venture an opinion. So long as we are on this earth, at any rate, we shall never reach a point where both our power of moral discernment and our intellectual development, on which it closely depends, cannot be increased. In other words, they will remain imperfect, and this intellectual imperfection will necessitate more or less of moral imperfection — not in the sense of blameworthiness, but in the sense of coming short of the moral ideal.

We hold it to be also true that there is another particular in which there lies before us, as long as we are in the flesh, an endless opportunity for progress. We refer to the promptness and heartiness with which we accept or welcome the will of God. We are warranted, it seems to us, in thinking that an angel or a redeemed spirit above unites with the divine will more swiftly, eagerly, absolutely than does anyone here below; so that the prayer that God’s will may be done in us as in heaven is one always appropriate for the ripest earthly believer, one which he does not outgrow. Must it not, also, be said that the failure to render this perfectly prompt and hearty obedience, even though our purpose is never so good, indicates some remaining disorder in our powers, shows that perfect harmony there is not yet quite restored? There is probably some slight lack of perfect watchfulness, some over-occupation with self, so that we do not recognize the will of God, coming in unexpected shapes, as quickly as we might. Hence, being for a small or large moment in doubt what is his will, there is a flaw in the perfect promptness with which it is seized. It is impossible to believe that depravity is all gone so long as there is possibility of improvement in the promptness and heartiness with which God’s will is known and done, for this is only another way of saying that there is possibility of improvement in our empowerment for service. There would seem to be, so far at least as this life is concerned, a possibility of unlimited and perpetual growth in both these directions.

It is, we suppose, failure to separate the two things referred to a little above — blameworthiness and blemish — that has led many writers and speakers on this theme to insist that a man may be perfect in love, while very imperfect in the qualities or manifestations of love; that he may have a perfect subjective or internal purification, while his outward life is far from perfect and his Christian graces are very immature. These writers will declare that a person who unquestionably shows imperfect control of tongue or temper, imperfect patience, humility, meekness, gentleness, contentment, prayerfulness, etc., has, nevertheless, perfect love. They overlook the fact that all these virtues and qualities of a perfect character are one and all but parts of love, and parts that can in no wise be separated from the whole. We separated them in thought, simply for convenience of consideration, precisely in the same way that we assign special names — “ Arctic,” “ Atlantic,” “ Pacific,” “Indian ” — to the different parts of the one great ocean, the undivided body of water which covers three fourths of the globe, whose billows join in all latitudes with no sign of separation.

Even so, there is but one divine element — love. Patience is love suffering; meekness is love enduring provocation; peace is love reposing, or love producing harmony with environment; humility is love estimating its claims; truth is love speaking; joy is love exulting; charity is love sitting in judgment; politeness is love in society; and so on. Love embraces everything. This is why getting more religion is only getting more love, why there can be nothing higher than love, why, as Wesley says, “love is the one kind of holiness, existing in different degrees in various believers; and if we are seeking anything but more love we are seeking amiss. Whatever defect there may be, then, in any of these divisions, or departments, or developments of love, is a real defect in love itself. There can be no perfection in the latter which does not show itself throughout the former.

The very vagueness of the word “love,” taken in a merely general way, and not separated into its component parts which have a closer application to daily life, lends itself readily to delusion; and directing the attention to one or more of the parts, such as are most practical, is an excellent way of detecting the deception. Love, being an emotion, is best tested or measured by that to which it moves us, by something which comes out clearer into the light of day as a matter of practical obedience to the will of God. It is quite convenient and comfortable for a person to say, when charged with certain derelictions, “I feel nothing but love; but on account of my physical and mental infirmities I am not able to manifest my feelings.” Is not such a person very much on a par with the child who, when questioned at school, replies, “I know, but I cannot tell?” The trouble with the child is that he does not really and clearly know. He only thinks he knows; he has only a vague, dim, and misty half-knowledge, which, of course, refuses to shape itself into a definite form of words. The endeavor to put his cloudy conception into articulate speech is the very test needed to reveal its cloudiness, which was before suspected, but now is manifest. Just so it is with the claim that our love is all right, while our manifestation or exhibition of it somehow fails. The latter must be accepted as the test of the former.

Love is shown by its fruits. The only way we can really know the state of the heart is to watch its outcome. If the outward is only relatively or partially perfect, the proper conclusion to draw is that the inward, also, is only relatively or partially perfect. A partially perfect life means a partially perfect love. If, for example, something that looks like pride is seen in a man’s demeanor, if there is too much self-assertion and self-confidence, if there is an assumption of leadership for which there is no sufficient foundation of well-attested ability, does not this plainly show that an over-fondness for self really has place in his heart, that there is a lack of proper love to the others with whom a comparison has been made so much more to their disadvantage than it ought to have been? Would they have been thus wronged in the estimate had they been perfectly loved? In the same way, if there is impatience in a person’s conduct, if irritation or petulance is shown in tone or manner, it appears that pure and perfect love is not in active exercise at that time. If it were it would sweep away these uncomfortable agitations; it would prevent the formation of such feelings; it would make impossible, even for a second, anything like animosity toward the person or thing that, by interfering with our plans or crossing our will or frustrating our purposes, has disturbed the equanimity of our mind. And so we might proceed with the other qualities. When closely analyzed we believe that any experience or manifestation of such traits as we have mentioned will be found to imply some lack of love, that is, of love in active exercise then and there. But it is only as it is in activity, when the conditions calling for it exist, that we can rightly infer its probable existence.

Clearly, then, it would be better to say — not, “T have perfect love of the highest quality which, through my mental and physical imperfections, I am unable to manifest’ — but, “Because of my mental and physical imperfections, my love must also be in some respects imperfect, and be called perfect love only in that lower, inferior sense which suffices to keep me from condemnation, because keeping me from sin.” To claim anything else is to fall into the same pit of absurdity which involves those believers in the healing of sickness by faith alone who stoutly maintain that the cure of their bodily ailments is complete, while the symptoms all remain unchanged. “Simply ignore them, and press forward, claiming the reality at the back of, and below, the symptoms,” is the cry of the faith healers; “count them only so many infirmities, and steadily believe that the life of Jesus is there just the same, working out the great restoration.” Sensible people count this, in the case of the faith doctors, as absurd fanaticism and barefaced presumption, the all-sufficient cause of so many pseudo-cures which result in physical relapse and spiritual despair. We find a complete parallel in the case of great numbers who profess, just as loudly and positively, to be wholly cured of all those sinful habits of the soul which constitute about what we mean by depravity, although the symptoms of that moral malady, as shown in the tongue and temper of daily life, appear to be but little changed. In the matter of both spiritual and physical healing it is the height of unreason to claim for the interior anything which does not, with a fair degree of promptness, show itself on the exterior. This is a looking, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen, which was not contemplated in the apostle’s exhortation.

John Fletcher certainly did much to guard against such a perversion of the term “perfection;” for, at the very beginning of his treatise (Last Check to Antinomianism, §1), where he formally defines what he is about to discuss, he calls it “a spiritual constellation made up of these gracious stars — perfect repentance, perfect faith, perfect humility, perfect meekness, perfect self-denial, perfect resignation, perfect hope, perfect charity for our visible enemies, as well as for our earthly relations, and, above all, perfect love for our invisible God.” And he adds, “This last star is always accompanied by all the others, as Jupiter is by his satellites.” So it would seem, from this, at least, that he did not think a person might be perfect in love while not in the qualities of love. Neither, apparently, did John Wesley ; for he speaks (Plain Account, pp. 129-132) of some whom he has met that “are undeniably wanting in long-suffering, Christian resignation. They do not see the hand of God in whatever occurs and cheerfully embrace it. They do not in everything give thanks and rejoice evermore. They are not happy, at least, not always happy, for sometimes they complain. They say, ‘This or that is hard.’ Some are wanting in gentleness.... If they are reproved or contradicted, though mildly, they do not take it well.... They speak sharply or roughly when they reprove others. Some are wanting in goodness. They are not kind, mild, sweet, amiable, soft, and loving at all times, in their spirit, in their words, in their look and air, in the whole tenor of their behavior. ... Some are wanting in fidelity, a nice regard to truth, simplicity, and godly sincerity. ... Some are wanting in meekness, quietness of spirit, composure, evenness of temper. ... Their soul is out of tune and cannot make the true harmony. Some are wanting in temperance. They do not steadily use that kind and degree of food which they know, or might know, would most conduce to the health, strength, and vigor of the body.” He says to all such, ‘‘You have not what I call Christian perfection; if others will call it so they may.” Hence, he certainly would not have admitted that they could have perfect love without the perfection of the accompanying traits and practical developments thereof.

No, it will by no means do to say that the defects of the life are simply due to lack of skill in manipulating the outward implements by which the inward disposition finds expression, that the trouble is due simply to the old habits not being fully mastered by the new spirit within. A young convert might say this, for it is only another way of saying that depravity to some extent still remains; but he cannot say it who asserts that all depravity is gone. The inward disposition and the outward manifestation are linked too closely together to be separated. No such division of our powers can rationally be made. We are a unit. The spiritual, the intellectual, and the physical are so very closely intermingled while we remain in the flesh that each of them more or less controls the others. The spiritual and moral development is dependent upon the intellectual at many points, as has been already noted in this discussion. And it is none the less true that the intellectual condition is, in turn, most closely dependent upon the physical, The mind and body, under their present conditions of union, are inseparably interpenetrative. Whole volumes, full of fascinating interest, are devoted to the details, which cannot be given here. Every disease has certain specific mental effects, readily traceable, as all doctors know. This is most clearly seen in such marked diseases as dyspepsia, which produces depression, and consumption, which produces hopefulness. But other diseases also affect us in less traceable ways. And no one is perfectly free from all disease or in a state of absolutely perfect health. All abnormal physical states, however slight, are accompanied by more or less abnormal mental states, up to pronounced insanity or the total overthrow of reason, which is but the result of violated laws of health.

To make a single quotation out of the multitude that might be given in support of this position, we take the following from Bishop Brooks’s posthumous volume of sermons. In a discourse on ‘‘The Natural and the Spiritual” he says: “Need I even suggest to you how every man has in his bodily constitution the physical basis of the most subtle and transcendent parts of his profoundest life? Out from the very marrow of his bones comes something which his finest affections never outgo, and which gives a color to his soul’s loftiest visions. His dreams are different from other men’s because of the texture of his muscles and the color of his blood. It is on the harp of his nervous system that the psalm of his life is played. There is a physical correspondence to everything that he thinks or fancies. There is a physical basis to his most spiritual life.... A man thinks well and loves well and prays well because of the red running of his blood.” In the words of Paul, “That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and then that which is spiritual.”

An imperfection, then, in any one of these three so intimately related sides or aspects of the man means an imperfection of the whole. The more nearly normal is any one of them, other things being equal, the more nearly normal will be the remaining two. The spiritual cannot be so separated from its necessary dependence on the other two parts that it can be perfected while they are imperfect. Although three, we are one and one in three — a unit. The entity or being which goes by our name will be judged by the total outcome of all its powers and faculties. To change our old habits is our life task. The degree of alteration shown in them at any moment measures the degree of our growth in grace and our approximation to the stature of Christ. Just so far as perfect love does not show itself, we may be sure it does not exist, but that something else exists which would fain pass itself off for the genuine article. To claim that perfect love fills the heart, however little of it appears in the life and in the practical manifestation of these various virtues, is a monstrous delusion, fraught with great harm and closely akin to that Antinomianism which claims that its standing in Christ is all right whatever may be its conduct.

Our growth in holiness, that is, the decrease of depravity or sinfulness, is most fitly measured, among other things, by our increasing power over temptation. This is a topic most intimately connected with perfection, and a topic which many of the principal writers on the latter theme have manifestly failed to master, thereby bringing themselves and their readers into great confusion. The main muddle is over the words “repression” and “ extermination.” Scarce any two authors are agreed as to just what is repressed or regulated, and what is destroyed or exterminated. It is quite common, with a very large number of those who assume to teach the public on this theme, to declare that temptations, with the wholly sanctified, “do not go beyond the thoughts;” “that they are stopped in the intellectual perception;” that they are wholly from without, finding “no response from within;” that, as soon as presented, they awaken “at once a universal rebellion throughout the whole soul, instead of the emotions becoming favorably excited;’’ in short, that everything has been eradicated from the soul which would do anything but greet with loathing the object of temptation. It ought not to require much acumen to perceive that, if this be the case, any real temptation, and, of course, any falling into sin, is rendered absolutely impossible. Even a limited knowledge of mental philosophy suffices to show that that which in no way touches the sensibilities, except to arouse their antagonism, could not by any possibility produce favorable action of the will, which is reached only through the sensibilities; and it would be the barest kind of a fraud to style that sort of thing a temptation.

A bottle of whisky, for example, is no temptation to a man in whose whole nature it arouses only disgust, although its very presence is the fiercest kind of temptation to one who has come into bondage to the appetite for liquor. If there was nothing in Adam’s nature that responded with any favor to the assault of Satan it is impossible to see how he fell. If there was nothing in Christ’s nature that so responded it is impossible to ascribe to him any credit or virtue for resisting, and it is impossible to regard him as “in all points tempted like as we are,” or to believe that he “suffered being tempted.” The good people, to whose glaring mistake we make reference, have supposed that it was in some way derogatory to the Saviour’s purity to imagine him as really feeling the force of temptation or doing anything but look upon it with a coldly critical and purely intellectual contemplation, as upon something that did not in the least interest or concern him. He could hardly, on this theory, even have spurned it, as he would a noxious reptile, or have brushed it away, as he would a venomous insect; for this would imply that it had power to do him harm and that he might have yielded. It is entirely safe to say that, if Christ was a complete man and in any sense an example to us, he deeply, keenly felt the temptation to shrink from the bitter agonies of the cross. A multitude of scriptures bear witness to the sore trouble and bitter anguish with which he wrestled against that which found his flesh weak, simply because it was real flesh, not a pretense, though his spirit was perfectly willing.

And it is, also, safe to say that no soul, however completely sanctified, has any of the natural, normal susceptibilities and propensities of human nature eradicated. Depravity being not a creation of something new, annihilation is not called for. No new powers being added, there is no demand for subtraction. If new physical or intellectual capacities, new constitutional faculties, had been imparted at the fall, then something of this sort would have to be taken away to constitute recovery. But, since depravity in no way implies a substance or entity projected into the soul, but was only a perversion or derangement of existing powers, its very completest destruction must be simply a regulation of those powers. None of our essential human parts, among which are certainly emotions and desires, are taken away by grace. It is just as legitimate and inevitable for an emotional nature to be stirred when the objects divinely appointed to stir it are presented, as for an intellectual nature. It is no more sin in a hungry man to desire food than to perceive that the food before him is adapted to satisfy his hunger. He cannot help desiring it to some extent, for the desire is instinctive and necessary and, hence, innocent. But, if law forbids him to take that food, plainly it is his business, in the exercise of his will, to turn his thoughts as far as possible away from the exciting object and refrain from cherishing the desire. In that case, there will be no sin. Sin begins when the desire is fostered against the remonstrance of the conscience, and so passes over from the mere incipient, instinctive desire into a full-fledged, voluntary desire, which is a very different thing.

But desires of some sort for those things which seem calculated to gratify the natural propensities, those things that are pleasant and agreeable, a man must have so long as he continues to be a man. That which produces pain within him — inevitably produces it because of the constitution of his nature — can never be regarded in the same light or awaken precisely the same feelings as that which produces enjoyment. Self-love, that innocent and necessary propensity which prompts us to seek the pleasant rather than the painful, is a component part of our being, from which, so long as we remain human, we shall never be divorced. After the sinful self, or selfishness, is all gone there will remain this innocent self, giving cause for self-denial, that is, pain in the path of duty. Desire in its tentative, provisional stage is purely involuntary and has no more moral character than breathing, for the very good reason that it can be as little helped and has as little to do with the will.

But, unless an object is both to some degree desired and at the same time perceived to be forbidden, its presence cannot constitute temptation. A man who is simply disgusted with the sight and smell of tobacco, all his senses and tastes revolting against it, is not tempted by being asked to smoke. Nor is he tempted by such an invitation who, while liking the weed, considers it perfectly allowable to use it. “Temptation” is only another word for the excitement produced in the mind, or the conflict arising, in presence of an object liked but unlawful, instinctively desired but authoritatively forbidden. We believe it cannot be better defined.

But temptation, which is never sin of itself, though often confounded with it by untrained minds, sometimes to their great injury, passes into sin just where the desire passes from its incipient, involuntary stage to the completed and voluntary, just when the desire for the object or course of action seen to be contrary to God’s will begins to be cherished, even though but slightly, or is retained, instead of being thrust vigorously away; just when a man, feeling within him a drawing toward a certain object and perceiving, also, that it is not right under the circumstances to possess or pursue the object, does, nevertheless, yield a little to the drawing or neglect to oppose and repel it, just then he begins to sin. To use the language of St. James (i, 14, 15): “Each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust [or desire], and enticed. Then the lust, when it hath conceived [or come to full fruition by obtaining the consent of the will, the deciding factor], beareth sin.” Is not this clear?

The difference between partial and entire sanctification, at this point, in the light of these facts, may be stated thus: He who is but partially sanctified has a great deal more of trouble with his lower nature than he ought to have, than it was designed originally that he should have, more than Adam had. His appetites and passions, by long indulgence on his own part, together with their inherited abnormality, have gained inordinate strength, so that they make it very difficult, more or less as the case may be, for the higher powers, the reason and conscience, to keep them in their proper place. As he grows in holiness, as his sanctification increases and draws nearer to the point of perfection, while the original elements of his nature are not added to or diminished, any more than they were at the fall, the distortion, or bent, or bias, or tendency toward evil which has come upon them is gradually straightened out and rectified. The abnormality is removed or destroyed, but certainly not the powers themselves. They are simply subjugated completely, or put in perfect order.

There can be no such destruction of the sensibilities or susceptibilities as that all stirrings of the emotions or desires can be gratified and no occasion remain for self-denial. The innocent sensibilities will always need to be guarded against excessive or misdirected action, will need to be held in check lest they go beyond proper bounds. Their tendency to seek gratification— which is by no means the same as a tendency to sin, recognized as such, which it is our business to diminish day by day and as speedily as possible destroy — did not come from the first Adam and will not be destroyed by the second Adam. The latter, the tendency to sin, is controlled in partial sanctification and destroyed in entire sanctification. The former, the tendency to seek gratification, will always remain and will always need looking after. Hence, the constant need for watchful. ness and prayer that we fall not into, or yield to, temptation, which will always be a source of danger through the feelings which it arouses.

Unless the force of the temptation is felt by the sensibilities, and not simply perceived by the intellect, there can be no temptation. When the abnormality, or undue strength, of our appetites and passions is entirely removed, then alone is established their due and proper subservience to the reason and conscience, then alone comes the easy and prompt subjection of the lower to the higher. They will always seek blindly for gratification when objects suited to gratify them are presented, for exactly that is their function in our complicated structure; and they will always need to be resisted and repressed in cases where their gratification would not be right. The most absolutely complete sanctification conceivable would not alter this. It was Adam’s business to do this, and because he did not he fell. Christ was obliged to do this, and because he did it perfectly he was not touched by sin. “It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master.” In proportion as we approach the condition where our passions and appetites have simply their healthy, normal degree of urgency, such as is essential to constitute us complete human beings and no more, where the effects of the fall upon them and the effects of our previous improper yielding have all been neutralized, in that proportion we approach entire sanctification, in the fullest sense, or the removal of all depravity.

The degree of ease and readiness, then, with which we overcome temptation and avoid sin is an accurate test of our progress, our growth in grace. Early in the Christian life, or where there is but a small measure of sanctification, there are often sore struggles and severe conflicts, the lower powers through previous indulgence being in great force and not yet accustomed to the yoke. With more mature Christians these conflicts have greatly diminished, holy habits have become established, and passions are much less violent, having become largely subjugated and made to know their place. The ripest saints have learned the secret of God’s presence; are so recollected that they very rarely miss any indication of God’s will, however slight; are so quick to recognize, by their vigilant and trained moral sense, the right or wrong of every incitement or suggestion that they are very seldom, even for a moment, misled; and have so deep an abhorrence of sin or anything approaching it that no sooner is it recognized than the whole force of their being, with resolute promptitude, fiercely thrusts it away. Very great degrees of advancement may be made and a very close approximation reached to the ideal condition; but it does not appear possible on earth to gain a place where there can be no increase in the promptness with which we recognize God’s will and the heartiness with which we embrace it. In other words, the powers by which we perceive the evil and repulse it remain at our best estate somewhat imperfect, and our obedience will not be flawless. Our sanctification will not be absolutely complete. Our depravity may be very greatly diminished, how greatly none can tell; but, so far as we can perceive, it is never, in this life, absolutely destroyed.

How, indeed, can one tell with exactness just what is the precise measure of strength which his various passions and propensities ought really to have, or just how urgent they would have been had not sin in any way touched them? And without this knowledge it is evidently impossible for him to tell whether or not he is entirely free from depravity. That the Holy Spirit by special personal revelation imparts this very peculiar piece of information to his mind, as some seem to claim, is to the present writer inconceivable and absurd, totally contrary to all our knowledge of the Spirit’s operations. And, in default of this, we know of no method by which such information can be acquired. Furthermore, how can one tell with positiveness, in the absence of a direct and immediate revelation from God, whether, for so many days or weeks, the unavoidable incipient desires for pleasant, but forbidden, things have not in some instances, to some slight, but perceptible, extent, passed beyond the necessary stage and been for an instant cherished, or suffered to linger unrebuked, in the mind? If they have there has been more or less of sin. How can one be sure whether the suggestions of Satan have been repelled with the utmost possible instantaneousness and vehemence, or whether, owing to some still remaining, slightly morbid state of the sensibilities, there has been a dalliance with them that was not necessary and, hence, was blameworthy? How very few at all realize what they mean when they say that, since such and such a date, they have been saved from all sin!

It is amusing to see how, almost invariably, these very ones who make this declaration, when charged with professing sinless perfection, indignantly repudiate any such position, apparently not discerning that he who is now without sin or has been delivered from all sin is by the very nature of the case necessarily sinless — for that, and that only, is the meaning of the word — sinless, not, of course, from birth, like Jesus, but sinless for the length of time which their ‘‘second” experience covers. We think it is better not to pass judgment upon ourselves in this very intricate matter, about which some uncertainty would seem to be inevitable. It is better simply to press on with as much haste as possible, making it the one absorbing object of our lives to know and do God’s will, leaving to him the decision as to whether or not we have in any degree fallen short of our highest possibility of growth, and certain that the broad shield of his forgiving love will cover our shortcomings as we humbly say, night by night, in view of what his pure eye may have seen amiss in us during the day, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.”

Before leaving this subject, it may be remarked that we have in it an excellent example of the great necessity for care in the use of words. Those who have declaimed with such violence against what has been called, or stigmatized as, the repressive theory of entire sanctification, and have denounced in unmeasured terms its upholders, as though they were guilty of some rank heresy, have been the victims of misconception and have been fighting a man of straw. For to repress means, according to a standard authority, “to press back or down effectually; to crush down or out; to quell; to subdue; to suppress; as, to repress sedition or rebellion; to repress the first risings of discontent. Hence, to check; to restrain; to keep back.” To repress depravity, then, which, as we have already shown, is simply a rebellion, is a most proper term, and means to crush it or destroy it and restore the perfect harmony which originally prevailed. When that is restored the fullest kind of entire sanctification will have been reached. It is the improper regarding of depravity as something to be uprooted from the mind or soul which has made the use of the term “repression” an offense. It is declared by one of these disputants, who has written a volume of nearly five hundred pages — good at some points, but misty in more, for lack of apprehending the force of words — that ‘‘every unconverted man has power to repress disordered affections, and that grace destroys disordered affections.” The fact is that the disorder is destroyed, by being repressed, when sufficient grace is obtained or sufficient growth reached, but that the affections are so far from being destroyed that they remain intact. Another one of this class declares, “Temptations to sin are from without; they are not impulsions of the mind.” The fact is that the exciting cause or occasion of the temptation is some external object or person, but that the temptation itself is within the man invariably, no matter how pure he is, since it is a mental excitement.

On the other hand, they who deny that there is any such thing as partial sanctification fail to distinguish between the sensibilities in their natural, and in their unnatural, strength. Both the partly, and the entirely, sanctified man will have to check the cravings of desire whenever these cravings are met by the inhibitions of duty, and a conflict will of necessity take place. But these writers ignore the fact that, with the former, the checking is much harder, because the disordered condition of the faculties yet in some measure remains, thus making it easier to yield to temptation than it was with Adam or than it is with those who have the disorder more thoroughly rectified. So, on all sides, these discussions have largely degenerated into mere logomachies, which would be, for the most part, obviated if a few fundamental definitions were made and adhered to and a few clear distinctions in the use of terms properly regarded.

One of the most singular notions connected with this subject of growth, which one meets at every turn in a certain class of “holiness” authors, represented most prominently by the Revs. J. A. Wood, G. D. Watson, and William McDonald, is that, no matter how much we grow in grace, we are brought by it no whit the nearer to entire sanctification and become in no degree or particular purer in heart. Amazing as it may seem to those not familiar with this class of writings, this is declared in so many words and with every appearance of complete belief. Dr. Watson says (White Robes, pp. 29, 42, 78, 79): “The growth that is previous to heart purity [by which he always means perfect purity] does not, in any degree, cleanse the soul from inbred sin.” “To be freed from all sin does not indicate growth or maturity, but is the pure normal condition of a soul, whether it be old or young. Processes of growth can no more produce heart purity than addition can produce subtraction.” “Purity is the subtraction of evil, but growth is the addition of grace. Any child can see that these are just opposite to each other.” “Purification and progress are as distinct in their offices as sin and grace are distinct in their character.” Mr. Wood similarly says, in his Purity and Maturity (pp. 183, 148): “It has been asked, ‘Is not growth in grace growth toward entire holiness?’ If it be meant, ‘Is growth in grace, in the common acceptation of the term, the process of gradually cleansing the soul?’ we answer,‘No.’’“ “The fact that inbred sin is a unit...is proof that we cannot obtain freedom from it by growth in grace. Like error, inbred sin is a simple, uncompounded element or quality. ... Hence, it cannot be divided or subdivided and removed by parts.’ Mr. McDonald says (Scripture Views of Holiness, pp. 212, 213): “Depravity can never be removed by growth in grace.” “Growth is but the accumulation of the same kind of particles of which the animal or plant was possessed at its beginning. Growth never changes a tree or animal into one of another kind… The growth of a believer does not consist in what is removed, but in what is added. Holiness is the gift of God.”

Other passages, too long to be quoted here, show that these writers — who seem to have quite a large following, in spite of the preposterous nature of their positions — have an idea that, if growth be conceded to have anything to do with removing or diminishing depravity, some dishonor is cast upon the spirit of truth, the blood of Christ, and the office of faith. But surely no one of any evangelical school of thought for a moment supposes or claims that growth in grace is secured in any other way than by faith — joined, of course, with works — and through the perpetually operating efficacy of the atonement and through the ever present Holy Spirit. These divine agencies are behind and within every genuine particle of growth. It need not be affirmed so fiercely that “there is no power in growth.” Everyone admits that “all power is of God.’ But we hold it to be quite as conceivable, and far more in accordance with divine operations elsewhere, that successive operations of the Holy Spirit remove depravity — it being, in no comprehensible sense; a unit incapable of division and removal in parts — as that it is removed altogether or not at all. The class of writers under discussion are obliged by their theory (than which anything more untenable or remote from reason can scarcely be imagined) to assert that depravity is in no degree diminished, even at the new birth. Their language is: “When original sin goes it all goes; while it stays it all stays. Its removal is always instantaneous; in the nature of things it cannot be otherwise.” If an appeal is made to the nature of things, or, in other words, to common sense and pure reason, we are quite willing to carry the case before that tribunal, confident that the verdict will be on our side.

We say that in the nature of things the negative and positive works go on simultaneously in the soul. The destructive and reconstructive processes proceed side by side. Just so far as one dies unto sin he lives unto God. Just so far as one puts off the old man he puts on the new man. More light always implies less darkness, more knowledge less ignorance, more wisdom less folly, more strength less weakness, more beauty less ugliness, more love less selfishness. In the same way, more of the grace or favor of God implies less in us which is contrary to God’s nature — that is, less depravity. There can be no vacuum in the soul. As we are emptied of evil we are filled with righteousness. As self goes out Christ comes in. There can be no instant when we or any of our powers are simply neutral, neither in favor nor disfavor with God. We must be at all times either one thing or another, and at no two moments are we in precisely the same state. The decrease of depravity, or sinfulness, and the increase of holiness keep always equal pace. They are not really two things, but one and the same thing looked at from different sides, like the decrease of darkness and the increase of light, the decrease of cold and the increase of heat. “In the nature of things it cannot be otherwise.” To talk about one being always instantaneous and the other always gradual, one being both begun and completed at the second blessing, while the other is conterminous with the Christian life, whether in this world or the world to come, is to use words without significance, is the same as to say that cold diminishes while heat is in no way increased.

Most people require no argument to show them that it is utterly impossible for a person to grow in grace, that is, in the favor of God, except as he becomes daily more Christlike, that is to say, more holy and pure, stronger in faith and in all the virtues or qualities that make up the perfect Christian. It was in this way that Wesley expressed himself in the passage already referred to from his sermon “On Patience” (Sermons, vol.ii, p. 222). “In the same proportion as he grows in faith he grows in holiness, he increases in love, lowliness, meekness, in every part of the image of God.” Similarly, Bishop Foster in his Christian Purity, expressing his dissent from those “who deride the doctrine of progress in holiness, or progressive sanctification” (p. 188), says: ‘“We have no favor for the sentiment that growth in grace is not growth toward entire holiness” (p. 185). “That growth in holiness, from the degree of it imparted in regeneration, is progress toward the completeness of it in entire sanctification, we cannot conceive a Christian understandingly to deny” (p. 183). Bishop Merrill, also, adds his disclaimer of those who are so void of understanding as to deny this self-evident truth. He says (Aspects of Christian Experience, pp. 263, 219, 221): “There is no growth in grace without an increase in holiness.” “Every step of advancement in the divine life brings more purity and lifts the soul nearer to the sublime height of complete holiness. The growing Christian is increasing in holiness.” ‘“His growth toward maturity is the highest proof of increasing purity.”

It is, of course, true that a mere enlargement or increase of capacity, a further “accumulation of the same kind of particles,” would not mean greater purity; a simple increase of quantity would not affect quality. But we are not speaking of any such increase as that when we speak of Christian growth, or growth in grace. We are speaking of spiritual growth, not of any mere physical or mental growth. The distinction is a very simple one, and it seems singular that so many good people should have entirely overlooked it. The mere enlargement of a man’s powers or capacities would not enlarge his holiness, making him a better man; nor would the decrease or decay of his powers decrease his depravity and so make him in this way a better man. A man is made better — be his powers large or small, increasing, decreasing, or stationary — when the proportion of those powers which are dedicated to God increases.

If the sum of his powers is ten, and, though a Christian, he is in a low state of grace, his holiness may be represented by six arid his depravity by four. If his powers remain the same and he grows steadily in grace the ratio of his holiness to his depravity will constantly shift, becoming as seven to three, as eight to two, as nine to one, and so on. If his powers should be doubled, so as to be represented by twenty, and he remain in the same state of grace as at first, so that twelve to eight correctly represents his ratio of goodness, it is plain that, while in one sense he might be said to have more holiness, in the correct sense he has not, since his depravity, also, has proportionately increased and the net result to his character is the same. The test of his true growth in grace is the growth of the disproportion between his holiness and his depravity, so that the former more and more preponderates in the scale. A person becomes perfectly good when perfectly freed from all depravity, so that ten to zero represents him. When perfectly good he cannot be better, though he can get larger; so that fifteen or twenty or forty to zero would be his expression. As a matter of fact, however, according to the doctrine explained in these pages, depravity will never come in this life to an absolute zero, but will always be represented by, at least, some fraction of one, though it may be and should be a constantly diminishing fraction. Our powers will also, in all ordinary cases, be in- creasing, so that if at conversion in youth ten represents them and we are not taken to heaven till, after a long and useful life, we have reached threescore and ten, our proper figure may, perhaps, then be one hundred, of which glorious sum total only a unit or a fraction thereof would stand for the depravity remaining.

The claim so often made, that all growth in grace — some who are more timid or temperate content themselves with saying nearly all — comes after, and not before, entire sanctification, is now seen, we trust, to come from total misconception of the signification of the term. The truth is that such growth must come before, and not after. When one is entirely freed from depravity or sinfulness or evil there can be no more growth in holiness or goodness. The only further growth possible is growth in quantity, not quality — the expansion of power which has no moral or ethical flavor. A bootblack may be as holy as a prime-minister, a canal boat boy as holy as a president. Indeed, when the former has become the latter he is very likely to be less pure. This enlargement of capacity, we may suppose, will go on forever and ever, so that we shall be perpetually fitted for larger tasks and higher posts in the administrative service of the higher regions; while all the time our entire powers, without the slightest fraction of diminution, are absorbingly devoted to God, and so our holiness is kept at the maximum point. Then, and then only in the fullest sense, shall we be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect.

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