1.A 15. LETTER XV
LETTER XV. The evidence of sanctification Direct, indirect, and external The direct witness This the doctrine of all evangelical Christians The way so plain, that no one need err Contrary opinion absurd The witness is God’s Spirit This bears wit ness to His own work Shines by His own light Proved by sundry arguments By our poetry. MY DEAR M : Having shown the possibility and nature of holiness or sanctification, it seems proper that we should inquire into the evidence of its existence. This is three-fold.
1. Its internal, or direct witness, to the heart of the believer.
2. Its indirect evidence, which is its fruits, called the fruits of the Spirit.
3. Its external evidence, called keeping the commandments of God. In regard to the first evidence, the internal witness of the Holy Spirit, which bears witness with our spirits that we are the children of God the sacred Scriptures are full of it, so full that all the holy men of God, patriarchs and prophets, primitive fathers of the Church, re formers, Luther and Calvin, and every true evangelic minister, bear testimony to its truth and reality, either in direct and explicit terms, or by necessary inference. Indeed it would be one of the greatest absurdities imaginable to suppose that God would require us to seek after any particular blessing, and threaten us with ever lasting destruction if we did not find it, and promise us a present and an eternal reward if we did, and yet never let us know whether we had come into its possession or not. An earthly parent who should deal thus with his child; that is, command him to do a certain job of work, and threaten him with a severe punishment if he did not do it, and a certain reward if he did, and yet never let the child know whether or not he had done it, would be denounced, by every reflecting mind, as cruel, unfit to rule, and would be deprived, if justly dealt with, of his parental authority. And shall we attribute to our heavenly Father such a capital defect in his government? Has he marked out the road to heaven with such obscure lines, that those who are making their escape from earth to heaven can never know whether they are in it or not? Has he required us to be holy, and has He, at the same time, left holiness so obscurely defined, so imperfectly described, and the way to obtain it so uncertainly marked out, that those who seek it, and actually find it, are so left in the dark that they can never know whether they are in the way or not, or whether they are in the possession of that holiness which is the object of their pursuit? Surely this cannot be so.
Nay, so far from this being the unhappy case, the way of holiness, thrown up for the redeemed of the Lord to walk in, is so plain, that the "wayfaring man, though a fool" in other respects, " need not err therein." God has made the way to heaven, which is the way of holiness, so plain, and furnished us with such evidences of its plan, of its reality, of its length and breadth, that no one, unless he be wilfully blind, or inexcusably careless, need mistake it, or dangerously err therein, or live without a satisfactory witness in himself that he possesses the requisite qualifications for the enjoyment of God in heaven. But let us inquire what this witness is. It is none other than God’s Spirit bearing witness with our spirits that we are his children. His Spirit bears witness to His own work, in every step of its progress, from conviction of sin to repentance, faith in Jesus Christ to justification, regeneration, sanctification, and so on in the path of holiness, until the purified believer arrives to the kingdom of glory. Not a single step does the sinner take in the way of repentance, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ for the pardon of his sins, the surrendering of his whole heart to God by faith in Christ for the entire destruction of sin, and the full sanctification of his nature, and all his subsequent progress in the path of obedience to the commandments of God, but what God shines upon the work by his Holy Spirit, illuminates his understanding, sheds his heavenly rays into the darkest corners of his heart, communicates strength to make him to repent, believe, and finally, when the work either of justification or sanctification is accomplished, bears testimony to God’s work upon the soul, that it is done, and well done too, for " all God’s work is perfect." Thus the Spirit goes before us, opens the way, removes the stumbling- blocks, scatters our enemies, overcomes, by our yielding to His holy influence and this yielding itself is in consequence of His aids our native opposition to the ways of God, and finally, when we are adopted into the family of God, enables us to " cry, Abba, Father, I know myself thy child." Do you doubtingly ask, How shall I know it? No you do not. You, my dear M., re member perfectly well, when, after a long struggle of soul, in which you poured out strong cries and tears to God for this very blessing, being encouraged by those Christian friends who surrounded you, and mingled their prayers of faith with yours, the Lord appeared to your troubled heart, removed the load of inward pollution under which you groaned, shed abroad his love in your heart, and spoke, in accents of the kindest compassion, not indeed with an audible voice, but with the sweet whispers of his Spirit, " I will; be thou clean." In that moment you felt the storm which had raged within hushed to silence, and all was calm and peace, and you sank down into the arms of your heavenly Father, saying, from the very depths of the soul, " Thy will, which is my sanctification, be done on earth, as it is in heaven." Did you doubt in that moment but that God had accomplished the work of holiness in your heart? No, you did not. Wherefore? Because the Holy Spirit had taken the things of Christ and given them to you, and you could but rejoice in the things that you had received; and you no more doubted that these blessings the blessings of peace, of love, and joy in the Holy Ghost, came from God, than you did of your own existence. What brought this assurance? It was the " Spirit of truth" which cannot lie or deceive any of God’s people. It was this that overshadowed you, that penetrated into the depths of the soul, and that brought up from thence, first, a " hungering and thirsting after righteousness, a longing desire after this very kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," creating within your heart a resolute determination that you would devote yourself hereafter exclusively to the service of Almighty God. Have you ever either repented of this entire cooperation of soul and body, time and substance, to God, or seriously doubted the reality of the work? No, indeed! But this evidence, what is it? I cannot conceive of any evidence distinct and apart from that which accompanies, and therefore is inseparably connected with, the operations of the Holy Spirit upon the heart. What other evidence do we need that the sun shines than that which the sun itself brings, by the darting of its own rays upon the world? Light up a candle in a dark room. Does not the light bring an evidence, to all that see it, that it shines, and consequently that the candle burns? And what would you, my dear M., think of a man that should ask, in the midst of this glare of light, for an evidence distinct and apart from that light itself, that the candle burns, and that its rays are diffused through the room? Would you not conclude that he asked for an impossibility? Or, at least, that he wanted a superfluity of evidence? Would you not tell him to open his eyes, and see the light for himself, and then if he doubted its existence, he must continue in his skepticism? Surely argument would be lost on such an unreasonable man.
Just so, when God shines upon the soul by the Holy Spirit, He brings an evidence of him self, that he is there. When the " Sun of righteousness rises on the soul with healing in his wings," disperses the clouds of ignorance from the understanding, removes sin from the heart, and sheds abroad Divine love there, He brings an evidence clear and strong, that he shines upon his own work, that the Divine Spirit has " wrought a perfect cure," and that he himself now " inhabits there." He is his own best evidence. When he works he does his work to such perfection, that it bears an impress of the Divine hand. When he speaks to the soul in accents of love, and says, " It is I : be not afraid," the sanctified soul recognizes the voice of his Lord and Master, and cries out, in the rapturous language of faith and love, " My Lord and my God!" " My beloved is mine, and I am his." " He has brought me into his banqueting- house, and his banner over me is love." This is the evidence, the internal evidence spoken to the inmost soul, by the sweet voice of that Spirit of TRUTH which Jesus Christ promised to his disciples, and which should be with them forever. He shines by his own rays, and they bring an evidence clear, strong, and undeniable, of his own presence, make an impression upon the soul of his own image, and write in legible characters his
"New best name of love" upon the heart; and when this is done, the sanctified soul looks up by faith, and " beholds the glory of God, shining in the face of Jesus Christ." Is not this, my dear M., your experience? Did you ask for any other evidence that you were " cleansed from all unrighteousness," than what the Divine Spirit brought to your heart in that very moment when he descended into your soul, and which was accompanied with a " Peace unknown to sensual minds?" When we " dwell in love, we dwell in God, and God in us," and where he is, he always brings an evidence of himself, and we cannot mistake his powerful, convincing voice, the shinings of his glory, the whispers of his Spirit, the feelings of his love, for the deceitful voice of Satan, the darkness of error and sin, and the feelings of hatred and envy. Did you, my dear M., ever read attentively the 590th hymn, in which the poet describes the feelings of a soul determined to rely on the promises of God, however impossible their fulfilment might appear to human reason? After leading the confiding soul along in the path of faith, and teaching him to sing " Though earth and hell the word gainsay, The word of God can never fail," he puts the following words into his mouth, and makes him sing most delightfully and triumphantly the song of deliverance from sin, and asserts the evidence of it as contained in his image which the Spirit of God had stamped on his heart :
" When thou the work of faith hast wrought, I HERE shall in thine IMAGE SHINE, Nor SIN in deed, or word, or thought; Let men exclaim, and fiends repine, They cannot break the firm decree, ALL things are POSSIBLE to me." Our hymns upon this subject are so numerous, and so fully prove the point under consideration respecting the witness of the Spirit, as well as its nature and fruits, that I can hardly quote amiss. Take the following as a sample among the many which you may find scattered up and down in the book, but more especially under the head, " For Full Redemption," and to which
I refer with the more pleasure, because I know that you, my dear M., delight to familiarize yourself with those Scriptural, deeply experimental, and lively devotional compositions; and likewise with a mournful fear that too many of our people either never read or sing them at all, or else look at them so slightingly that they neither understand nor feel their solemn import. The following is the verse to which I refer :
" My PEACE, my LIFE, my COMFORT thou, My treasure and my all THOU ART! True WITNESS of my sonship, now ENGRAVING PARDON ON MT HEART, Seal of my sins in Christ forgiven, Earnest of love, and PLEDGE OF HEAVEN." The following is yet more in point :
" Thy WITNESS with my spirit bear That God, my God, INHABITS there;
Thou, with the Father and the Son, Eternal life’s co-eval beam, Be Christ IN ME, and 7 m kirn, Till PERFECT we are made In mu." May our most merciful Father give you and me, and all who read these lines, that peace, that life, that comfort, which arise from this witness, that God inhabits in our hearts, and makes us perfect in LOVE.