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  A HOLINESS MANIFESTO
  by Charles W. Butler
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Butler's statement of holiness principles calling the church to a renewed
commitment to biblical holiness and the pursuit of sanctification, presenting
the core convictions of the holiness movement.

  Chapters: 23

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 0000 - Preface
    2. 00000 - Introduction
    3. 01 - The Doctrine of Holiness
    4. 02 - The Experience of Holiness
    5. 03 - The Life of Holiness
    6. 04 - Advantages of Holiness
    7. 05 - The Relation of The New Birth to Holiness and Heaven
    8. 06 - Witnesses To Holiness
    9. 07 - The Need and Value of Being Sanctified Holy
   10. 08 - Eradication, Suppresion, Or Counteraction, Which?
   11. 09 - The Importance of Holiness
   12. 10 - Heart Talk On The Second Work of Grace
   13. 11 - A Heart Talk On Holiness
   14. 12 - Holiness and Service
   15. 13 - The Method By Which God Makes Us Holy
   16. 14 - Holiness and Worship
   17. 15 - Preaching Holiness
   18. 16 - The Logic of Holiness Evangelism
   19. 17 - A Single Standard
   20. 18 - Observations
   21. 19 - How To Obtain The Blessing
   22. 20 - Identification
   23. 21 - The Compelling Power of Christian Realism

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  CHAPTER 1: 0000 - PREFACE
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A Holiness Manifesto By Charles William Butler

Back Cover A HOLINESS MANIFESTO is a good climax title for a book prepared by C.
W. Butler in life’s evening, and I can hardly think of any one’s leaving it out
of his library, after having witnessed the nationwide ministry of the Author. I
am quoted as having referred to him in the earlier days as the Martin Luther of
the Holiness Movement. It is a miracle the way the Lord has strengthened him to
write and preach for revivals and camp meetings. The Publisher has been asked to
send me my copy, as soon as The Holiness Manifesto comes off the press.

John Paul

I have known Dr. C. W. Butler for many years. He is a tower of strength in the
holiness movement. He has been honored and respected by those who have known
him, and his preaching and writings have been a mighty power for God. I am sure
that this new book, A Holiness Manifesto, will have a large sale and be the
means of blessing many.

Stephen S. White, Editor HERALD OF HOLINESS

Dr. C. W. Butler has had a long and fruitful life in promoting Biblical truth --
especially that of scriptural holiness. His virile mind, logical habits of
thought, keen insights into truth, sensitivity of spirit and loyalty to the
highest standards of God’s Word have made him an outstanding leader in
Arminian-Wesleyan circles in America.

I know of no man who has kept the passion for a sound theology and a soul-saving
ministry in closer union across the years than has Dr. Butler. He has maintained
a perennially fresh approach to the Word of God, to the Throne of Grace and to
the souls of men. His sermons by voice and pen have been both intellectually
stimulating and soulfully satisfying. He is eminently qualified to give us
instruction on the "central idea of Christianity," namely, "true holiness." I
heartily commend his Holiness Manifesto to all who would know God and his power
through Christ, by the Holy Spirit, to cleanse from all sin.

Delbert R. Rose, Ph.D. Prof. of Biblical Theology Asbury Theological Seminary
Wilmore, Kentucky For something over forty years Reverend Charles W. Butler and
I have worked side by side in school, tabernacle, and camp meetings. We have had
remarkable agreement in our views on all vital matters of doctrine and general
policies. When he is called to a camp meeting I know the camp will get great
preaching, sound teaching, and rugged truth. His messages come from a rugged
personality. A man thoroughly and conscientiously in earnest saturated with
truth, shot through with experience and mastered by sober thought, tugging at
the mind to lead man to God and holiness of heart and life. Possessing strength
without arrogance, faithfulness with charity for all that is good, and unbending
opposition to all that is evil or scripturally unsound, his preaching is under
the light and anointing of the Holy Spirit. He has continued as long, if not
longer in years of full salvation evangelism than anyone of our time. A cedar of
the mountains, a strong oak of the valley, a gleaming pine of the hills. May the
sun linger on him here until it dawns upon him from the skyline of the
everlasting tomorrows. His friend -- John Lakin Brasher


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  CHAPTER 2: 00000 - INTRODUCTION
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Introduction The Communist Manifesto was issued by Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels in 1847. The far-reaching influence of this work is now manifest in that
more than one-third of the earth’s population has been brought under the sway of
the Communist regime. A manifesto of far greater influence and significance,
than the Communist Manifesto, is proclaimed by the Apostle Paul in these words:
"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that
we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Ephesians 1:4). The
holiness manifesto, patterned according to God’s choice and plan, is the supreme
manifesto of the ages. This manifesto extends from the eternity of the past to
the eternity of the future, and presents the only complete remedy for the malady
of sin in all of its phases, the overwhelming blight and curse of mankind.

One of the best equipped men of our generation, to present the Scriptural
manifesto on "true holiness," is Dr. C. W. Butler. He speaks out of a wide
experience as pastor, teacher, college president, author, editor, and
evangelist. His keen, penetrating insight, profound spiritual discernment, and
wise discrimination in terminology, have contributed to a manifesto on holiness
of the first rank. This volume presents holiness as a doctrine of Scripture;
holiness as an experience and holiness as a life. The instant crisis involved in
obtaining the experience of holiness is not a final but a door of entry to an
experience where much territory is to be explored and many conquests are to be
made. The relation of the new birth to holiness is portrayed with clear and
illuminating insight. The timely illustrations in this volume are adequate
windows through which floods of light enter for further illumination of the
subject. The theories of eradication, suppression, or counteraction are
discussed in regard to their relative merits on a scriptural basis. The author
says: "It is not a sin to be human. To associate mortality and sin as
inseparable is to charge God foolishly as being the author of sin. God created
mortal man, but God did not create sin." The steps necessary to obtain and
maintain the experience of holiness are clearly defined. In the chapters of this
book will be found a treasure house of truth pertaining to "the breadth, and
length, and depth, and height" of the experience of holiness, obtainable in this
life through the shed blood of Christ, which cleanses from all sin. The full and
complete atonement of Christ for all sin does not leave the human heart a
necessary hiding place for the remains of carnality. Christ is not limited in
his power to save from all sin. He is able to do for the Christian "exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh
in us."

J. C. McPheeters


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  CHAPTER 3: 01 - THE DOCTRINE OF HOLINESS
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Chapter 1 The Doctrine Of Holiness In the history of our modern holiness
movement there is a Trinitarian statement which is common but valuable. Who was
first eresponsible for it I do not know. But it analyzes and classifies holiness
truth under three heads: holiness as a doctrine of Scripture, holiness as a
heart experience, and holiness as a life. Under these three statements there is
room for a very thorough setting forth of the whole truth. It is our purpose to
bring a series of chapters following this outline. We shall be true to the Word
and to the facts as revealed therein, and to the experience of those facts in
our lives. We shall seek to show the advantages of the experience in every phase
of our total living.

First, the doctrine as set forth in the Word of God. Please observe it is a
doctrine or truth of Scripture. As such it is declared to be in the will of the
sovereign Father. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification" 1
Thessalonians 4:3. "For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto
holiness" 1 Thessalonians 4:7. "By the which will (the will of the Father) we
are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all"
Hebrews 10:10. "To them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in
Christ Jesus" Jude 1:1. "According as He (God the Father) hath chosen us in Him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame
before him" Ephesians 1:4.

Secondly, that which the Father hath chosen and willed concerning the character
His people are to bear, He hath provided and made available by the death of His
Son. It is, therefore, associated with the shed blood of the Son. The will of
the Father is accomplished through the provision of the death of His Son:
"Through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ." "Wherefore, Jesus also that
he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate"
Hebrews 13:12. "Who gave himself for us that he might purify unto himself a
peculiar people zealous of good works" Titus 2:14. The experience prepares us
spiritually and motivates unto every good work. "Husbands, love your wives, even
as Christ also loved the Church (twice-born children of God) and gave himself
for it, That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the
Word (the symbol of regeneration), that he might present it to himself a
glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it
should be holy and without blemish" Eph. 5:2527. "The blood of Jesus Christ his
Son cleanseth us from all sin" 1 John 1:7. The Father wills it, the Son provides
it, and that which the Father wills and the Son provides the Holy Spirit is
given in his sanctifying fullness to realize unto us. That is, by the direct
agency of the Holy Spirit the experience is wrought in us and made real and
effective. "That the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being
sanctified by the Holy Ghost" Romans 15:11. "Elect according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit unto
obedience" 1 Peter 1:2. "God hath from the beginning chosen you unto salvation
through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" 2 Thessalonians
2:13. That is, in sanctification wrought by the Holy Ghost. God’s chosen and
established method in applying salvation is by the work of the Holy Ghost.

"For by one offering, he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified"
Hebrews 10:14. "Follow peace with all men, and the sanctification without which
no man shall see God" Hebrews 12:14. That is the definite sanctification the
Father authorizes by His will and decree, provided for meritoriously by the
blood of Christ and made real by the promise of the Father in the Pentecostal
baptism of the Holy Ghost. The Bible setting of this great truth makes the
experience a vital part of our salvation. It is, therefore, clearly taught that
it is received, as is every part of salvation, wholly by faith. In Acts 26:18
where we have the record of Paul’s ministry, the scope of it climaxes in this
truth: "To open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the
power of Satan unto God, that they may receive the forgiveness of sins and
inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me." Here we
have the whole purpose of the Gospel declared from turning a sinner to God,
first for forgiveness and then for sanctification. Both facts obtained by faith;
both parts of one full salvation. That is the basis for Mr. Wesley’s speaking of
sanctification as the "second blessing properly so-called. Not simply being
blest, but obtaining the blood-provided cleansing of all indwelling sin, a
definite part of the one salvation. The Bible setting of this doctrine makes it
indeed "The Central Idea of the Gospel." This is the ultimate moral objective of
the whole revelation of God, and His atoning provision for man, His moral
creature.

Truly, He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we
should be holy, and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us
(as redeemed holy ones) unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory
of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved" Ephesians 1:4-6.
Glory to His matchless grace forever and forever. Amen.


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  CHAPTER 4: 02 - THE EXPERIENCE OF HOLINESS
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Chapter 2 The Experience Of Holiness The experience of holiness as a definite
epochal crisis is in its very nature bound to bear fruit in the life of its
possessor. I remember so well that the Word of God was a new book to me. The
illumination administered to my mind and heart by the sanctifying gift of the
Holy Ghost opened the book to me in a way that made it new. Many Scriptures
before but dimly understood became clear and radiant with light which confirmed
the reality of my experience and confirmed the truth of the doctrinal standards
maintained and promoted by the National Association for the Promotion of
Holiness. I found myself in complete harmony with our Wesleyan interpretation of
saving truth so that the faith to which I had consented when I united with the
Conference of the church now became something to which I not only consented, but
I was made a living witness thereto. The experience of holiness gives an
enlarged vision of truth. With this enlarged vision, there comes a passion for
the truth which motivates and gives one the urge for its promotion. One becomes
aware that what he possesses is an essential part of blood-bought salvation.
Like Isaiah. he "sees the Lord high and lifted up." He cries out of the deep
passion of his soul, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts!" This experience
takes out of its possessor everything that objects to or draws back from
anything in God’s Word. He soon adopts the language of Canaan. I remember how I
used to shudder if anyone witnessed clearly to being sanctified wholly. I
allowed, they would better live it and not say so much about it. I ignorantly
agreed with the devil splendidly. But once I crossed the Jordan and began to
possess the land, how all this was changed. One feed of the old corn of Canaan,
with the grapes of Eshcol for my desert, found me so in love with the land I had
entered that everything in me that ever shrank from the giants of the country
was gone and a deep, holy enthusiasm for the whole truth possessed me.

I remember an illustration Dr. C. J. Fowler gave of this truth to which I am
witnessing. Dr. Fowler was pastor of a Methodist Church in New England, and of
course, true to the truth, he had a holiness revival in his church which
produced living witnesses to this experience. He said that one evening at the
close of a happy, victorious service where many witnessed clearly to the joy of
full salvation, a very refined, cultured, kidgloved lady of his church came up
to him and said, "Dr. Fowler, don’t you think these people are making altogether
too much of this question of entire sanctification?" Dr. Fowler replied,
"Sister, did it ever occur to you that you have something in you that kicks on
the Word of God?" The question stung her with conviction. She sought and
obtained the blessing. He said ever after that she was always talking about and
witnessing to the experience, using the term sanctification.

Yes, this experience both envisions and impassions its possessor so that one
becomes active with a new and increased zeal for all of God’s truth and for all
the souls of men.

How many ministers and laymen, too, shrink from identifying themselves with this
definite truth because there is a certain reproach accompanying it. It takes a
consecration which involves death to reputation and death to position, and a
devotion to God and His Word which puts the stake at martyrdom to cut the
shorelines, and put all, including our church and our position in it, on the
altar and swing out free for God. My wise friends of fifty years ago shook their
heads and said, "Too bad. Butler was a promising young man but he has run off
with those holiness people."

Yes, I have been identified with the whole saving truth of God and God’s method
of applying said truth and making it effective for fifty years now. God has led
in ways I knew not of, but if I could stand again at the forks of the road and
know all it involved to identify myself with this truth, I would without
hesitation, and gladly, make the same choice I made at that time. I settled it
to stand without wavering or compromise for the absolute authority of God’s
inspired Word, and for the promoting of second-blessing holiness. It became
light in my soul. No shade of night has ever arisen on the day in which "the
light shines more and more unto the perfect day." I stand at this evening hour
of a long life without regret for the choices made and the course followed for
half a hundred years now. I regret all personal failures and mistakes made. I
have had many occasions for self-correction, but I have had no occasion for
creed revision during these years. The truths embraced then I have proven in all
the vicissitudes of life, and they have grown dearer and sweeter with the
passing of the years. I have found that truth instead of needing any revision,
needs to be held to with unquestioning loyalty, and I have found that truth,
instead of changing, has dimensions of height and depth, of length and breadth,
which remain a continued challenging to a growing soul. To my young brethren of
the ministry let me say, do not shrink from the reproach of identification with
true holiness. Do not water down the crisis experience to fit the failure of
anyone professing it, but rather lift the standard to its true level until all
who are below that level will be awakened to their need and seek and obtain the
blessing that maketh us free. Let us preach it, sing it, and live it, until its
beauty shall shine from our lives, making all who know us best hungry to possess
that which radiates from our lives by being true.


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  CHAPTER 5: 03 - THE LIFE OF HOLINESS
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Chapter 3 The Life Of Holiness

Just as the doctrine of holiness is the Central idea of Christianity and the
experience of holiness is the true normal state of Christianhood, so the life of
true holiness is God’s mightiest challenge to an unbelieving world. In the High
Priestly prayer of our Lord recorded in the Gospel by John, in the seventeenth
chapter, the very center and hub of that prayer Is, "Sanctify them." There is a
double objective to that prayer, and each objective is twice named. First,
sanctification consummates the believer’s highest union with God. Secondly, it
all issues in the effective relation of the Church to the world order, "that the
world may believe." Thus in John 17:21 and John 17:23 we have this double
objective stated twice. That in order that "they all may be one; as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in them, that they also may be one in us: that the
world may believe that thou hast sent me." John 17:21. Again in John 17:23 it is
doubled, "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and
that the world may know that thou hast sent me." The deep separation and
devotement unto God, involved in the experience of holiness, results in
establishing such controls in the total living of its possessor, that Christ
identifies the believer with himself in character. He is the light of the world
-but in Matthew 5:1-48 he says, "Ye are the light of the world." He identifies
the believer with himself in his relation to world order. It is God’s plan to
save his people that they in turn shall win the lost of this world to himself.
We are to represent Christ to the world, that they may believe, that they may
know.

Sanctification fits the believer for right world relationship, and for world
conquest. When one lives the experience the purpose of God is realized in the
effect of his life.

I was holding a meeting in a fine country church a few years ago where one man
obtained the blessing one year before, and I was boarding in his home. I had met
him often enough during the year to know he had the experience and was living
the life of Christian holiness; and Friend, I have such confidence in the truth
I am setting forth, that, if you will assure me you have lived for a year in
possession of the blessing, I will with confidence use you as an example of the
truth. I had such an experience in the church I am speaking of. The meeting had
the attention of the community. People were coming, and about the middle of the
week a man noted as the most godless and wicked man in the community came to
church. It was so unusual that people talked about it and said, "so-and-so was
there last night," and he continued several nights in succession. I managed to
speak to him every night until I felt led to entreat him about his soul. When I
did so, he began a tirade against the Church. He spoke so disparagingly of the
Church, I finally said to him, "My friend, that is too bad, if things are as you
say in this church, it is far from the true Bible standard of Christianity, but
what about Bro. Blank?" and I named the man who, I was assured, had the
experience and lived the life in that church for a year. (I used him as a
sample) . "Well now," he replied, "he is an exception. He got hold of something
about a year ago and he has had the real thing the past year. He never had it
before." You see it works.

Another instance in the same meeting. The pastor and myself were invited to
dinner in one of the finest homes in the community. The wife was a member of the
church. The man was one of the finest moral men in the whole area, a real
gentleman. He came in early from his chores and received us with real courtesy.
(He, too, was an utterly worldly man, never attended church). We visited for a
time in a friendly way until I felt it was my opportunity to deal with him
regarding his salvation. I pressed the matter until he made the following
defense. "Mr. Butler, if this salvation is as good as you say it is, I wonder
about it. I have lived here twenty years and I am friendly with all my
neighbors, all of them are members of the church. We talk together about current
events, about politics and about the weather, all in a friendly way. How is it
that not one of them ever says anything to me about this salvation?" That was a
center shot, but I had one sample to use, so I said to him, "Mr. R., that is a
very abnormal condition I’ll admit. I am preaching a gospel here and now which,
if experienced, would make such a fact impossible but I am surprised that that
is true. I am boarding with Brother Blank as you know, and do you know, Mr. R.,
that he is deeply interested in your salvation, he prays for you and weeps as he
prays. Oh well now, he is an exception. During the past year he has dealt with
me personally about my soul two different times."

Dear readers. God’s method works. Instead of fussing at holiness people about
their faults and failures in life, simply preach the real crisis experience
until it becomes a reality in personal experience. When real, it works. Holiness
in experience in its very nature brings forth the fruit thereof. God says, "This
is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I
will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them"
(Hebrews 10:10).

"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of
Jesus" (Hebrews 10:19). "Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of
faith" (Hebrews 10:22). "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith" (Hebrews
10:23).


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  CHAPTER 6: 04 - ADVANTAGES OF HOLINESS
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Chapter 4 Advantages Of Holiness The definite experience of true holiness is the
highest state of grace available to us in this life. It is a big state. We enter
it instantaneously, as we cross the boundary of a state in passing from one
state into another. When we are in the state, we are really in, but there is
much territory within its boundaries to be explored. There is a great advantage
however to one’s crossing the boundary line and being in. Every phase of our
total living in the Christian life is greatly advantaged by the
crisis-experience of entering the state.

First, its effect on our prayer life. There is nothing more to be desired than
free and easy access to God in prayer. The experience of holiness removes the
inward hindrances to such access, and establishes a relationship and spiritual
union, which greatly increases our fellowship with God, and which renders our
approach to him both free and easy. Sometimes we need quick answers to our
prayers. An illustration of this is very vivid in my memory. In one of my
pastorates there was a very godly, holy, colored woman who worshipped with us. I
used to go to her home to unite with her in prayer in meeting problems and in
crisis-times in revival seasons. I was holding a revival series of meetings,
doing the preaching myself. One evening I asked Sister E. to lead in prayer. She
proceeded in freedom and power of the Spirit, and finally came to the point
where she named me in prayer, asking God to "especially bless Brother Butler for
the service." I shall never forget the quick answer to her prayer. The best way
I can describe it is, if you had been standing near me with a fourteen quart
bucket full of water, waiting for the word to dash it on me, it would not have
been more real than the response of God to her prayer. The instant she mentioned
my name, the Lord gave me such a sensible blessing that the thrill of it was as
real, even physically as a bucket of water dashed upon me. She lived in the
state of holiness of heart and life. The fellowship phase of the prayer life is
greatly intensified and enriched. By the experience we are freed from opposing
elements, and are brought into such agreement with God, that fellowship is deep
and sweet.

Secondly, its effect on our power to meet temptation. You hear some preachers
say you will have much stronger temptations after you are in the experience.
While it is true that there are some temptations peculiar to the sanctified, for
instance, the temptation to over-confidence, on the whole, the benefits of being
truly sanctified, in meeting the old temptations are great. Just as it is easy
to be healthy when you are well, so it is easy to have victory over the world,
the flesh, and the devil, when you are well spiritually.

I shall never forget my own experience as I read 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, after I
had the experience. It reads, "For though we walk in the flesh (live in our
body) we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons of our warfare are not
carnal, but mighty through God to the PULLING DOWN of STRONGHOLDS; casting down
imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of
God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."

I had already experienced the victory described in this Scripture. It had been
so easy to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, and to
cast down every high thing, that when I read this Scripture, my heart leaped
within me with joy. I said, that is what has happened to me. It dawned upon me
then that God had taken all sin out and come in to stay in the temple of my
selfhood, and as Jesus said, "The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing
in me," so I could meet Satan and say, you have nothing here that belongs to
you. Victory is so much easier when sin is out, and Christ dwells within. Yes,
one may lose the grace of holiness, but one has the power not to.

It is a very serious thing to turn back when we have possessed this grace.
Holiness makes us what we ought to be, and gives us power to do that which we
ought to do. To turn to sin after knowing this power, is like a man with plenty
of money failing to pay his bills. There is available to us in grace all we need
to be and to do as we ought to. Glory to God! "Not that we are sufficient of
ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God." We are united with the source of
power.

Cyrus Nusbaum, when obtaining the experience wrote the song, "Let Him Have His
Way With Thee." Ellen Williams Childs wrote a companion song, "Jesus Has His Way
With Me."

"Walking with my Saviour, clinging only to the cross Bathing in the blood that
purifies from dross; For his blessed knowledge counting all besides but loss -
Jesus has his way with me. His power has made me what I ought to be! His blood
now sanctifies, and sets me free! His love fills all my soul, and I can see,
’Tis best for him to have his way with me." This makes the victory present and
real. I am persuaded that where the experience is real, it works.

Thirdly, the great advantage of having holiness is, it prepares us to meet the
hard trials and tests of life. The condition of obtaining the experience brings
death to self-will, and to all but God’s will. Often the final test of our
complete consecration in preparation for obtaining the blessing is such, that it
prepares us to meet future tests. When God tests us in this experience, he
brings us to the death point and centers us in his holy will. The test may be
simple and seemingly small, or it may be some major interest or concern of life,
but whatever it is, it brings us so to center in his will, that we are prepared
to suffer, live, or die for him. Consecration puts the stake at martyrdom, then
we are ready for anything this side of it. Paul said in speaking of trouble and
pressure in Asia, until life was despaired of, "But we had the sentence of death
in ourselves" (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). My own test was severe, but I have thanked
God many times for it, as I have met the various circumstances of the years. I
saw and became enhanced by the beauty and power of true holiness. I did not know
all about the entrenchments of "The Old Man," in my personality, but God knew
and he searched me out, and brought me truly to the "Day of Pentecost" for me. I
see now how ambition to get on, and advance was strong in my nature. I wanted to
climb to the best I was capable of in Appointments and win success in having
something. I was reared in the limitations of poverty, against which I rebelled
as a boy. God had called me into the ministry, I had united with the Conference,
I was prospered in the work. When I earnestly sought holiness, God asked me if I
would take holiness and demotion, instead of promotion. He asked if I would take
holiness if it meant to go back to’ the beginners on hard scrabble and serve
there. I made my choice -- I said, "Lord, there is no place where there are
souls for whom thou did st die too small for me to go to and do my best.

"If I have only a small place to serve and a small salary, I’ll do the best I
can for souls and for my family. I’ll take holiness and hard scrabble if that is
what it will cost." That was indeed a near death point for me, but God saw that
I was not dead to ambition yet so added, "and die in the county house when you
get through?" Again I had to choose. I said, "Lord, it will be just as short a
trip to glory from a county house as from a beautiful home with velvet carpets
and downy beds. I’ll take holiness if it means the county house to die in."
This, with some other tests brought me to where God saw I was ready to be
sanctified, and he proved his faithfulness and gave me the blessing.

I have often testified to the fact that I got on the train in Lansing, Michigan,
without the blessing and somewhere on the Grand Trunk train between Lansing and
Perry, God sent a Lightning Express for Canaan, and my baggage was so
streamlined that I caught the express and landed in the Canaan of Perfect Love
and true holiness, so that I got off the train in Perry singing, "I’m living in
Canaan now, I’m living in Canaan now, I’m doing well, I’m glad to tell, I’m
living in Canaan now." The atmosphere was so glorious, I felt as though I had
just begun to live. I had struck my true native clime. True holiness is indeed
the level upon which God designed man to live.

How many times as I have faced the experience of life this test has proven a
real preparation for it. My reputation was given to God. I have had many
occasions to thank God for that. I have had some hard things to meet, have
suffered some injustices, but with Paul I could say, "None of these things move
me." Paul did not say, none of these things hurt me, but none of these things
move me. He wrote the wonderful chapter on Perfect Love and declared that
"Perfect love endureth all things." The advantage of being truly sanctified is
thus proven in all the phases of our Christian living. The fourth special
advantage is on the service side of life. True holiness as an experience
furnishes its possessor with the motive and power for sustained Christian
activity. There is service power, as well as a purifying power in our personal
Pentecost. "Ye shall receive power" Acts 1:8, has a two-fold reality in
experience. It puts the holy go in the soul. It prepares for service in all
legitimate activities for winning souls and honoring God. "Sanctified and made
meet for the Master’s use." "My strength is as the strength of ten, because my
heart is pure" -- Tennyson.

Health is the normal condition of physical life. Holiness is spiritual health.
It is therefore the normal condition for true Christian living and activity.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: 05 - THE RELATION OF THE NEW BIRTH TO HOLINESS AND HEAVEN
========================================================================

Chapter 5 The Relation Of The New Birth, To Holiness and Heaven The law of
entering the Kingdom of God was settled forever by the great Master when, in
conference with Nicodemus, he declared, "Ye must be born again." He enlarges the
circle of his statement in the context to include all men. "Except a man (that
is any man) be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." The "must" of this
text is not based upon an arbitrary ruling by a sovereign God. Instead of this,
it is the absolutely essential outgrowth of conditions and facts as they exist
in the life of man in his natural state. No one of us can occupy two places in
space at the same time. I am standing in one position; and it is obviously true
that if I desire to occupy another position, I must change from the place I
occupy to the other point in space which I desire to occupy. I cannot fill space
at two points at one time. The condition of man in his natural, once-born state
is such that he simply cannot see the Kingdom of God. There is an essential and
fundamental change which must be experienced in order to be both conditioned and
placed where we can see the spiritual realm of things involved in the Kingdom of
God. It is like our occupying a room in a house with the doors to other rooms
closed. We cannot see that which is in the adjoining room without opening the
door and entering that room. Certain facts obtain in our natural state; and
there are certain facts in a spiritual state which, in the nature of the case,
must be entered by the door to those facts or they cannot be known.

Therefore we accept on the basis of logic, as well as on the basis of authority,
the absolute necessity of the supernatural change in the heart of every man and
all men in order for any man to see and know the realities involved in spiritual
life or in the Kingdom of God.

Here is a "must" which leads to something larger and better by obedience to it.
The new birth never results in narrowing or ensmalling the true life of the
individual, but the exact opposite of this. Life is both enlarged and enriched
by the facts brought into our possession by the experience of the new birth.
These facts involve a very vital change in our relationship to God. The spirit
department of our nature is made alive, and God comes within the range of our
moral consciousness a reality. New life is imparted to our spirit nature. This
life is received directly into human consciousness by our personal embrace of
and receiving Jesus Christ in his Saviourhood. There is also a vital change in
our relation to the world order in which we live. Our bondage to the opinions of
men and standards of a godless world about us is broken and a new loyalty is
established in our lives. Instead of conforming to the standards of the world,
we seek to know and be conformed to the will of God. We change masters in the
experience of the new birth. We come to realize the fact that "one is our
master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." This experience introduces us
into the fellowship of God and of his people, a reality in our inner life, of
which we may be as certain as that we love or hate in our spirits, or as that we
are hot or cold in our physical selfhood. The change effected by the new birth
is such that no one can experience it without knowing it. The absence of our
knowing that we are born again is a clear witness against its being a fact i n
our lives. It is by the new birth that we become children of God. "And if
children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ." The relation of
the experience of the new birth to definite Christian holiness is a very vital
relation. The conditions upon which we are born again involve an abhorrence of
sin and the embrace of and love of righteousness. Sinning as the willful habit
of our lives ceases when we are born again. The practice of righteousness in all
our relationships and activities of life has a vital and real beginning as a
result of this change. The new birth begets in us the hope which becomes the
motivating urge for our seeking the blessing of holiness. "Every man that hath
this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." The hope of seeing
Christ and being as he is furnishes the believer the strongest motive for
availing himself of the complete cleansing through the merit of Calvary’s
sacrifice, and the full renewing of his inner nature in righteousness and true
holiness after the image of him that created him. When we are born of God, we
are made heirs of that "holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." The
second work of grace is the birthright of every believer. It is not only ours by
virtue of the new birth; but it is expressly and repeatedly declared to be in
the will of God, as our Father, for us.

It is related of the late Amanda Smith that two brethren on a camp ground were
discussing the question of the personal experience of holiness as they were
passing Amanda’s tent. They were questioning with regard to this high standard
of being sanctified wholly, whereupon Amanda stuck her head out of her tent and
said: "Brethren, this am in Father’s will for me, and I’m a-going to have that
which is in his will or bust the will."

Instead of real children of God, if rightly instructed, objecting to, or
shrinking from definite holiness of heart and life, there ought to be a glad
embrace of this high privilege and holy calling of God. No doubt there always
will be such an embrace unless ignorance or prejudice interferes with the normal
outreach of the new life begotten in us as children of God. Enlightened
ignorance will usually kill prejudice; and the enlightened subject will then
either walk in the light; or, if for any reason his choice is otherwise, he will
draw back unto darkness and death. The new birth makes us heirs of glory; but on
our way to the goal of glory, our inheritance includes a definite work of grace
begetting in us Christian holiness, which is the qualifying of our selfhood for
the possession of our final inheritance. The new birth makes us heirs of his
eternal glory. The experience of Christian holiness prepares us for the
possession of our inheritance.

There is an experience in holiness "without which no man shall see the Lord."
This is the final test of our full preparation to meet God and enter his glory.
It involves and clearly implies the fact of the new birth. We may have the first
of these two works and need the second; but if we possess the second, it is an
assured fact that we have all the reality and benefits of the first. Therefore,
the final test required for entrance into his glory does not rest with the
statement, "Ye must be born again," but upon the further fact to which this fact
is so vitally related, "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: 06 - WITNESSES TO HOLINESS
========================================================================

Chapter 6 Witnesses To Holiness In a little journal which came to my attention
sometime ago from London, England, I found the testimony of one, brother John
Garrick, under the caption of "A Complete Deliverance." I greatly enjoyed this
testimony and am passing it on to others. In connection with it I wish to call
attention to one very important statement. Brother Garrick witnesses with
reference to his experience in regeneration, "Sin did not reign in my life, but
it existed." This statement of the truth is really classical. The gracious grace
of regeneration breaks the power of sin and conditions one to live in victory
over it. However, as long as sin exists as an indwelling fact in our lives, the
danger of failure is very greatly increased. This discrimination makes
exceedingly clear the work of entire sanctification. In this grace sin, as such,
is removed from our inmost nature; and in its place there exists a purity which
not only frees from sin but which includes an inwrought righteousness which is
ours by faith in Jesus Christ. The experience of Christian Holiness, in its very
nature and content, provides the believer with the secret of abiding victory. In
this grace there is an element of self-preservation as well as an element which
gives the holy urge for its propagation.

Brother Garrick’s testimony follows. The sainted Fletcher of Madeley says, When
you are solemnly called upon to bear testimony to the truth and to say what
great things God has done for you, it would be cowardice or false prudence not
to do it with humility. I was born again when eighteen years of age, and a great
change was wrought in my life by the Spirit of God. Such a fountain of joy was
opened in my heart that it utterly extinguished the desire for all I had
formerly found pleasure in. I was a new creature in Christ Jesus. Old things had
passed away, all things had become new. I had passed from death unto life. My
entry into the Christian experience was so satisfactory to me that I imagined
the work of God in my soul was complete; that sin had not only been forgiven,
but destroyed. However, I was soon to find my mistake. I was an out-and-out
Christian and very earnest and sincere in my service. I wished to be a useful
member in the church, but soon I became conscious of the presence of a "mixed
multitude" in my inner being.

There were hankerings for the things of Egypt, murmurings against God because of
a dissatisfied experience, and passionate longing for the promised land. Sin did
not reign in my life, but it existed. It had been subdued but not removed. The
old man had been bound but not cast out and spoiled of his goods. I continued
like this for eighteen months, when Mr. T. Lamb Scott came to address some
meetings in connection with the Pentecostal League of Prayer which were being
held in the Mission I was attending. He preached complete deliverance from sin
and the Baptism of the Holy Ghost to meet the entire need of man. In response to
his appeal I claimed the blessing and, to the glory of God, I humbly testify
that God has sanctified me wholly. He has baptized me with the Holy Ghost and
with fire. Hallelujah! To all the world I dare avow That Jesus sanctifies me
now. For me to describe what I then realized is utterly impossible. Jesus became
a mighty reality. He became all-in-all, the altogether lovely One, the Rose of
Sharon, the Lily of the Valley. Hallelujah! Glory! I have cause to shout over
the work of that eventful day. During the seventeen years that have since
passed, God has stood by and helped me. I have had varying circumstances to test
the genuineness of my submission and the saving power of God, and I can
truthfully say I know "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanseth from all
sin."

Some of the results of the baptism of the Holy Ghost in my life have been:

1. The Bible has become an inexpressible treasure. I love it above all other
books.

2. A sensitive conscience.

3. A deep realizing sense of spiritual things.

4. An increase of spiritual power.

5. A burning desire to tell the blessed story of Christ and his "great
salvation."

6. A passionate longing for revival.

Experiences of others fully corroborate this:

"My whole heart has not one single grain, this moment, of thirst after
approbation. I feel alone with God; He fills the void; I have not one wish, one
will, one desire, but in Him; He hath set my feet in a large room. I have
wondered and stood amazed that God should make a conquest of all within me by
love." -- Lady Huntington.

"Holiness -- as I then wrote down some contemplations on it -- appeared to me to
be of a sweet, calm, pleasant, charming, serene nature, which brought an
inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness, ravishment to the soul; in other
words, that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of
pleasant fruits and flowers, all delightful and undisturbed, enjoying a sweet
calm and the gentle vivifying beams of the sun." -- Jonathan Edwards.

"All at once I felt as though a hand -- not feeble, but omnipotent; not of
wrath, but of love -was laid on my brow. I felt it not outwardly but inwardly.
It seemed to press upon my whole being, and to diffuse all through me a holy,
sin-consuming energy. As it passed downward, my heart as well as my head was
conscious of the presence of this soul-cleansing energy, under the influence of
which I fell to the floor, and in the joyful surprise of the moment, cried out
in a loud voice. Still the hand of power wrought without and within; and
wherever it moved, it seemed to leave the glorious influence of the Saviour’s
image. For a few minutes the deep ocean of God’s love swallowed me up; all its
waves and billows rolled over me." -- Bishop Hamline.

"Many years since I saw that "without holiness no man shall see the Lord." I
began by following after it and inciting all with whom I had intercourse to do
the same. Ten years after, God gave me a clearer view to obtain it; namely, by
faith in the Son of God. And immediately I declared to all, "We are saved from
sin, we are made holy by faith." This I testified in private, in public, and in
print, and God confirmed it by a thousand witnesses. I have continued to declare
this for above thirty years, and God has continued to confirm the work." -- John
Wesley in 1771.

"I knew Jesus, and He was very precious to my soul; but I found something in me
that would not keep sweet and patient and kind. I did what I could to keep it
down, but it was there. I besought Jesus to do something for me, and, when I
gave Him my will, He cam’ to my heart, and took out all that would not be sweet
all that would not be kind, all that would not be patient, and then He shut the
door." -- George Fox. MY FIRST DAY IN CANAAN In September of the year 1900 I was
appointed pastor of the Methodist Church at Perry, Michigan. It was then a three
point circuit. A few years before this, under the ministry of Reverend

J. F. Emerick, a mighty revival swept over this charge. Bro. Emerick was a
definite holiness preacher. As a part of the results of that revival, there were
definite living witnesses to the experience of second blessing holiness in each
of the three churches. They were truly consistent, holy people. It was through
the influence and invitation of some of these people that I attended the old
State Holiness Camp Meeting at Eaton Rapids for three days. During that period
of time I purchased a book entitled "The Sanctified Life" by Dr. Beverly
Carradine. Through the ministry of the camp and of this book, I was led out of
my wilderness journey into my spiritual Canaan. The old Jordan did truly divide,
and I went over on dry ground. I had been dealing with the Lord in the realm of
a perfect consecration and had acknowledged both my need and my pursuit of the
blessing to a brother preacher on the train en route from Eaton Rapids to
Lansing, Michigan. I had been getting ready for this change for some time. I
boarded the train in Lansing for my home in Perry; and somewhere on that old
Grand Trunk train, between Lansing and Perry, I truly passed over Jordan and
came into my spiritual inheritance in Canaan. I walked from the station to the
Methodist parsonage singing, I’m living in Canaan now, I’m living in Canaan now,
I’m doing well, I’m glad to tell, I’m living in Canaan now. The atmosphere was
so precious and the experience so delightful that I felt as though I had been
living in that clime forever. It seemed literally to fit my soul. It was indeed
the native clime for my new life in Christ. There was an immediate change of
diet in my spiritual life. Such illumination was on the Sacred Page. It gave me
a whole new Bible. I had been questioning with regard to the method of receiving
this grace. How quickly I was enabled to see the two works of grace in the Word!
I remember previous to this I had questioned a man who professed this grace,
asking him to give me Scripture for the second work of grace. The dear man
seemed a bit lost regarding the matter and was unable to give me much light.
But, having received the grace, I immediately began to see the whole truth
standing out prominently in Scripture. This happened on Saturday evening. The
very next morning I preached from the text, "I indeed baptize you with water
unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I
am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire"
(Matthew 2:11). I was quick to see the double cure. Here is the record of two
baptisms, involving two elements and two administrators; also involving two
spiritual results, one symbolized by water, and the other symbolized by fire. I
have done very little, if any, serving of manna from that time until now. The
riches of grace opened to my soul as never before.

During the years which followed, there were occasions of loss for a time; but
from these God graciously recovered me and taught me how to abide. The
illumination of the Sacred Page has been one of the marked realities which has
now been unbroken in my soul for a great many years. The ability to trust and
hold steady in the absence of feeling and in the presence of very deep tests is
one of the abiding results.

Entering Canaan involved to me a fixed attitude of loyalty to the Word of God
and to the will of God. The result of a daybreak in my soul upon which there has
been no nightfall to date has been an abiding evidence of this gracious grace.
The consecration then made closed the door of my mind against all doubt of God’s
Word so that, instead of bowing the knee to what has been called a scientific
age, I have continued to bow the knee to a holy God; and by his grace, like Paul
of old, "I have kept the faith."

I have served an age of question and of doubt. It has been popular to speak of
keeping "an open mind." In my own experience the open mind has been to increase
light and knowledge of God and his Word and of the deep riches of his grace; but
it has meant a closed mind to every approach to the reality of Christian faith
which has raised questions of doubt through the mere speculations of human
reason.

I want to bear testimony to the practical and working value of the grace of
Christian holiness. I can witness after these many years that not one good word
of the Lord has failed. Glory to his name! My faith is more certain, God is more
real, and the grace of Christian holiness proves continually to be a working
reality in performing service for God, and in meeting the tests of life.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: 07 - THE NEED AND VALUE OF BEING SANCTIFIED HOLY
========================================================================

Chapter 7 The Need and Value Of Being Sanctified Wholly

I. Entire sanctification is absolutely essential to make us what we ought to be.
We are called unto holiness. We are commanded to be holy; but we are not holy by
nature. Time does not cure sin. We cannot grow sin out of the heart, but God can
take sin out of our Spirit, soul, and body, by an instantaneous work of grace
through faith in Jesus’ blood. This work of grace is properly designated entire
sanctification and it is further proper to speak of it as a second work of
grace. But you reply: "I know holiness folk who are not what they ought to be."
This may be true. It is possible for people to embrace the letter of the truth
of Christian holiness and contend for it as a doctrine and yet be destitute of
the grace experientially. It is further true that our human personalities
differ, our abilities and limitations will all remain much the same after we are
made holy. Nevertheless, after both of these considerations are acknowledged I
am going to insist that the blessing of entire sanctification does so take the
old sin-self out and it does so temper our natural selfhood, that we are made
what we ought to be. A holy man is good without the presence of any admixture of
evil in him. He may err in judgment. He may make a mistake in practice but when
you get close to the man and understand him, you will find that he is altogether
good in the condition of his real selfhood. There is no other way for any man to
be made what he ought to be except by the route of the provision of divine grace
in sanctifying power which makes us holy.

II. We need to be sanctified wholly in order to live right. I am thinking now
not only of continued, consistent outward conduct, but I am thinking also of the
inward life every one of us lives, in thought, in purpose, in motive, and in
imagination. We live in the realm of attitudes and of faith or of unbelief. The
blessing of entire sanctification conditions one to live right inwardly where
only God’s eye sees and where we ourselves know what transpires. To live with a
conscience void of offense toward God and toward men is a standard which
requires a full cure of sin and the empowering of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

III. We need to be sanctified wholly to be satisfied truly. Our spirit nature
has appetites of hunger and thirst and insatiable desire. The blessing of
sanctification is remarkable in its satisfying effects in our spirit nature. It
is to the inner nature the river of living water flowing. The satisfaction of
sanctification is not the satisfaction of stagnation, but it is the absence of
the hunger of want in the presence of the hunger of relish. We are kept with a
keen appetite for all that is holy but without the weakening condition of lack
which comes from the hunger of want. The human spirit both hungers and thirsts
with insatiable desire for something, and that something is found and exactly
fits our need when in entire devotion to the will of God our faith claims and
receives the sanctifying fullness of the Holy Spirit.

IV. We need to be sanctified wholly to condition and prepare us to meet our
Christian obligation in the realm of service. This blessing in its illuminating
effect upon mind and heart envisions its possessors with regard to human needs
and divine provisions, until a holy urge possesses all who are enjoying the
blessing to accomplish real things for God. Not only is the vision clarified,
but the heart is fired with holy passion so that a wholly sanctified individual
will in some measure, dependent possibly upon his natural gifts, see the world’s
need as Jesus sees it and will feel toward that need something like God felt
when John 3:16 was born in His infinite nature. We will share the sufferings of
Jesus and be moved to holy activity by the passion of love that fills every part
of our being when our cleansed temple is filled with divine love. How we need
holy passion in Christian activity. The absence of this means coldness and death
in the service of God. Its presence means fervency and aggressive act ion. It is
one of the glories of Christian holiness that it carries in its own content
experientially the elements which serve to propagate it.

It is unthinkable to me that any one should possess this grace and have this
divine love shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit and fail to have deep
concern for the welfare of others, both in the salvation of sinners and in the
spreading of the truth and experience of entire sanctification. It is not
uncommon in the early stages of this experience for its possessors to start out
with an idea that they are just about going to change the whole situation in
their church or community as soon as they can reach individuals to tell them
what has happened to them. Alas, all such are soon disillusioned and have to
recognize that God has a great many others working at the task for a long time
and that they will have to learn to pull steady and take their place as abiding
witnesses and at best only win trophies from the masses rather than stirring the
multitudes to action. When I first received the grace, I felt as though I could
go out and right every wrong, turn the world upside-down and get rid of all its
dirt and turn it right side up and have it as it ought to be in about thirty
days. That is a fair expression of the zeal that possessed me. I thought surely
every one in the church would quickly want what I possessed when I witnessed to
them. I shared, of course, with all others who started out in the white heat of
passion with the expectation that multitudes would immediately seek and enter
the experience that some failed to understand, others turned a cold shoulder,
while still others took a pitying attitude, and some openly criticized. Thank
God there were those who were glad to hear the good news and expressed hunger
for the blessing. In spite of the facts just named, it is nevertheless true that
the vision and passion given one in the blessing of entire sanctification is
essential to furnish us with motives and power for sustained Christian activity,
and after one is disillusioned regarding rapid successes and large immediate
results, he nevertheless is possessed of the passion which makes him alive to
the embrace of every opportunity to help men to God, and he undertakes things he
never would undertake without the holy urge that this experience gives.

V. We need to be sanctified wholly to condition us to engage in the highest
activity of which a human personality is capable, namely; the consistent and
persistent worship of a holy God. We live in temples of clay. The material
things about us are very real. God is a Spirit. Without the clarifying of our
souls and the impassioning of our lives by the sanctifying grace of the Spirit
of God, we are very apt to experience, even after the grace of regeneration, the
fulfillment of the poet’s picture when he declared, "Our souls, how heavily they
go, to reach eternal joys." Again, "And shall we ever live at this poor dying
rate?"

I am by no means advancing the thought that possessors of Christian holiness
live in a frame of ecstasy continuously, or that we do not have periods of
suffering temptations; but I do say that wherever the Spirit abides in a
cleansed heart, the fervency and fire of devotion which condition us for the
worship of God in spirit and in truth are continually fed as having the source
of the same dwelling within. How this grace does furnish us with the fuel of
holy devotion for the spiritual worship of God. We do not have to assemble in a
public place of worship to experience this, though when we possess it we
certainly will avail ourselves of all such opportunities, but it is a heart
condition and life experience which is in a very proper sense continuous. The
song writer of Israel cried out, "While I was musing the fire burned." Holy men
and women worship God while at their work, riding on trains or in street cars,
driving automobiles, or plowing furrows in the fields or washing dishes in the
kitchen. There is such a harmonizing of our spirits with the divine Spirit and
such sacred and perfected relationship between us and our God that the
experience of the Psalmist is often repeated. "We muse and the fire burns." The
gracious benefits of the grace of entire sanctification are such that if
believers were perfectly safe so far as the eternal future is concerned without
it, they could not afford to continue to live in the present world without this
grace which brings such gracious benefits into the life and which is obtainable
immediately by faith in Jesus Christ. The question is not, "Who can live it?" It
is rather, "Who can live as he ought with- out it?"

Dear reader, accept no substitute and make no delay in your personal possession
of this Bloodbought grace. It is the Father’s will that you should be
sanctified. The blood of His Son was shed to make it possible and the Holy
Spirit is now present where you are to make it real. The Word has revealed it
and as God’s ambassador I am commissioned to declare this truth and to call the
believers in Jesus to immediate possession of this grace.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: 08 - ERADICATION, SUPPRESION, OR COUNTERACTION, WHICH?
========================================================================

Chapter 8 Eradication, Suppression, Or Counteraction, Which?

It was Socrates who said, "If you wish to talk with me, define your terms." The
three terms which caption this article have been used in the field of Christian
theology to represent different facts with regard to the dealings of God with
original or birth sin. The Wesleyan interpretation of the truth of Christian
holiness has used, from time to time, the first of these three terms,
"eradication." The Keswick Movement and those of the Calvinistic school have
used from time to time, the term "suppression," and in other instances, the term
"counteraction."

We are frank to confess that none of these terms are Bible terms. There is
however a great body of truth in the Scriptures upon which to base the doctrine
of Christian holiness. After defining each one of these terms, we shall turn to
Bible terminology in dealing with the subject of indwelling sin and I trust we
may be able to discover by this procedure which one of the terms best expresses
the dealings of God with this phase of the sin trouble. The term "counteract" is
defined in Webster’s New International Dictionary as follows: "To act in
opposition to; to frustrate by a contrary agency or influence; as to counteract
the effect of medicines. Synonyms are, to nullify, to neutralize." This is a
fine definition and if it were God’s method of dealing with indwelling sin it
would mean the victorious life just as those who hold to this doctrine designate
the best grade of Christian experience which from their standpoint is possible.
The term "suppression" is defined as "an instance of suppressing; state of being
suppressed; as, the suppression of an insurrection, of truth, and so forth. In
forestry it is defined as retardation or stoppage of growth in a tree or its
branches caused by insufficient light or nutrition. In medicine the term is used
to note a complete stoppage of a natural secretion or excretion. In
psychoanalysis it is applied to the forcible exclusion of a mental process, an
idea or desire, from conscious and overt activity; sometimes as equivalent to
repression, and sometimes as a more conscious and deliberate process." For a
good many years these terms were used more frequently than any other by those of
the schools mentioned. It is good that at least in some places they changed from
the use of this term to that of counteraction which is by all means the stronger
and more meaningful term. Counteraction as defined comes much nearer to the
truth than does suppression.

There has always been a battle in the field of religious thinking with regard to
the use of the term "eradication." I feel sure that much opposition to this term
has grown out of a misunderstanding of its true meaning. Let us therefore look
to the same source for a definition of eradication. Webster says: "To pluck up
by the roots; to root up or out; hence, to extirpate; as, to eradicate disease."
Synonyms named are, "to abolish, destroy, annihilate."

Before proceeding to list the Bible terms designating this truth I want to
remind my readers that if we find Scripture corresponding with the definition of
any of these terms, the truth expressed does not mean to dehumanize the subject
who receives this work. It is not a sin to be human. To associate mortality and
sin as inseparable is to charge God foolishly of being the author of sin. God
created mortal man, but God did not create sin. It is sin of which we are
speaking when we use the terms we have been discussing. That there is a
sin-condition inherent in fallen human nature no one who believes the Word of
God or who rightly analyzes human experience will deny. The question is, how
does God deal with this phase of the sin-problem?

Psalms 68:13 "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings
of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold."

"And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take
away all thy tin."

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as
scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they
shall be as wool."

"Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean: from all your
filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I
give you and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my
spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and ye shall keep my
judgments and do them."

"For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap; and he shall sit as a
refiner and purifier of silver."

"Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might
be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin; but now being made free
from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the
end everlasting life."

"For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the
law of sin and death."

"That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt
according to the deceitful lusts."

"But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with
another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin."

Add to these Scriptures the very definite New Testament Scriptures which refer
to personal sanctification as a definite work in and for the believer. Then
define the term sanctification in its personal, its largest and truest sense,
namely, not only to set apart, to devote to, but to make clean, to make holy, to
cleanse the believer from all sin subsequent to regeneration. It is very clear
that when God refers to this inward trouble under the symbol of the stony heart,
the remedy is to take it away. When he speaks of it as the "body of sin" he
declares it is to be destroyed. When he uses the figure of "our old man," he is
to be put off and we are to put on the new man which after God is created anew
in righteousness and true holiness.

Since to eradicate means to pluck or to take out, I ask you, dear reader, if
Bible language does not fit this thought better than that of either suppression
or counteraction? The fact is that the term "eradication" defined and
understood, is the best term of which I know in our English tongue to express
the thoroughness which is constantly expressed in Scripture language for
deliverance from the fact of indwelling sin.

There are many figurative terms used in Scripture. For instance, bitterness is
spoken of as a root, and sometimes in ministering the truth we speak of the
cleansing efficacy of the blood as taking sin out, root and branch. This
language may mislead sometimes to the thought of sin’s being a physical or
material entity. It is not. It is a moral condition. The depravity of our nature
which is purged and cleansed in the sanctifying gift of the Holy Spirit is a
moral poison which pervades every part of our human selfhood. Total depravity
means there is no part of our human personality which is pure until the
cleansing blood is applied. We insist that when it is applied, we are then free
from all sin, so that, to use the figure, sin is plucked up and rooted out. This
is figurative language. The fact is a moral fact.

Let me illustrate. Here is an individual who is afflicted with some form of
disease which causes fever. His temperature is 102. You cannot localize his
fever. It affects the whole body. You can free this individual from the fever,
removing its cause so that his temperature is 98.6. This does not destroy his
humanity. It does not destroy the possibility or the physical capacity to be
sick again, but it does remove the fever and leave him normal at the time. The
eradication of sin from our whole nature is like the removing of fever. It does
not destroy our capacity to be tempted, or our capacity to sin, but it does
destroy sin itself and leave our humanity free from sin and indwelt by the
righteousness which is of God by faith. The same conditions upon which one is
freed from sin will, if met, continue to keep him free from sin. It is not that
the possibility of sin is removed, but it is that both the fact of and the
necessity to sin are removed. This, we contend, honors the blood of Christ and
brings glory to our holy God. That God should provide a salvation for man which
fails to cure sin, when rightly viewed, is a reflection upon himself. If man
cannot be saved from all sin, the limitation must be either in the ability of
God to remove sin from his nature, or a lack of moral capacity on the part of
man to be holy. Neither of these facts is thinkable in the presence of an
omnipotent God who is holy and in the presence of a provision for the remedy of
sin which cost him the supreme price -- the gift of his only begotten Son.

We insist there is a blood-cure that takes all sin out of our humanity, in the
merit of which we are built in righteousness and true holiness, and that this is
the true Scriptural doctrine capable of demonstration in personal experience.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: 09 - THE IMPORTANCE OF HOLINESS
========================================================================

Chapter 9 The Importance Of Holiness

Christian holiness as a second work of grace is a fact or it is not a fact. If
it is true -- and it is -- then its importance cannot be over-emphasized. A
great cloud of witnesses arises across the path of Christian history to declare
its truth and its value. The Scriptures afford us abundant proof of this
blessing as being essential in the great plan of salvation. All who are real
believers accept the fundamental fact of divine revelation, namely, that Christ
died to provide an adequate remedy for sin. His death and man’s sin problem are
directly related. The sin-problem involves man’s relation to God, his holy law
and government; and not only so, but his condition of heart, and his success or
failure in sustaining ethical standards of life. That sin is twofold in its
nature is a fact sustained by the Scriptures and by universal human experience.
We sinned: we stand guilty before a holy God and his righteous law. We are by
our sins estranged from God. Our spirit-capacity to register God in our
consciousness as a living reality is dead in us. We do not by nature or wisdom
know God. (Death always conveys the idea of separation, in all its uses of the
word). The provision to meet our need fully recognizes these facts and offers to
us in the first approach we make to God, through faith in Christ, the
forgiveness of our sins, the canceling of our guilt, the adjustment of our
relationship with God, so that we become reconciled unto God and have peace with
him. Our burden rolls away. We come to know him whom to know aright is eternal
life.

"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,
according to the riches of his grace" (Ephesians 1:7).

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we
stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God" Romans 5:1-2. Amen. Glory to
God! The forgiveness of our sins, yea, justification through faith in Christ
(justification means forgiveness on a legal basis, or in harmony with the
righteousness of the law, and involves therefore the whole redemptive work of
Christ and the conditions of a moral approach on the human side for our
appropriation of the benefits of his death) and our being made alive
-God-conscious -- in our spirit-nature are recognized needs which are fully and
adequately dealt with in the provisions of grace. We are made "free from the
law." Oh, happy condition! We are "born, not of blood, nor of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13).

Great and essential as are the facts, there remains an area of man’s need to
fully settle his sin problem which is not met as yet. This further need involves
man’s condition in the depth of his moral nature. This is a condition of need
which pardon cannot reach, nor does being made alive from our spiritual death
cover it. There is a "seed of sin’s disease," a moral ill health, a perverseness
of condition which calls for a radical treatment. There lurks a foe within man’s
heart from which he needs a complete deliverance. Something unholy pervades his
human selfhood which lifts within him awful power.

"For from within, out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries,
fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride,
foolishness" (Mark 7:21-22). The same lips which taught this truth also taught
that there is a condition of heart exactly opposite to this. "Blessed are the
pure in heart; for they shall see God." The conditions of heart described by our
Lord in the Mark-Scripture are such as cannot be changed by pardoning mercies.
Indeed, they are not acts of conduct, but a condition deep down in man s inmost
self. That such a condition exists is so in evidence in our everyday contacts
that to deny it would be to fly in the face of facts with a degree of
unintelligence not many could be credited with.

Now the question is, "Is there in redemptive provisions a remedy for this area
of need? Can the heart of man be made pure? Is there a cleansing from all sin as
truly as there is a pardon for all our sinning? Did the finished provision of
Calvary include anything to meet this condition of need and deal with it as
adequately as with our guilt and death?"

"To the word, and to the testimony" for our answer. The Word, first, "But if we
walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,
and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).
"Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood,
suffered without the gate" (Hebrews 13:12). "For their sakes I sanctify myself
(offer, or separate myself unto sacrifice), that (in order that) they also might
be sanctified through the truth" (John 17:19).

"In truth" sanctification, for which Christ died and for which he prayed, is
that deep personal sanctification which only God can accomplish, and for which
Christ made provision when he "offered himself without spot to God." Our
self-sanctification is our dedication, consecration of ourselves and our all
unto God; but his "in truth" sanctification is his separating sin from our
inmost selves. He takes sin out of our human selfhood, as it dwells in our
members, and thus purifies our hearts, making us "free from sin" and to become
in the fullest, truest sense "servants to God," love-slaves, having our "fruit
unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." As all the evil things named by
our Lord in Mark, chapter seven, proceed out of our uncleansed hearts, so
holiness proceeds out of our cleansed and "in truth" sanctified hearts.
Hallelujah!

Now, beloved, this is true, and to its truth and reality there live today hosts
of witnesses; and the names of many whose lives have influenced their times in
the past most effectively. These too have been definite witnesses. I say, if
this second work of grace meets the need in this second area of man’s sin
problem, then it is important with a degree of emphasis which makes its refusal
sinful and its neglect dangerous. It is truly an essential part of the good news
of the Gospel. This second work of grace is indeed emancipation from the fear
and fettering of an inward foe which in its nature weakens us and contributes to
our defeat in living a persistent and consistent life as followers of our Lord
Jesus Christ. God never meant anyone to come into right relationship with
himself and then go out and lead the type of life that would honor and please
him, without being made pure within, filled with divine love and empowered by
his own indwelling, his cleansed and purified temple. Amen. It is hard for a
sick man to be well. Make a man holy (which is moral health), and he finds it
easy to be holy and to live holily. Praise God!

"The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us,
that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life" (Luke 1:73,
Luke 1:75). Amen.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 12: 10 - HEART TALK ON THE SECOND WORK OF GRACE
========================================================================

Chapter 10 Heart Talk On The Second Work Of Grace

How any real student of the Word of God can fail to see the difference between
the first epochal work of grace and the second work of grace is more than I can
understand. The two symbols by which the double cure for sin is presented to us
by our Lord himself, are so plain it is amazing how any careful reader of the
word, much less a real student, can miss the truth. The new birth is the first
divine imperative in salvation. This inward change is referred to as passing
from death unto life, and it is this: The spirit-department of human personality
is that part which died in man, as the first fact in the original penalty for
sin. Man was created a threefold being - Body, Soul and Spirit. Bodily, through
the physical senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling he is
earth-conscious. Soulfully, which involves intellect, imagination and memory,
man is self-conscious. I can close my eyes and neither hear nor feel, nor smell,
nor touch anything, and yet I am a self-conscious being. I think, I reason, I
imagine, I have insight. Spiritually, man was created God-conscious. This phase
of man’s consciousness died when he sinned. That is, man was so separated from
God, that he lost God-consciousness. He lost the favor and fellowship of God.
Thus men in their natural state "Know not God." When Jesus said to Nicodemus "Ye
must be born again," he was not just proclaiming an arbitrary requirement of a
sovereign God; but rather announcing a merciful and adequate provision of a Holy
God to meet an imperative need in man’s condition. "Except a man be born again
he cannot see the Kingdom of God." The New Birth enables him to see. As soon as
the New Birth is experienced men know God, become God-conscious. This experience
is symbolized by water, and illustrated by the wind’s blowing. Jesus said to
Nicodemus who asked "how can these things be?" "The wind bloweth where it
listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." This
is a wonderful illustration; there is in it that which cannot be explained, but
there is also that certainty which cannot be denied. Everyone who lives knows
beyond a shadow of a doubt that the wind blows. We feel it; we see the effects
of it. It is an unmistakable fact known to every one. So the experience of being
born from above cannot be explained but it is a certainty, known and felt by all
who are thus born. Then, too, the unmistakable effects of being thus born are
seen. No question about this at all. This truth expresses the first divine
imperative. It is a foundational fact in salvation.

There is, however, a second imperative in man’s need and in God’s provision. It
is "The Sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord" Hebrews 12:14.
This definite sanctification is Pentecostal Sanctification, or the
"In-truth-Sanctification" for which Christ prays in his High Priestly prayer for
his own in John 17:19. It is unto the end that we, his own believing people,
might be "in truth sanctified," that he offered himself in supreme sacrifice.
This in-truth-sanctification is not ceremonial or official, but it is personal,
character-deep, bloodbought, and Spirit-wrought Sanctification. The following
Scriptures fully confirm this fact. "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ
also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might present it to
himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but
that it should be holy and without blemish" Ephesians 5:25 and Ephesians 5:27.
"Wherefore Jesus also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood,
suffered without the gate" Hebrews 13:12. This second divine imperative, like
the first, is not an arbitrary decree, but rather a gracious provision to meet
an imperative need in man’s condition. This is symbolized by fire, and is
associated with our being baptized with the Holy Ghost. This baptism is as
definitely in God’s plan of salvation as is being born again. Being baptized
with the Holy Ghost is both promised and commanded by our Lord.

I have heard men embrace the language of John 17:21, John 17:23 and utterly
ignore the fact of the relation of the experience described, to the fact of its
being the direct objective of Christ’s prayer for the personal sanctification of
those who were his own. He witnessed to the Father of them for whom he prayed
"Sanctify them." "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" John
17:16. He witnessed further, "They are thine, and all mine are thine and thine
are mine, and I am glorified in them" John 17:10. John 17:21, John 17:23 are
clearly descriptive of the experience of these after the prayer, "Sanctify
them," was answered.

It is indeed faulty, in view of the whole of this wonderful chapter to claim the
experience of verses 21, 23 and identify such experience with the first work of
grace. No, beloved, there is a double cure for a double need in our being saved
to the uttermost. The "Tarry ye" side of Christ’s teaching is as plain as the
"Repent ye" side of it.

After the disciples had been in the school with Christ for the entire period of
his public ministry, he bade them to "Wait for the promise of the Father" Acts
1:4. Surely Toplady has it right in his immortal hymn, Rock of Ages, when he
wrote "Be of sin the double (twofold) cure, Save from wrath, and make me pure."
These two facts are associated with the blood of Christ, and the office work of
the Holy Spirit, and are both presented as being obtained "by faith." Amen. When
Paul wrote of and witnessed to the resurrection of Christ in the Corinthian
letter he said, "If Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some
among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" "If Christ be not risen,
then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found
false witnesses of God," 1 Corinthians 15:12-15. We may adopt this language
regarding the truth of this article as to two epochal works of grace, as two
parts of one uttermost salvation.

If this is not true then a great host of God’s people in the past and in the
present are false witnesses of God. We would have to include in this list such
men as Bishops Hamline, Joyce, Oldham, McIntire, McCabe and Mallalieu, and such
men of our own generation as Daniel Steele, Commissioner Brengle, Joseph H.
Smith, J. A. Wood, Milton Haney, H. C. Morrison, John Wesley Hughes, C. J.
Fowler, E. F. Walker, J. B. Chapman and a host of others, both ministers and
laymen, numbering literally thousands, who witnessed clearly to this definite
fact of two works of grace. These witnesses rang clear and backed their
profession by fruit-bearing lives.

Beloved, it follows as a logical and necessary fact, that if this is truth, then
the importance of it cannot be over emphasized It is essential. It is no small
error to deny it, or to fail to obtain it and minister it. Paul witnesses as to
his preaching Christ. "Whom we preach, warning every man in all wisdom; that (in
order that) we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus" Colossians 1:28.
In preaching Christ, Paul ministered the whole range of truth which resulted in
turning men from sin to Christ for the new birth, "Warning every man." And then,
"Teaching every man in all wisdom that every man may be presented perfect in
Christ Jesus." This means leading men to Christian perfection, or in other
words, to true holiness as a second work of grace.

Let us minister all the good news of the Gospel, which includes God’s double
cure for sin here, and our final deliverance from mortality, pain and death
hereafter.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 13: 11 - A HEART TALK ON HOLINESS
========================================================================

Chapter 11 A Heart Talk On Holiness

I met a man a few days ago who hates holiness. This man is Superintendent of a
Sunday school in a fundamentalist unit of an independent work. He entered the
room where I was seated having a conversation with his pastor. As he saw me his
countenance clouded, but he made a quick adjustment so that by the time he faced
me, he extended his hand in a fairly friendly way. His pastor who knew his
attitude toward holiness noted this, and after his departure explained to me
some facts I had not known before. This incident set me to thinking. I mused on
what the pastor told me. A man hating holiness yet a fundamentalist in faith,
professing grace. I said to his pastor, perhaps he associates holiness with
something which is not holiness at all. This is the most charitable conclusion
one could come to, so as to respect his profession of grace at all while a
pronounced and openly confessed hater of holiness. It is too bad that there has
ever been associated with the profession of this beautiful grace anything so
inconsistent with the fact and nature of true holiness as to give birth to the
kind of deep prejudice which filled this man’s mind concerning this truth.

Misinformation about anything, or anyone, may lead to utterly wrong conclusions.
This in turn may lead to utterly wrong attitudes and even wrong conduct. It
seems natural for people to say when they see extremes and inconsistencies in
people professing faith to say, "Well, if that is Christianity, or if that is
holiness, I don’t want any of it." My friend, if what you see and judge as
wrong, is as you see and think it to be, it is not holiness, nor is it true
Christianity in any degree of its true reality. When James says, "pure religion
and undefiled is" -- he recognizes that there may be religion mixed with, and
defiled by that which is untrue and mistaken or even false. I said to the pastor
I was talking with, "I would like the privilege of sitting down alone with that
man and talking with him for an hour or two." I believe I could disarm, and win
any honest individual with the reality of truth regarding any part of our holy
Christian faith.

Let us look at "true holiness" and see. The basis of all holiness is the
character of God himself. God is holy. God is glorious in holiness. "Rejoice in
the Lord, ye righteous and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness"
Psalms 99:9. He is "the Holy One of Israel." His holiness is the eternal
standard by which all moral values are measured. Any holiness in angels or men
grows out of and is based upon his original, underived, eternal holiness. Then
too, we have a Holy Bible. His word is holy. This word reveals to us that heaven
is holy. Also it reveals that all unfallen angels are holy. Angels are moral
beings, God created all angels holy. The devil was as God created him, an angel
of light. God did not make the devil, sin transformed a holy angel into the
devil. God created all moral beings holy, including man. Man was holy in his
origin. It was rebellion against the will of our holy God that made him a
sinner. It follows as a necessary conclusion that sin destroys holiness and
renders any moral being who chooses sin, a sinner and sinful.

Now let us analyze and define holiness. Whatever more it is, it is absolutely
and eternally the very opposite of sin Indeed, the one and only thing which true
holiness is against, is sin. Holiness is to sin what light is to darkness. Light
and darkness are mutually exclusive. Exactly so. So sin and holiness are
mutually exclusive each of the other in the essential nature of each of these
qualities. It follows that if we reject one of these elements the opposite is
embraced. If we hate holiness we must love sin. The embrace of either of these
alternatives necessarily excludes its opposite. When rightly understood, no
Christian can hate holiness. It is the most reasonable proposition thinkable,
that the God who created man, and who has undertaken to redeem him, should
provide as the supreme purpose of that redemption, the full moral recovery of
man. Could a lesser moral objective motivate a holy God to make the supreme and
unspeakable sacrifice for a lesser moral objective? Why think our infinite
Creator and Redeemer, after making such a sacrifice to provide salvation for
man, unable to create him anew "in righteousness and true holiness?" Ephesians
4:24. The holiness provided for in God’s plan of redemption recovers man to a
state of heart purity, and perfect love, which takes out of man’s disposition
all that rejects God’s holy will, yea, all in man that is out of harmony with
God’s will and nature, so that we are freed from sin, (Romans 6:22) and saved
from all that causes fear of God in final judgment. 1 John 4:17-18. This
experience is rightly designated by Wesley as "Christian Perfection." It makes
us just such Christians as we ought to be. It results in our power to keep the
greatest commandment in the law, also the second greatest, which is like unto
it, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind," and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" Matthew
22:37, Matthew 22:39. The experience of true Holiness not only frees us from
sin, but empowers us to measure up to the standards of devotion and of living
enjoined upon us by our Divine Lord. It is truly an empowering of our entire
moral selfhood for the life of victory. I like one of John Wesley’s definitions.
It is to me especially fine because it presents the two sides of the experience,
the negative and also the positive. "Holiness is an instantaneous deliverance
from all sin, and an instantaneous power then given always to cleave to God."
Bishop Asbury witnessed to this experience in the following language, "I live in
patience, in purity, and in the perfect love of God. He fills my soul with pure
spiritual life, and keeps me altogether devoted to my Lord."

There are two other reasons why some good but mistaken people oppose holiness.
One is the fallacy of identifying sin with our humanity as if they were one and
inseparable "until death do them part." Of course, if it is a sin to be human,
then while we are human we can never be holy. But it is not a sin to be human.
Sin is no essential part of our true humanity. If this proposition were true we
would be compelled by logic of the situation to make God the author of sin, also
to believe Christ was sinful. Dr. Edwin Lewis made this mistake in his great
book, "A Christian Manifesto," and instead of following through in a true
Arminian view in theology, and acknowledging holiness as God’s remedy, he took
refuge in the sovereignty of God, and declared, because God is sovereign he had
the right to create. I do not wonder that he later swung to the awful error in a
later book, a "Creativity versus DisCreativity."

No, dear reader, God did not create sin, but he did create man. He not only
created man but he loved us as humans, and made the great provision of "Grace"
not to save us from being human, but to save us as humans from being sinful.
John 3:16 assures us of this great fact. The second reason I have in mind is the
error of making every infirmity and limitation of our humanity sin. This error
issues in a legal or absolute perfection, whereas holiness provided for
believers, by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, brings us to an evangelical or
Christian perfection, where "love is the fulfilling of the law" Romans 13:10.

There is no moral quality in our infirmities, nor in our limitations. Sin is
willful wrong. In it is the spirit of rebellion against the known will of God.
From all of this true holiness delivers us, and centers our will in God’s will,
and purifies our affectional nature, so that love dominates and controls our
lives We can live where we say with Jesus say, "I do always the things that
please him." This is according to 1 John 4:17-18. "Herein is our love made
perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment," because, "as he is,
so are we in this world." "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth
out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in
love." This most desirable experience is provided by the blood, and obtained by
faith, praise the Lord.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 14: 12 - HOLINESS AND SERVICE
========================================================================

Chapter 12 Holiness And Service "Sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use" (2
Timothy 2:21).

God’s method for producing the state of Christian holiness is, to sanctify his
believing children wholly. This grace is obtained by faith; and by faith alone.
The believer’s preparation for the exercise of the faith by which God sanctifies
wholly is our entire consecration. When our all is on the altar, we look up in
humble trust and God sanctifies truly, or wholly. Our consecration to God for
Christian holiness is not primarily unto service. Holiness is a great
love-covenant between the individual and the Lord which centers in a supreme
loyalty, not to a cause or a work primarily, but to a person. The personal
element in our relation to Christ in full salvation is one of the most beautiful
and challenging facts involved in it. It is complete devotion to, and perfect
love for Christ himself. The result of this personal covenant and relationship
however, is complete devotion to his service.

Holiness furnishes the believer the motive power for sustained Christian
activity. When our entire living is in the spirit of dedication and devotion to
Christ, it becomes our delight to do always the things that please him. Service
to the point of sacrifice is sweet when motivated by perfect love. It is very
often true that experience of holiness brings to the front in human
personalities gifts and possibilities in the realm of service which were
unrecognized before. It also brings the individual a freedom and power in
service which can be obtained from no other source and in no other way.

Mrs. C. H. Morris, the writer of so many of our best modern songs in the
Holiness Movement, discovered her gift and responded in this realm of service
after she obtained the gracious grace of holiness of heart. The latent powers
are often brought to the front and the individual puts in his or her best in the
exercise for the glory of God. Let no one who is in possession of this gracious
grace refuse to enter any providentially opened door for service. It does not
become one who is wholly the Lord’s, ever to say when duty calls, "I cannot do
it." It becomes us rather to say, "I will do the very best that I can, trusting
in God as my strength." "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth
me" (Php 4:13). This blessing in its illuminating effect upon mind and heart
envisions its possessors with regard to human needs and divine provisions, until
a holy urge possesses all who are enjoying the blessing to accomplish real
things for God. Not only is the vision clarified, but the heart is fired with
holy passion so that a wholly sanctified individual will see, in some measure,
depending possibly upon his natural gifts, the world’s need as Jesus sees it and
will feel toward that need something like God felt when John 3:16 was born in
his infinite nature.

We will share the sufferings of Jesus and be moved to holy activity by the
passion of love that fills every part of our being when our cleansed temple is
filled with divine love. How we need holy passion in Christian activity. The
absence of this means coldness and death in the service of God. Its presence
means fervency and aggressive action. It is one of the glories of Christian
holiness that it carries in its own content experientially the elements which
serve to propagate it.

It is unthinkable that any one should possess this grace and have the divine
love shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit and fail to have deep concern
for the welfare of others, both in the salvation of sinners and ill the
spreading of the truth and experience of entire sanctification. It is not
uncommon in the early stages of this experience for its possessors to start out
with an idea that they are just about going to change the whole situation in
their church or community as Soon as they can reach individuals to tell them
what has happened to them. Alas, all such are soon disillusioned and have to
recognize that God has a great many others working at the task for a long time
and that they will have to learn to pull steadily and take their place as
abiding witnesses and at best only win trophies from the masses rather than
stirring to action the multitudes. When I first received this grace, I felt as
though I could go out and right every wrong, turn the world upside-down and get
rid of all its dirt and turn it right side up and have it as it ought to be in
about thirty days. This is a fair expression of the zeal that possessed me. I
thought surely every one in the church would quickly want what I possessed when
I witnessed to them. I shared of course with all others who have started out in
the white heat of passion with the expectation that multitudes would immediately
seek and enter, the experience that some failed to understand, others turned a
cold shoulder, while still others took a pitying attitude and some openly
criticized. Thank God there were those who were glad to hear the good news and
expressed hunger for the blessing. In spite of the facts just named, it is
nevertheless true that the vision and passion given one in the blessing of
entire sanctification is essential to furnish us with motives and power for
sustained Christian activity, and after one is disillusioned regarding rapid
successes and large immediate results, he nevertheless is possessed of the
passion which makes him alive to the embrace of every opportunity to help men to
God, and he undertakes things he never would undertake without the holy urge
that this experience gives.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 15: 13 - THE METHOD BY WHICH GOD MAKES US HOLY
========================================================================

Chapter 13 The Method By Which God Makes Us Holy The method God has chosen and
provided for the accomplishment of this great purpose is by the sanctification
of the Holy Spirit. "God hath from the beginning chosen you (his believing
people) to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth whereunto he called you by our Gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of
our Lord Jesus Christ" 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14. That is, he has chosen you to
final salvation -- to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, by
the route of the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctifying you wholly. The
sanctification of each one personally is provided by the shed blood of Christ,
and wrought in and for us by the agency of the Holy Spirit. This is the route to
the experience and life of true holiness.

There are two sides to the work of the Spirit in the experience of true
holiness: first, he destroys sin; then cleanses the temple. He cleans house,
"being then made free from sin, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end
everlasting life." Mr. Wesley in defining this experience says, "It is an
instantaneous deliverance from all sin." The second phase of the Spirit’s work
in this experience is to reveal in us the things of which Paul speaks in 1
Corinthians 2:9. "It is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have
entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that
love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God."

Paul speaks of some of these things the Spirit reveals as "the mystery hidden
from generations and ages, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God
would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the
Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" Colossians 1:26-27. An
enthroned, indwelling, unveiled and glorified Christ in you. "That Christ may
dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be
able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and
height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that (in order
that) ye might be filled with all the fullness of God" Ephesians 3:17-19. These
Scriptures set forth the positive side of the highest standard of New Testament
experience and life. Mr. Wesley’s definition referred to above continues to
cover this side of the experience, when he, after declaring holiness to be "an
instantaneous deliverance from all sin," and an "instantaneous power then given
always to cleave to God." This involves the "gift of righteousness" which is
imparted righteousness, which prepares our selfhood as the temple for his
earthly habitation. This is the positive side of the experience of true
holiness. It consummates the believer’s highest spiritual union with God, and
prepares us for right world relationship and for world conquest. There is a
standard not only of experience, but also of life, for this New Testament
experience and life. There is an established order for living the life. For want
of a better way of expressing it I am going to call it the law of this life.

There are two very wonderful universal terms used in the New Testament. One is
that grand word "Whosoever." We all love that "Whosoever will" with which God
makes his last heartbreaking appeal to all men. But there is another equally
important and within the limits of its proper application equally universal
term. It is "Whatsoever." This word represents the aim and conduct of all who
know the life hidden with Christ in God. The single standard life. It is
all-inclusive for our total living. "Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or
whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Again in Colossians 3:17, "And
whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving
thanks to God and the Father by him." This whatsoever is the final standard by
which as holy people we determine our conduct. The final and perfect definition
of sin is, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." Amen. Anything that hinders or
clouds faith is sin for us.

Dr. H. C. Morrison told me once that when the moving picture first came on the
scene, he attended twice. He said he found after attending that when he went to
prayer, he was hindered. His mind would not let go of the things he had seen and
heard in the movie. He never attended another one from then on. I wonder how
about the time spent looking at the T.V. in your home. Does it make devotions
richer and deeper, or is your mind filled with the scenes and sounds which at
best are not devotional. This wonderful universal term will enable us to judge
aright in every relationship and activity of our total living. To obey it will
keep the crown on the brow of our risen Lord which makes him King in our lives.
"If we do not crown him Lord of all, we do not crown him Lord at all."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 16: 14 - HOLINESS AND WORSHIP
========================================================================

Chapter 14 Holiness And Worship When John was conducted by one of his glorified
fellow-servants in his survey of the Holy City, he fell down to worship, "Then
saith he unto me, see thou, do it not... . Worship God" (Revelation 22:9).

Jesus, when instructing the woman at Jacob’s well, who inquired about the place
to worship declared, "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to
worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth" (John 4:23-24).

Again, the inspired writer had the true vision of worship expressed in the 96th
Psalm, where he associates our worship of God with his glory (verses 7, 8 and
9): "Give unto the Lord O ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory
and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; bring an offering
and come into his courts. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." Worship
is the highest exercise of which the human soul is capable. To be prepared to
worship God as his Word instructs, we need to be truly sanctified. We need the
experience of holiness in order to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,
and give him the glory due unto his name.

We live in temples of clay. The material things about us are very real. Without
the clarifying of our souls and the impassioning of our lives by the sanctifying
grace of the Spirit of God, we are very apt to experience, even after the grace
of regeneration, the fulfillment of the poet’s picture when he declared, "Our
souls, how heavily they go, to reach eternal joys." Again, "And shall we ever
live at this poor dying rate?" I am by no means advancing the thought that
possessors of Christian holiness live in a frame of ecstasy continually, or that
we do not have periods of suffering temptation; but I do say that wherever the
Spirit abides in a cleansed heart, the fervency and fire of devotion which
condition us for the worship of God in spirit and in truth are continually fed
as having the source of the same dwelling within. How this grace does supply us
with holy devotion for the spiritual worship of God. We do not have to assemble
in a public place of worship to experience this, though when we possess it we
certainly will avail ourselves of all such opportunities, but it is a
heart-condition and life-experience which is in a very proper sense continuous.
The song writer of Israel cried out, "While I was musing the fire burned." Holy
men and women worship God while at their work, riding on trains or in busses,
driving automobiles, or plowing furrows in the fields or washing dishes in the
kitchen. There is such a harmonizing of our spirits with the divine Spirit and
such sacred and perfected relationship between us and God that the experience of
the Psalmist is often repeated. "We muse and the fire burns." The gracious
benefits of the grace of entire sanctification are such that if believers were
perfectly safe so far as the eternal future is concerned without it, they could
not afford to continue to live in the present world without this grace which
brings such gracious benefits into the life and which is obtainable immediately
by faith in Jesus Christ. The question is not, "Who can live it?" It is rather,
"Who can live as he ought to without it?"

Dear reader, accept no substitute and make no delay in your personal possession
of this Blood bought grace. It is Father’s will that you should be sanctified.
The blood of his Son was shed to make it possible and the Holy Spirit is now
present where you are to make it real. The Word has revealed it and as God’s
ambassador I am commissioned to declare this truth and to call believers in
Jesus to immediate possession of this grace.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 17: 15 - PREACHING HOLINESS
========================================================================

Chapter 15 Preaching Holiness The only way to precipitate the experience and
thus promote true holiness is to preach the truth as it is in the Word of God.
If we are called and divinely commissioned men, we are called to preach The
Word. The truth of true holiness is clearly revealed as the final objective of
the revealed word, and as the final objective of Christ’s redeeming work. It is
also the final objective of the work of every New Testament minister, Pastor,
Evangelist and Teacher. "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and
some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the
saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-13).

"Wherefore I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is
given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God; Even the mystery which hath
been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints:
To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Whom we preach,
warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present
every man perfect in Christ Jesus" (Colossians 1:25-28). Perfect Christianhood
is the final objective of all of the above. This truth constitutes the doctrine,
and to preach it, using the Bible terms, is the only way to accomplish God’s
purpose in the whole realm of his infinite grace. There are those who utterly
reject this truth. Of course, we cannot look to such for its promotion. Our
concern in this message is not for those who in either ignorance, prejudice, or
blind unbelief reject, but for those who profess to believe the truth but who
fail so to present it as to ever get anyone in, or feed and satisfy those who
are true possessors of the grace. The preaching of the life without being
definite in the doctrine never gets anyone into the experience. It never
precipitates the real holy battle. To try to preach so as to awaken no
opposition, is to preach so that no one is convicted of the necessity of being
sanctified.

Two very marked experiences in my past experience illustrate this point. While
yet a pastor, I was called by a brother pastor to minister over the last
week-end of a ten day tent meeting he was conducting on his charge. I drove to
the meeting Friday morning, prepared to begin my ministry in the afternoon
service. I felt clearly led to a very definite message on being sanctified
wholly, from 1 Thessalonians 5:23. Upon my arrival I was informed by the
Evangelist who had been there for eight days that the church there was in
splendid condition, but the unsaved were not being reached. The great burden was
for the unconverted, for whom they had labored for eight days. The emphasis was
so strong, and the burden so great that it led me to question my leading.
Between dinner and the hour of the afternoon service I went alone with God and I
said, "Lord, thou knowest I love to preach to sinners. I am willing to change my
message if I have mistaken thy leading. The Lord very clearly led me not to
change, but to be definite in preaching the truth of entire sanctification. I
did so, and when I gave the invitation the altar was filled, sinners came in
genuine repentance and were converted, and Christians came to be sanctified,
among them the pastor and his wife. After we arose from the altar and asked for
testimonies, there was the glad witness of newborn babes in Christ. Presently
the pastor, who was a holiness man made confession as follows -- "I came back to
this charge for this my fourth year with the vision and burden for a real
revival which would reach the unsaved. I had been true to the subject of
holiness and preached it definitely until opposition was awakened. In the
beginning of this year I was approached by a leading, wealthy official of the
home church who notified me that if I continued to preach holiness he would
withdraw his support and leave the church. I considered the matter and decided
that I would preach the life of holiness without being definite, or using Bible
terms. I avoided the doctrine and simply p reached the life. Last winter we had
revival meetings in the home church for four weeks; we had the church filled
night after night but not a conversion, nor even a hand raised for prayer. Today
is the first conversion of the year on this charge, and now I see why. That is
the reason for my wife and my being at the altar. The Evangelist who did not
have the experience nor the light on holiness as a definite second-work
experience fell sick and left the meeting. I continued very definite preaching
over the week-end and a genuine revival which stirred the whole community was
precipitated. We had filled altars and real salvation. Sinners were converted
and believers sanctified. The meeting closed Sunday night with such interest
that the phone where I stayed began to ring Monday morning asking for counsel
and help, and continued all day Monday so that it was near night before I could
leave for home.

Another experience occurred while I was Conference Evangelist. I held a four
Sunday, three weeks of meetings in one of our churches where the pastor, a fine
man and a true friend of mine had never been a definite holiness preacher. He
preached the life, and wanted his people to have the truth, and that is why he
called me to hold his revival meeting. The results were small. A few young
people were saved, but the church as a whole remained unmoved. The fourth Sunday
morning I preached very definitely showing the necessity of being sanctified
wholly. Conviction was on but there was no large response. Walking with the
pastor and a group of lay people after service, a leading official opened the
question in real rejection of the truth, whereupon the pastor took sides with me
and for the truth, assuring his lay member that this doctrine was really true
and Biblical, also Methodistic. The layman turned on the pastor and said, "Why
then have you not preached it to us?" The embarrassed pastor said, "Oh brother,
I have preached the life."

I say, preaching the life, without teaching how to obtain the experience, and
without being definite that it is an essential part of present salvation, and a
necessity to be fully ready for judgment, does not precipitate the real
experience. The experience is essential to prepare one for living the life. We
need to be definite, use Bible terminology, and show the absolute necessity of
being made holy, in order to precipitate the experience. This truth is one half
of the good news of the Gospel. To preach one half and fail to tell the whole
truth is indeed tragic.

We cannot preach the truth effectively unless we know it by personal experience
ourselves. When Peter addressed the lame man at the gate of the Temple in
Jerusalem, he said, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I unto
you." The colored man who was asked how he liked the sermon of a preacher he had
heard, said, "That preacher can no more give what he ain’t got, than he can come
back from where he ain’t been." Paul said, "Woe is me if I preach not The
Gospel. Amen.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 18: 16 - THE LOGIC OF HOLINESS EVANGELISM
========================================================================

Chapter 16 The Logic Of Holiness Evangelism

If the grace of entire, or "in truth" sanctification, which produces the
experience of inwrought holiness, is related to one phase of man’s sin problem
-- and it is -- then it is logically one part of God’s salvation provision for
man. As we would logically expect if the above is true, this work is related
definitely to the blood of Christ provisionally; and further, it is directly
related to the work of the Holy Spirit in effecting it. God as Father wills it.
Christ as Son provides it. The Holy Spirit is the active Divine Agent in
accomplishing it. The revealed Word is the instrument by which the Holy Spirit
works; and this in response to faith on the part of the receiving subject. It is
a part of the sin cure. It is therefore a salvation blessing.

Evangelism is "the precipitation of salvation." It follows obviously that to
send forth the truth in a way to precipitate conviction for any part of the
remedy provided by Calvary, and further to lead to the exercise of a faith which
realizes the remedy a reality in personal evangelism. We have been faulty in
referring only to the first work of grace as evangelism. It is genuine
evangelism to precipitate in personal experience the knowledge of sin’s remedy
in all of its phases.

I saw a sign on the bulletin board of a certain church one day which read:
"Holiness Meeting at 11:00 A.M. Salvation Meeting at 7:30 P.M. Of course, I
understood what was meant by the announcement; but it was based on an error in
thinking which I am seeking to correct.

Holiness is salvation as truly as forgiveness. If provided by the blood and
wrought by the Spirit, if obtained by faith, if it remedies sin, then it is
essentially and logically salvation. It would be well for all holiness people to
recognize this truth and practice a correct classifying of the same.

Camp meetings which are advertised as "Holiness Camps" often fail to recognize
this truth, and speak of wanting evangelism in the evening services. This very
discrimination is damaging to the whole truth. It is based on a failure to
properly classify truth. Hungry people attend evening services of camp meetings
and should hear definite holiness truth. The whole program of our camps should
be recognized as genuine evangelism; the precipitation of both works of grace
should be present in the entire program. Of course, it is true that some
services of the day may very specially be used to teach holiness people and to
deepen and enrich them in God; and some services may be used to issue the
clarion call to repentance. Yet the whole program should be recognized and
branded real "Bible evangelism." A failure to recognize the truth I am setting
forth tends to minimize holiness and relegate it to a sort of specialization,
instead of recognizing it to be the fundamental of the fundamentals in Christian
truth, and the need of keeping it in its place as "the central idea of
Christianity."

You can work at the remedying of many ills and make little progress because the
real remedy for so many ills is wrapped up in the one great provision, namely,
the blood-provided, sin-purging, life-empowering baptism of the Holy Spirit.
This experience settles so many problems, answers so many questions, and fills
so many needs that it pays to stick to the main line of an instantaneous second
work of grace instead of bothering with the many symptoms for which this one
thing is a complete cure. Amen.

I wish I might issue an effective clarion call to all who know this "secret of
the Lord," to be true to the importance, yes, the absolute necessity, of working
insistently and persistently at the task of "spreading Scriptural holiness" over
these lands -yea to the ends of the world.

Some of us must be very insistent in our setting forth of this truth, or be
untrue to our sacred trust. We dare not lower the standard. We will not cease to
exalt the truth which honors our living Lord and which embraces such good news
to our fellow men. The gospel of a true double cure, of a full salvation, gives
to all men, and to every man who will embrace it, a chance for a new life and an
assured hereafter.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 19: 17 - A SINGLE STANDARD
========================================================================

Chapter 17 A Single Standard

There is but one standard of life for all Christians. In teaching the Bible
truth of two works of grace in salvation, we do not teach a double standard of
life. Holiness as a heart-attitude toward all known sin begins in the experience
of genuine repentance. Holiness as the standard of life so far as conduct or our
outward living is concerned begins with regeneration. God does not justify
sinning in any measure or degree. God’s justification is holy. Before the faith
by which we are justified can be experienced, we must in our repentance satisfy
a holy God. No sinning habit, or sin as allowed for by us is compatible with our
enjoying the smile and favor of a holy God.

"He that is born of God, doth not commit sin;" that is, does not live in the
practice of sin. The verb commit denotes continued action, it therefore means,
does not live in the habit of sinning. If one whose habit it is not to sin
should in any single instance be betrayed into any sin, even this is not to be
overlooked nor passed by, but he is to seek an immediate recovery from such
failure by the use of Christ as our advocate. "These things write I unto you
that ye sin not" and if any man sin, that is, if any man whose habit it is not
to sin, should by any means fail, "We have an advocate with the Father Jesus
Christ the righteous." Our use of the Advocate is essential to keep us in a
clearly justified condition and relation before God. In other words, no
allowance is made for any other than a life of obedience to God, or of
righteousness of life, or in holiness as the sustained standard of our outward
living. The definite experience of "true holiness" as a second work of grace
does not raise the standard of our outward living to a higher level, but it
removes inward sinfulness, empowers inward weakness and conditions the believer
with the advantage of inward purity and power to live the standard of outward
holiness without the inward struggle of civil war, and the lack of moral
strength, which spiritual health supplies. We are under a standard as followers
of Christ to live a life, which requires spiritual health to live. It is hard
for a sick man to be well, but it is not hard for a well man to be well. Thus
the prayer of Wesley, "The seed of sin’s disease, spirit of health remove,
Spirit of finished holiness, spirit of perfect love.

Oh, that it now from heaven might fall, and all my sin consume;

Come Holy Ghost, for Thee I call, Spirit of burning come." The first work of
grace gives life, the second work of grace brings health. When a young preacher,
as a candidate for entrance into my conference, I passed an examination on the
Methodist Discipline upon which the examiner gave me one hundred.
Notwithstanding the success of this examination, I found out a few years later
that I had utterly missed one very important paragraph in the Discipline,
namely, "Methodist preachers are to insist upon holiness in all of its branches
both inward and outward." I always believed in the outward branch of holiness of
life, but I was for years utterly blinded as to the inward branch of holiness,
that is, the definite inwrought experience which is received by faith, and is
given in an instant by the wonderful initial work of the Holy Spirit in Christ’s
baptism. In outward holiness, we seek to obey the will and word of God up to the
measure of light which we possess. In the experience of inwrought holiness, we
are cleansed from inward sinfulness and renewed in righteousness, after the
image of him that created us. There is an imparted gift of righteousness in this
second experience, (Romans 5:17). The moral fiber of our inner life is saved
from the infection of original sin and new moral fiber is built into our human
selfhood. Both of these epochs of grace are parts of one full salvation. Each
part is perfect as a part of the whole. The same atoning sacrifice which makes
possible our forgiveness and reconciliation with God, provides for our cleansing
and renewing in our inner nature in the "righteousness and true holiness" of
God.

There is therefore one all-sufficient perfect offering for sin in the sacrifice
of Christ, and there is one standard of life for all who follow him, but there
are two acts of appropriating faith in him and two definite operations of the
Holy Spirit in response to our faith to meet two very definite realms of need in
our lives, each an essential part of that salvation which saves from sin here,
and fits for final glory hereafter. "Be of sin the double cure, Save from wrath
and make me pure." The first essential to our obtaining the blessing is, "belief
of the truth" and the final step is a humble and immediate dependence upon the
blood for the experience. There is in connection with these conditions of faith,
an abandonment to the perfect will of God for every interest of our all to him,
at which point faith is enabled to act for the obtaining of the grace.

Dear reader, if you are not now in possession of this definite sanctifying
grace, do not delay. Give it your first and continued attention until your quest
is honored by a blessed realization. Holiness is the standard by which God
created man. Holiness is the standard of recovery provided for man in
redemption, and holiness is the standard by which God will finally judge all
men.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 20: 18 - OBSERVATIONS
========================================================================

Chapter 18 Observations

We observe, first, that whatever the moral quality expressed by the term
holiness, it is something which can only be attributed to responsible
personalities possessed of moral capacity and a measure of freedom of choice
which renders them responsible for what they are and for that which they do.
Mere things can be holy only in the sense of being dedicated by a responsible
agent to a holy sacred use. Persons may be holy in actual quality of character
and in conduct of life. Free, responsible beings are capable of this quality of
character.

We observe, secondly, that the great evangelical prophet Isaiah uses the phrase
"the holy one of Israel" twenty-five or more times in his great prophetic work.
He designates Jehovah God, the recognized Creator of the universe and the
sovereign Ruler of the order of nature, "the holy one of Israel." He further
discovers to us this same sovereign God as coming into covenant and redemptive
relationship with his creature, man. Of one thing in this second observation we
may be sure: whatever moral qualities and values we may discover in this
superlative moral term, they all have their origin in and are the direct output
of the infinite God himself. God is the source. All moral qualities are inherent
in holiness. It is a glorious white balance between the love-sacrifices and the
justice which demands righteousness in the character of God. Its quality of
mercy is balanced by truth. It is a quality of free personality capable of
exercise in the deepest disapproval of wrong, and in the highest pleasure and
approval of that which is right.

We may observe, thirdly, that since God is its source, it must in nature be like
God’s own holiness. Whether filling the infinite himself, who is possessed of
limitless capacity, or one of his moral creatures whose capacity as to quantity
is limited, it must be the same in its nature. Creatures whose capacity as to
quantity may be limited are nevertheless capable of the moral quality of this
likeness of God and of being harmonized with his own nature; yea, in the
redemptive plan we may even be "filled with all the fullness of God."

We may observe, fourthly, that holiness in God, in angels, or in men, denotes
the absence of sin and the condition of unmixed good. In quality it is pure. In
its nature as an active force, it resists all that is evil and it embraces and
unites with all that is good. It naturally imparts its own quality to all that
it does not oppose and destroy. On the basis of this truth, our humanity may be
permeated by this moral force until we will form habits of holy thinking, of
holy doing, and of sustained holy activities. Do not conclude that we therefore
end probation or move out of reach of being tempted and tried. Let us rather
recognize that in the face of these facts which are incident to probation, we
may so form habits of holy reaction and resistance as to be able to walk worthy
of God in obedience and victory all the days of our lives. This gracious
objective harmonizes perfectly with the revelation of truth contained in the
Abrahamic covenant: "The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, that he
would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies
might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the
days of our life" (Luke 1:73-75).

Observation five -- The nature of true holiness involves the highest possible
level of fellowship between moral beings. While holiness is the highest standard
of separation, when possessed, it seeks its own level for fellowship. It is
deeply social in its nature. The original, underived, eternal holiness of God
gave birth to the whole realm of divine activity in creation, in both nature and
grace.

God’s motive or reason in all his works is ultimately to share his own infinite
felicity and glory with others. His glory consists of the balance and perfect
harmony of his moral perfections. He is absolutely perfect in all that he is and
in all that he does. Christian holiness brings us to the level of this
fellowship forever.

God in his perfect foreknowledge and wisdom saw that the only way he could ever
inhabit a sinless universe with beings on this level of fellowship would be to
create this present order, and endow man, his new moral creature with capacity
to share his holiness, but with capacity for the opposite, and then empty
himself in supreme, unspeakable sacrifice to win man to Christian Holiness, at
the point of man’s being won to a supreme moral choice in the obtainment of the
restored image and likeness of himself provided for man in the realm of divine
grace.

God created the present order, including man, his new moral creature in his own
image and likeness, as an expression of his own perfections, but holiness as the
first Adam possessed it involved the will of God. Christian holiness is
different in this, that it involves two wills, the will of God, in the provision
of grace, and the will of man, won to the highest moral choice of which he is
capable. Created holiness characterized the first Adam, but he had nothing to
say about it. A person who is made holy in the provision of grace has everything
to say about it. He chooses it against every other consideration and value. When
the Christian race is finished and the crown of life won, those who enter his
eternal glory will possess characters of the highest possible value, prepared to
co-operate and associate with God forever on the level of final holiness. Glory
to our Holy God. This experience is immediately available to all true believers,
for it is received by faith; and as Mr. Wesley wisely counseled all believers,
"If by faith, then why not now?" Amen.

Dear reader, make it now for yourself. In utter self-yielding, step out on the
promise, and wait in faith until the gracious work is done. When you do truly
receive by faith, it is yours, and God will add the witness of the Holy Spirit
thereto.


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  CHAPTER 21: 19 - HOW TO OBTAIN THE BLESSING
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Chapter 19 How To Obtain The Blessing

All phases of salvation are obtained by our meeting conditions laid down in the
Word. There is in every step a human side and a divine side. Meeting the
conditions does not save us, but it conditions us to receive the divine side
which does save us. In Romans, chapter twelve, verses one and two we have the
greatest classical text in the Word on entire consecration. This is the human
preparation for the act of faith by which we obtain the sanctification without
which no man shall see the Lord. We often hear it said, "I laid all on the altar
when I was converted." This is a mistake. In the experience of repentance which
prepared us for justification by faith, we made a complete surrender of a
hitherto rebellious will. We ran up the white flag of surrender, and sued for
peace. In a perfect consecration we bring into the highest use, an already
surrendered will and make a dedication, an offering of ourselves and our all to
the perfect will of God. With a great objective in view, namely, in order that
we may prove the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. To consecrate
means literally, "To fill the hand." It is an act of one alive from the dead
using as stated an already surrendered will, to present our all to him once for
all in an entire dedication unto his will, to be made holy. There is progress in
our consecration, it is in this sense that many claim that our sanctification is
progressive, the human approach in our consecration is progressive, but the
divine work of our sanctification is instantaneous. We consecrate, God
sanctifies the offering. The text referred to in the Roman letter refers to a
complete and definite consecration. This completed, definite and final
consecration of our body, soul and spirit, involves a complete separation unto
God, and leads to the act of faith which involves a full realization of his
perfect will in proving to us the perfect will of God. Thus, first a perfect
consecration, involving secondly, a perfect separation, leading thirdly to a
complete realization of God’s perfect will. Praise God.

Consecration is a great love-covenant between a soul completely won to God and
the personal God himself. It is not therefore primarily to service. It is unto
him to be wholly and forever his. To be holy unto him. Service is involved, also
sacrifice even unto death, because we are his, we will do whatever loyalty to
him involves. We say with the poet, "I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,
Over mountain or plain or sea;

I’ll do what you want me to do, dear Lord;

I’ll be what you want me to be."

Consecration is the consummation of a love relation that is all inclusive. Its
parallel in human relation is the marriage covenant. It is thus a definite
once-for-all transaction which never needs to be repeated. We do not consecrate
ourselves over and over again, but after the consummation of this covenant we
acknowledge the same, and confess over and over our complete satisfaction that
it is so. Thus we adopt the language of the poet again and say, "Lord I am
thine, entirely thine, Purchased and saved by power divine, With full consent
thine would I be, And own thy sovereign right in me."

Again the poet has expressed this truth in the words, "But we never can prove
the delights of his love, Until all on the altar is laid, For the favor he shows
and the joy he bestows, Are for them who will trust and obey." Making this
complete, once-for-all consecration to God, sets the sails of our life, so no
matter which way the wind blows we are so adjusted both to the direct and
permissive will of God that we inherit Romans 8:28, "And we know that all things
work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose."

"One ship sails east and one sails west, by the self same wind that blows; It’s
the set of the sails, and not the gales that determines which way we go." In
meeting the tests and temptations of living the life, we are conditioned to say
with Paul, "None of these things move me." We can suffer being tempted, and
suffer from the wrongs done us, in persecutions, our fixed attitude is, "This
one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forth unto
those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Php 3:13-14). And Pressing we shall win the
crown. Amen.


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  CHAPTER 22: 20 - IDENTIFICATION
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Chapter 20 Identification

Identification is an important and meaningful term. Christ identifies himself
with them who are his, in several very important respects. For instance, in the
matter of essential material interests, there is his "inasmuch as ye have done
it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." It is
not cheap sentiment to say, "he knows and he cares;" it is a great Bible truth.
What a basis for trust, and what a comfort in all our living! This affords us
confidence and assurance against all the adverse experiences which may ever be
permitted to come our way.

Then, too, we have a life which is identified with his life. "When Christ, who
is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."
Identification of life and interest here identifies us with him with respect to
future events. Hallelujah! The fully consecrated believer identifies himself
also with the great mission of Christ in his first advent. "The Son of man is
come to seek and to save that which was lost." The wholly saved believer lives
with the same great objective. He is motivated by the same great passion of
love, and lives to save men to God. No matter what he may do to pay expenses,
his real purpose is to get men to God and see them prepared for eternity. During
the years of my presidency of the "National Association for the Promotion of
Holiness" I employed as a fellow-worker in many National Conventions that
princely preacher, that godly man, Dr. John Owen. It was Dr. Owen who said
regarding holiness, "No man is a true holiness man until he is identified with
this truth and experience." To this we said then and we wish to re-emphasize it
now, Amen, and Amen, and Amen! It gives us genuine concern when men once
strongly identified with holiness seem to be less so as the years go by. While
we have some things in common in our faith with our fundamentalist Calvinist
friends, there is a sharp line of demarcation. The truth and experience of
Christian holiness, and the movement as such, has in it an essential difference
from all and every other emphasis of truth, so that we dare not compromise. Let
us keep our identification. If we fail to do so, we shall fail in our sacred
trust. We will become non-effective in our spreading of Scriptural holiness as a
vital experience.

We must produce witnesses. When we fail in this, our failure is tragic; indeed,
it is utter defeat. The holiness movement has the message; and if proclaimed, it
will produce true witnesses. We need true holiness preaching. It needs to be
definite. God’s method for raising up witnesses must be insisted upon. It is an
instantaneous work of grace received by faith. In it God eradicates sin. Amen!
In it he imparts the gift of positive righteousness to the believer, inbuilt by
the blessed Holy Ghost. The experience has in it the life and power for its
propagation. When we tame down to a mild case, we have lost out. We need a
revival of the experience which carries with it the passion for its own
propagation. Holiness experience needs holiness food in the form of the preached
Word, and in the definite fellowship which special meetings appointed for the
purpose afford us. When we begin to advocate that all our meetings are holiness
meetings, we are in danger. Let all holiness churches and missions, together
with all units of Christian work that stand for and believe in holiness, put on
special holiness rallies, meetings announced and devoted to special emphasis of
this truth. Frequent short rallies are good. All-day holiness meetings are
invaluable. Since true holiness is one of God’s imperatives, we ought by all
means to seek to get men to possess it. Its value is to be measured by its
exclusiveness. It excludes all bitterness of spirit, all envy and strife. It
frees one’s soul from resentment and harmful anger. It takes the lechery out of
our natural passions, the covetousness out of natural ambition, and the self and
strut out of natural pride. It includes a spirit of charity, kindness toward
all, and perfects our love for a holy God. There is the absence of a man-fearing
spirit and the man-pleasing spirit, and the presence of a supreme loyalty to
God. It fills the believer with the light of a constant trust and the warmth of
perfect love.

Holiness is a moral value that must be misunderstood or misrepresented to
provoke opposition to itself or its possessor. Mr. Wesley said its opposers had
to clothe it with the skins of animals before opposing it. Its possession spells
victory in life and triumph in death. Let us get it at all costs. Let us keep it
against all hazards. It is the secret of the Lord imparted to all who get far
enough from all others and close enough to God to be told a secret.

It is the sweetness of inner life which makes God at home in the soul. In turn,
it gives its possessor the secret of his presence. "His presence disperses my
gloom, and makes all within me rejoice." Hallelujah! This glorious experience is
now available to them who obey him. That obedience includes a humble faith which
takes him at his word without sensible responses to feed upon. It just believes
God because he says it, and refuses to doubt his immutable Word.

We need an identification with the truth and ministry of "true holiness" that
will be reckoned as radical by those who simply acknowledge the truth, but who
do nothing to promote it. A true identification with this truth will be reckoned
as pure extreme and fanaticism by those who oppose it. But how such a stand with
all it involves will feed and bless those who have the experience! And such a
course alone will precipitate hunger for and real conviction for the experience.
The sane but real test of preaching this truth as it ought to be preached is
that witnesses will from time to time be produced. Even a witness who does not
preach will, by contact with others, bring conviction of the truth to them. By
this very means God proposes to keep faith alive among men. It is one of the
great objectives of our being "in truth sanctified," "that the world may
believe," "That the world may know." This God-chosen method works; it will be
backed by the fruit of the tree’s being good fruit. It works when it is genuine,
and no cheap or compromising substitute will work. "Therefore, by their fruits
ye shall know them." Amen! "Oh Lord, stir and revive us on lines of true
holiness of heart and life," is my prayer.


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  CHAPTER 23: 21 - THE COMPELLING POWER OF CHRISTIAN REALISM
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Chapter 21 The Compelling Power Of Christian Realism The dictionary definition
of realism states that "in literature and art, it is the principle of depicting
persons and scenes as they exist, without any attempt at idealization." In
philosophy, involving cosmology, "the doctrine that in external perception man
can and does perceive real external objects: opposed to idealism and skepticism.
The theory that logical genera and species are real things, existing
independently and apart from our conceptions of them and names for them." Truth
has been defined as that which corresponds to reality.

Realism in modern culture has become a system of thinking and of theories not in
harmony with truth as it exists in the higher realm of theology. The principle,
however, of adhering to that which actually exists on any level of thought is a
sound principle. Applied to the Christian message, truth is present which
answers to reality in human consciousness, involving power that makes
fundamental changes in the realm of human personality on the level of the moral
and spiritual. While Christian realism cannot be demonstrated in a chemical
laboratory, it is capable of demonstration in the laboratory of the higher
values of life. Christian truth is capable of realization and of practical
demonstration in its accomplishment of that for which it stands when conditions
are met on the part of free moral subjects. Just as surely as demonstrations may
be made in the laboratories of scientific investigation, the truth as it is in
Jesus may be put to a practical laboratory test in the realism of human
experience until certainties are established in the realm of the spiritual and
the moral, of which the believer is as certain on this higher level as the
scientist may be certain of the testing of a formula in the chemistry
laboratory. The reality of Christian truth and experience is of a nature which
creates a new force or compelling power in the experience of them that believe,
so that the Christian who has been cleansed from sin and filled with the Holy
Spirit, possesses a compelling enthusiasm which joins with the experience of the
Apostle Peter as expressed in the Acts of the Apostles at chapter 4, verse 20.
The text referred to is the statement of Peter, when on trial for his faith
before officials of the law. The opposition to the Christian movement in its
very early days was such that but for the realism involved in the content of
Christian faith, the whole movement would doubtless have faded away near the
hour of its birth. However, it did not fade; the exact opposite is true. When
Peter and John were threatened by officers of the law and commanded that they
speak henceforth to no man in the name of Jesus, their reply was, "We cannot but
speak the things which we have seen and heard." There is a Christian realism
that does not permit silence on the part of its possessor. There is a force
which creates enthusiasm which will not be silent. This is based on the initial
experience in Christianhood. When the first disciples discovered Christ, and the
fact of his Messiahship registered in their consciousness, we have the record of
their becoming evangels who, in their activity, cried as they met others, "We
have found Him, we have found Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did
write, Jesus of Nazareth." In later years, when Peter wrote a letter to the
church universal, he witnessed, "We have not followed cunningly devised fables
... but were eye witnesses of his majesty." Peter brings both the eye and the
ear into the line of testimony regarding the reality of the content of the
Christian faith and experience. He brings a line down to the present experience
of the same reality as he declares, "We have also a more sure word of prophecy;
whereunto ye do well that ye take heed; as unto a light that shineth in a dark
place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your heart." All this is in
harmony with the challenging test put on the individual by the great Founder of
the Christian faith. When the ministry of our glorious Founder was questioned by
the people who heard him until they expressed their surprise at his wisdom and
marveled, saying "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" Jesus
answered them, and said, "my doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me. If any
man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or
whether I speak of myself." The Christian faith has met this great test across
the path of all the Christian centuries. This is the basis of a realism in the
realm of the knowledge of Christ and the power of God in the gospel which
establishes certainties in the lives of all them that truly believe. It matters
not where it is or who it is that receives him. The same result is achieved --
enthusiasm which will not be hushed, a power within that becomes a compelling
force in our loyalty to him, based upon facts of consciousness in the individual
life. "We can but speak the things which we have seen and heard." The producing
of this type of result is the very central fact of genuine evangelism. It is the
mission of the true Christian church. It is the objective and test of every true
ministry. This fact is recognized by the great apostle who, in writing to his
son in the gospel, exhorts him "Do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of
your ministry." The very credential of the Christian minister and of the true
church is the producing of witnesses in the realm of Christian realism. Let
every believer awake and put on the whole armor of God and push the battle to
fulfill the command, the scope of which is the whole world and the unit of which
is the individual. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature." The reality of salvation in genuine Christian experience anchors a
man intellectually, morally, and spiritually. It determines his direction and
fixes his goal. An illustration of this truth is found in the following incident
in the life of our Lord.

Jesus, with his disciples, was en route north from Judea and the record for some
unknown reason declares he must needs go through Samaria. Wearied with his
journey and while his disciples went into a village to buy food, Jesus sat on
the curb of Jacob’s well, not only weary but hungry and thirsty. A woman of
Samaria came to the well to draw water. Jesus asked her for a drink, whereupon
she, being a Samaritan woman, exclaimed in surprise, "How is it that thou, being
a Jew, askest drink of me which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no
dealings with the Samaritan?" Jesus’ reply to the woman was, "If thou knewest
the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, give me to drink; thou
wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water." The
conversation which followed between Jesus and this Samaritan woman discovered to
the woman her sinful life and condition, and the Messiahship of the man with
whom she was speaking. The outgrowth of the conversation was such conviction
concerning Christ that the woman became a witness, left her water pot, went her
way into the city and declared to the people that she had found the Messiah,
basing her testimony upon the fact of His self-revelation to her and the
discovery of her own condition of need. A revival was thus started in Samaria.
Many of the Samaritans believed on Christ through the testimony of the woman.
She said of him, "He told me all that ever I did." Many others came out unto
Christ and besought Him that He would tarry with them and he abode there two
days. The revival swept on, making many witnesses into Christ’s true
Messiahship. The testimony of the people after seeing and hearing Christ was,
"We have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the
Saviour of the world." The key to this message is the statement "We have heard
Him ourselves and know ..." Christian truth is capable of demonstration in the
consciousness of the individual. Christ put all his teaching and claims to this
test: "He that willeth to do the will of my Father, shall know of the doctrine."
We note in this instance that there were those who believed upon the testimony
of the woman. Thus we see faith may be based upon testimony. Very much of the
knowledge we possess in practically all fields of our thinking is to a greater
or less extent based upon testimony. Bishop Butler in his famous book, "The
Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion," states that the content of Christian
faith is of such importance that if its truth could be established, by even a
probability in its favor, it ought to command the most serious attention of all
right-thinking men. The experience of the disciple Thomas with Christ in his
post-resurrection appearances illustrates the two principles we are emphasizing.
First, he refused to accept testimony as evidence of the resurrection of his
Lord. Upon the occasion of his meeting the Lord and coming into the possession
of faith based upon actual experience, and sight, we have the special approval
of the Master upon those who do not demand such materialistic evidence as Thomas
demanded. Jesus said to Thomas, "Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed;
blessed are they which have not seen and yet believe." The wonderful truth we
are seeking to stablish in this meditation is that while there are grounds for
faith other than that of actual experience, yet in the realm of Christian truth
we are permitted to test the promises and precepts of the book in a way that
will make witnesses of us on the basis of experience. We can test the essential
facts of Scripture so that we, with the Samaritans, shall bear testimony: "We
have heard Him ourselves and know ..." Testimony based upon experience, when
that experience is backed by the truth of Scripture, becomes very valuable
evidence for the truth. It is great to have a settled consciousness within
ourselves that we know him and know that the great promises of the gospel are
true, which, in their fulfillment, save from sin and build us in holy character.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/butler-charles-w-a-holiness-manifesto/
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