Heart Talks on Holiness

THIS BOOK is a welcome successor to the

writer’s former volume on the same subject, which was entitled Helps to Holiness!’ The aim of both is intensely practical. The former has won for itself a permanent place in the literature of this great subject, and I have little doubt but that the present work will prove equally useful to the plain people for whom it is written — pilgrims, soldiers of Christ, who are seeking how they may order their lives and train their hearts in holiness and righteousness before Him.

I have said that the aim of these papers is a practical one. Nothing would, I am convinced, be more unsatisfactory to the Author, a gifted Officer of The Salvation Army, than that the perusal of what he has written here should result merely in a better understanding of the theory of Salvation, or viii even in increased knowledge of the Will of God, He has aimed at something more than this — to help men and women to enjoy that Salvation, and to enjoy it now, and to lead every reader to do that Will, and to do it all the time.

The glorious experience here described and enforced is the true secret of a life of happiness and usefulness on earth as it is the highest preparation for the life and service of Heaven. That experience is for you.

BRAMWELL BOOTH.

The son of god came into this world, and lived, and toiled, and taught, and suffered, and died and rose again in order to accomplish a twofold purpose. The Apostle John explains this two-fold work. In i John iii. 5, speaking of Jesus, he says, “Ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins.* This is His justification, and regeneration, which are done for us and in us. In verse eight he adds, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devill That is entire sanctification, which is a work done in us. Now upon an examination of experience and Scripture, we find this is exactly what man needs to have done for him.

First, he needs to get rid of his own sins, and have a new principle of life planted in him. “All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and when any man comes to God, he comes burdened with a sense of his own wrong-doings and tempers. His sins condemn him; but, thank God, Jesus came to take away our sins.

When a man comes with a penitent heart, acknowledging himself a sinner, and puts his trust in Jesus, he will find himself suddenly freed from his sins. The sense of guilt will vanish. The power of evil will be broken. The burden will roll away. Peace will fill his heart. He will see that his sins were laid on another, even on Jesus, and he will realise that ‘‘with His stripes we are healed.” This is a result of that free pardon, that free justification for all past offences’, that God gives to every one who surrenders himself heartily to and trusts in Jesus. At the same time God plants in the man’s heart a new life. The man is born of God, and receives what Paul calls the washing of regeneration, which washes away all the man’s guilt, and all the sin for which he is responsible. At this time, too, there will be planted in the man’s heart love, joy, peace, and the various fruits of the Spirit, and if his experience is very marked, as such experiences frequently are, he will probably think there is nothing more to be done. But, if he walks in “humbleness of mind” (which, by the way, is a much-neglected fruit of the Spirit), if he speaks often and freely with those who love the Lord, and if he carefully searches the Vord of God and “meditates therein day and night,” he will soon find that sin’s disease is deeper and more deadly than he thought, and that behind and below his own sins are the “works of the devil,” that must also be destroyed before the work of grace in his soul can be complete.

He will find a big, dark something in him that wants to get mad when things are against him; something which will not be patient; something that is touchy and sensitive; something that wants to grumble and find fault; something that is proud and shuns the shame of the Cross; something that sometimes suggests hard thoughts against God; something that is self-willed and ugly and sinful. He hates this something in him and wants to get rid of it, and probably condemns himself for it and may-be will feel that he is a greater sinner now than he ever was before he was converted. But

THE OLD MAN.

he is not. In fact, he is not a sinner at all so long as he resists this something in himself. Now, what is the trouble with the man? What is the name of this troublesome something? Paul calls it by several names. In the eighth chapter of Romans he calls it ‘‘ the carnal mind,” and he says it is “enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” You cannot fix it up. You cannot whitewash it over. You cannot make it better by culture or growth, or by any effort whatever. It is an enemy of Goi and cannot be anything else.

In the seventh chapter he calls it “the body of this death” and wonders how he can get deliverance from it. In Ephesians iv.. 22, and in Colossians iii. 9, he calls it “the old man.” In Galatians v. 17, he calls it “the flesh.” James calls it “superfluity of naughtiness,” which is also well rendered, “the remainder of iniquity” {James i. 21).

John calls it “sin,” as distinct from “sins,” and the “works of the devil.” Ezekiel calls it a “stony heart” (chap, xxxvi. 26). The theologians call it “inbred sin,” “original sin,” and “depravity.” Whatever you wish to cnll it, it is something evil and awful that remains in the heart after a man has been converted.

Some say that it is gotten ridden of at conversion, but I never saw any people who found it so, and Mr. Wesley, who was a much wiser man than I am, atid who had a far wider range of observation, examined thousands of people on this very point, and he said he never

knew of one who got rid of this troublesome thing at conversion.

Some people say that growing in grace is the remedy.

Some people say you never get rid of it while you live. It will remain in you and war against you till

you die. They are not altogether prophets of despair, for they say the new life in you will overcome it and keep it down, but that you will have to stand on guard

and watch it, club and repress it, as you would a

maniac, till death relieves you.

The Catholics have fixed up a doctrine of after death destruction in purgatory for this “old man.”

Keep reading