DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF HOLINESS. (Continued from page 163.)

3. The next view we may call the Faith School, as its I members hold that they can step into a condition of holiness by an act of faith. It is said to be " a blessed, positive attainment or gift." They desire to enjoy the blessing of rest and liberty, and, at the same time, avoid either of the extremes of the Perfectionists and Evangelical Schools. Like the former, they profess to have received a positive blessing, though they differ from them in admitting in a way that the flesh still remains in the believer, and they also hold that he has received a new nature. Still, both are minimized and mystified till the advocate baffles the critic by disappearing in the region of the clouds. There need be no question as to their experience and enjoyment of blessing being beyond what the great majority of believers realize; but the Faith School do not give a consistent and scriptural account of the experience. Their definition of sin is left vague ; sin in the flesh, and acts of sinning in the life, are not kept distinct; liberty is confused with purity, and holiness with righteousness ; cleansing the source of evil is sought, rather than deliverance from the power of indwelling sin ; and the tendency of the teaching is toward self-occupation and self-adulation, rather than the utter repudiation of self and occupation with Christ. The Faith School would have Christ to stoop to meet our every need where we are, and produce a happy experience ; whereas the Spirit would teach us that we are dead, and risen, and set free to have our hearts taken up with Christ Himself, where He is at God's right hand. It is true, as they affirm, that holiness is by faith ; but it is not true that a soul can enter a region of rest, happiness, and power by an act of faith apart from the humbling experience of Rom. 7:; nor is it true that when rest and deliverance are realized that the believer has got a kind of store of power, or capital of holiness, upon which he can work without continual watchfulness, self-judgment, and positive dependence on the Lord moment by moment. They too frequently forget or overlook the exercise or pressure or the thorn in the flesh spoken of by Paul. (Acts 26:16 ; i Cor. 9:26, 27 ; 2 Cor. 4:10 ; 13:7-10.)

4. This brings us to what we may call the Scriptural School. The aim in this view, as pointed out at the beginning, is to have the life of Jesus manifest in the body. Christ Himself is the standard, and as Paul puts it, " I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."/ Overt acts, which we call sins, are clearly distinguished from the evil nature by which they are produced. This inherent bad disposition, or capacity, is called sin. The man commits the sins himself, and is responsible for them ; but he inherited his evil nature from Adam, and is not responsible for that, though he is responsible for its acts. The presence of the evil nature does not give him a bad conscience ; but the allowing it to act does, and renders him guilty. As guilty he may own what he has done, and find forgiveness through faith in Christ's blood. But as a believer, he is urged to confess his sins, and he is forgiven, and communion is restored. He is cleansed, indeed "once purged," and, if he only takes (Heb. 9:and 10:) what the Spirit has written, he may enter the holiest, and know that as to sins he is as clean as an unfallen angel. But the blood does not and cannot cleanse his evil nature. He has received a new nature :the life of Christ, the last Adam ; but that has not changed or removed the evil nature which he received from the first Adam. Cleansing cannot alter that any more than the cleansing of a sow would make the animal a sheep.

The blood indeed cleanses away the sins of the sinner who believes; but in order for him to "walk in newness of life," and "have his fruit unto holiness," he needs to be not now forgiven or cleansed, as he is that already, but he requires deliverance from the power of indwelling sin. He was cleansed by blood; he is now to be delivered by death-not the death of his body, but the death of Christ. His evil nature, sin, "the body of the flesh" (Col. 2:n) is not forgiven :it is condemned. (Rom. 8:3; 6:6-11.) He needs to know Christ as a deliverer. When he has learned painfully that there is no good in the old nature; and further still, that in the new nature there is no strength, he is led to despair of self, and to look at Christ's death in a new light. Now he sees that not only were his sins borne by Jesus and purged by His blood, but he himself was crucified with Christ, and he can reckon himself to be dead indeed unto sin,,«and alive unto God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Liberty was what he required, and the Son makes him free indeed. (Jno. 8:32-36.) Though the evil nature is there unchanged, he can say, " The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." The blood has cleansed him ; death has delivered him ; he has resurrection life, and the indwelling of the Spirit, and is free to be occupied with Christ where He is, and have Christ's life manifested here, where in person Christ is not. "I, yet not I ; but Christ liveth in me," and "For me to live [is] Christ;" this is deliverance, and the result is fruit unto holiness.

But learning deliverance is a reality. It may be more marked and wonderful in the experience of a Christian than was his first conversion. It is, no doubt, what some of the schools call the "second blessing," or "higher Christian life," or " sanctification ; " but they do not and cannot account for what they have received in the light of Scripture; and they miss a great deal by not being guided by its teaching. The Evangelical School, and half-hearted Christians, rather enjoy the exposure of the perfectionist view ; but they think, and really mean, that there is nothing for the Christian in the way of a positive __deliverance. With them it is simply to sin as little as you can help ; but it must be more or less sinning and repenting, and going back to sin, till delivered by death. But there is a positive deliverance, not from the presence, but from the power of indwelling sin, and Rom. 6:is the divine answer; and it indeed shows we are delivered by death-but Christ's death-and are to reckon ourselves dead, and find and enjoy deliverance now so as to have our fruit unto holiness.

But these things require to be taught, illustrated, enforced, and applied among Christians, as the gospel is pressed upon the unconverted. It has been my privilege to do this during many years, and in giving ten or twelve consecutive addresses, through the Lord's blessing, there are usually a number brought into liberty; but this is a very different thing from professing to live without sinning, or having had the evil nature changed or eradicated. If Christians could be got to look at Scripture, and would bend their minds, and yield their hearts and wills to learn the truth as the Spirit would reveal it, from the epistle to the Romans, Christian holiness, in its roots and fruits, might be understood and exemplified as never before. The principal work by those who attack holiness teaching is that of pulling down; but what is wanted is that the people should be led into the apprehension and enjoyment of the truth of deliverance as it is found in Scripture. This would be building them up in their most holy faith. W. C. J.