DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF HOLINESS.
To clear the way, it might be helpful to bear in mind that there are at least four views of the subject of holiness. The variations are numerous and diverse, but nearly all might be ranged under one or other of the views now to be described.
1. There is what may be called the Perfectionist School. An advocate of this view fairly puts what is taught by them by saying that in those cleansed or sanctified there remains " no defiling taint of depravity, no bent toward acts of sin." This is by an American. General Booth, in Britain, gives a similar testimony when he says that "the last remnants of the carnal mind may be plucked up by the roots, and the tendencies to evil taken away." Another advocate, in New Zealand, writes that the Savior " can just now extirpate the foe, expel the fiend, and extract the virus of sin from the human heart." This might be thought to be thorough enough work, but somehow it is also allowed that the sanctified man may be liable to errors of judgment, and by temptation from without he may again yield to sin, lose the blessing, and even so fall away as to be finally lost. It is said that Charles Wesley was sanctified four times, and yet held that it was possible for him to be lost after all. Others might not go so far; but they would admit that they might lose what they call the second blessing, and slip back among the great mass of believers who do not profess holiness or sanctification.
2. There is what we may call the Evangelical School It has been stated as follows by a moderator from the chair in his opening address in the Free Church General Assembly in Edinburgh, Scotland:" Christ's blood purges our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. We are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, in mind, in will, in heart, and sin hath not dominion over us, because we are under grace." "It cannot, however, be set forth as within the plan of redemption that perfect holiness should be ours on earth. If we wash our hand with snow-water, and make ourselves ever so clean, we are quickly plunged into the ditch again, and compelled to cry out, 'Oh wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'" "We are not, therefore, defeated :we have learned that sin is not omnipotent over us, but that grace is omnipotent over sin." " There is no sin, no temptation, no obstinacy, no vitality of sin, which grace is not almighty to overcome, and at last to uproot it." In this view, as in the previous one, be it observed, there is no admission of there being two natures in the believer. In both views the whole man is supposed to be dealt with:the one relies upon the efficacy of the blood to cleanse from all sin, the other looks to the almighty power of grace to overcome evil. The Perfectionist holds that the cleansing is complete when he has believed for it; the Evangelical more modestly allows that sin will not be uprooted tilt death; but, being Calvinistic in his faith, he believes that he will persevere till death, and immediately be with and like Christ in glory; but both schools deny that a Christian has two natures, and fail to bring out the truth as to the first and last Adam, or the old and new creation. (Rom. 5:12-21; Eph. 2:i-10; 4:22-25.) W.C.J.
( To be continued.)