Tithing?

QUESTION: Ought one to give a tenth of his income to the Lord?

ANSWER: Much more would be given to him, if all Christians should adopt the practice of systematic giving. The New Testament fixes no other ratio than this: "As God has prospered him" (I Cor. 16:2). By this rule some ought to give their two mites or one mite or nothing at all.

— Steele's Answers p. 172.

Immortality of the Soul

QUESTION: A neighbor denies "the immortality of the soul," saying that there is no such a phrase in the Bible; that after death the wicked will have a chance to repent, and if they do not repent, they will be annihilated. How is this?

ANSWER: The doctrine of the eternal existence of the wicked is found in all those passages which speak of their endless punishment in plain terms, as in Matt. 25:46, or under the imagery of "unquenchable fire" (Matt. 8:12). "Smoke of their torment ascending forever and ever" (Rev. 14:11); "the false prophet tormented day and night forever and ever" (Rev. 20:10); "eternal sin" (Mark 8:29, Revision); "eternal fire" (Matt. 25:41). There is no Scripture in proof that repentance after death is possible. The idea that God will ever annihilate a free moral agent is nowhere found in the Bible. If that is the way to secure a holy universe, God would have annihilated the devil long ago.

— Steele's Answers p. 171, 172.

Life Insurance

QUESTION: Is it right for a sanctified person to carry life insurance?

ANSWER: I fail to see anything sinful in it. Like fire insurance, it is a device by which men help one another, the long-lived help those dependent on the short-lived, the widow and the fatherless. In this way, "the strong bear the burdens of the weak," though not in the form that Paul intended. I do not think that he would have condemned it.

— Steele's Answers p. 171.

Irresistible Conversions?

QUESTION: Does God irresistibly convert men temporarily, suspending the free will for that purpose?

ANSWER: Never either in this world nor in that to come will he turn a free agent into a machine in order to save him. This doctrine leads to universalism, for if God, who is no respecter of persons, saves one sinner in that way, justice requires that he should save all in the same way, whether men or devils. Moreover, it implies the crude notion that the moral realm is the appropriate sphere of physical omnipotence. It also involves the marring of God's image in man by God himself, for moral freedom is the very center of man's likeness to his Creator. Man creates his own character, which in God's estimate is worth more than the whole material universe. He has the assistance of Divine grace, as a moral suasive, but not as a determining force. Saving faith is a graciously aided human act, not an irresistible grace — one of the five points of Calvinism. "Salvation through faith is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God," is the meaning of Eph. 2:8, as every Greek scholar will say. See the exegetes.

— Steele's Answers p. 170, 171.

Will We Know People in Heaven? (Part 2)

QUESTION: In your recent answer to the question relating to knowing one another in the future world, you said there are texts from which an affirmative answer could be inferred, quoting Paul's words in Col. 1:28, "that we may present every man perfect in Christ." Are there any other texts of this kind?

ANSWER: Yes, II Cor. 4:14, "knowing that he that raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus, and shall present us with you." Here the apostle expects to recognize his converts, as also in chap. 11:2, "that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ." In Luke 16:9, Christ exhorts us to make, by a benevolent use of our money, friends, who, dying before we do, "may receive us into everlasting habitations." Here the beneficiaries are represented as on the lookout for their benefactors whom they recognize and welcome to heavenly mansions.

— Steele's Answers p. 170.

An Encouragement to Seekers of Joy

Let no one throw away his Christian experience because it is not joyful. This is what the adversary of your soul desires. Are you a servant of God, fearing him and working righteousness? Thank God and ask him to adopt you as a son. Are you adopted and have the witness of the Spirit now and then? Ask for the abiding witness. Are your peace and joy interrupted and variable? Ask in faith for the indwelling Paraclete in the plenitude of his grace. Take large views of God's mercy and benevolent purpose toward you in this life.

Let Paul's cumulative phrases in the ascription at the end of his wonderfully comprehensive prayer inspire you to ask for large things, even to be filled with all the fulness of God: "Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." This power is the personal Holy Spirit, the fountain of supreme joy through the inspiration of supreme love. Get an enlarged view of God's love as the ground of a larger faith. To this end study not only the Bible but the Christian poets. Let this spark from C. Wesley's glowing fire enkindle your soul:

Your Joy May Be Full

To every believer did Christ give his gracious command, "Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full."

To restrict this promise of fulness of joy to only a few of the many who pray is to destroy all ground of faith for anyone. Fullness of joy was not designed to be a rare and exceptional Christian experience. Ever since the day of Pentecost Satan has been busy in all Christian lands spreading the wicked lie that only a few favorites of God, one in a thousand or a million, can be victorious over sin and permanently dwell on the sun-lit summits of assurance and fulness of joy. Alas, the majority of Christians believe this falsehood and dwell ever on the lowlands of doubt and depravity, and ascribe their wretched state to their constitution or their circumstances, in other words, to their Creator and not to their own failure to claim their full heritage in Christ. The promise of fulness of joy is to all believers today and to-morrow and forever, absolutely without exception. It is the business of your preacher to drive this lie out of both pulpit and pew where it has dwelt for ages, and to get men to believe Christ's glorious truth instead. It is encouraging to know that the truth is steadily mastering and exterminating the lie. Many are panting after a complete conformity to the image of the Son of God, crying, "Nearer, my God, to thee." Many in all the evangelical churches are claiming an experimental demonstration that the Holy Spirit can sanctify wholly and preserve blameless. Many are believing it as a doctrine and attesting it by a joyful experience. When this becomes general in Protestant churches their oneness in spirit will be complete and the prayer of our Saviour will be answered, "That they may be perfected in one." The chief obstacle to Christian unity hitherto has been a lack of love to the common Master.

— Jesus Exultant, Chapter 7.

The Value of Christian Joy

The notion is widely prevalent that an emotional religion must be fitful and unstable.

It is true that feeling excited by appeals to the sensibilities only, without any inculcation of truth upon the intellect, is to be deprecated. This results in a Christian character described by Christ as the stony-ground hearer that hears the word, and anon with joy receives it, but having no root in himself he endures only for a while. The failure is not to be ascribed to the joy, but to the lack of deep moral convictions resulting from a reception of Christian truth used by the Holy Spirit as a subsoil plowshare breaking up the fallow ground of the heart as a preparation for a spiritual life which will grow more and more robust as persecutions and tribulations increase.

Scholarly men are apt to think that feeling stands on a lower plane than the understanding and that it is not consistent with large thinking powers. Hence comes the error which spoils so much preaching warming at the head instead of the heart. It is thought that he who addresses the emotions and melts his hearers to tears is not so great as the master of syllogisms who welds a flawless chain of argument. Hence the tendency of the schools is to repress feeling and to intensify the dry intellect; whereas few people reason while all feel.

The Liberty of the Spirit

Many modern Christians become so highly cultivated and refined in their taste as to rebuke the spontaneous hymn breaking out in the pews, independent of the chorister's tuning fork or the organist's keynote, and to take offense at the amen or hallelujah in the congregation not printed in the ritual. They deem such freedom unbecoming the dignity and solemnity of Christian worship. It is possible that the Spirit, who dwells only where there is liberty, departs from those assemblies which attempt to imprison him in stiff forms. He desires to develop individualities by bestowing different gifts severally on whomsoever he will. Dr. Stalker says that the prophets addressed only nations, but Jesus Christ discovered the individual. This latest discovery it is the office of the Holy Spirit to create anew, preserving all original traits so far as they are innocent. Men are not at their best when pruned of all personal peculiarities. Grace is not a die which makes all souls alike like dollars dropping from the mint. There is the same variety in the new creation as there was in the original creation. There should be the same variety in the expression of Christian experience. Let not the quiet find fault with the exultant. Let all the people praise the Lord, each in his own natural way.

— Jesus Exultant, Chapter 7.

The Uniqueness of Christian Joy

The peace of Christ and the joy in the Holy Ghost depend on persistent, appropriating faith. The perpetual fulness of the Spirit resulting from this kind of faith is the condition of fulness of joy.

The joy inspired by the Spirit is unique. It is totally unlike natural gladness such as arises in worldly men when their corn and wine are increased. Hence it is indescribable. A simple emotion cannot be defined. You may talk forever of the peculiar emotion of the young mother who feels the first pulsation of maternal love, when her first-born child is laid in her bosom. The feeling must be forever unknown except to those who have had such an experience. It is so with every kind of emotion. We can describe it only by stating under what circumstances it arises. If you have never been in those circumstances the person who speaks of such an emotion speaks to you in an unknown tongue. The joy of the Holy Ghost is to an unbeliever as vague and meaningless as the colors of the rainbow described to one born blind.

The Kingdom Realm of Joy

"For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." — Rom. xiv. 17

But great as is the blessedness of peace, Paul intimates that the kingdom of God affords a richer banquet. We have three degrees of beatitude set before us, rising like a climax: righteousness is good, peace is better and joy in the Holy Ghost is best of all, the crowning grace which God has to bestow on believers in his adorable Son. It is the link which unites us with God. It is the first installment of heaven paid on earth in advance.

This is more than the joy which is the natural sequence of right doing. The approval of conscience is the lowest degree of the joy of righteousness. If the act be not merely right but beneficent, if we have by sacrifice benefited some person, the joy rises in quality and intensity. Hence the generous deeds of the unregenerate are to them a source of felicity. This arises from the very constitution of human nature. Happiness and virtue are not divergent but parallel lines. We are as moral beings so constituted that joy must follow the exercise of benevolence. This joy is natural. But the joy of the Holy Ghost is supernatural. It is handed down direct from the Giver of all good gifts through the agency of the Holy Spirit. It flows not in the channels of nature, but is a fruit of the Spirit. Paul intends to discriminate between the natural joy of rectitude and this heavenly joy in Christian experience by styling it the joy of the Holy Ghost. It attends his residence in the soul. For there is a mystery next to the three-fold personality in the unity of the divine nature, the two-fold personality of the believer, the human interpenetrated by the divine personality inhabiting it as his temple. This miracle of the fulness of the Spirit was first manifested in Adam in Eden when the breath of God conveyed not merely animal and intellectual life, but spiritual life resulting from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Sin dissolved this mysterious union and the heavenly personage withdrew from his polluted sanctuary. From being filled with joy pervading every capacity, Adam became desolate indeed. The supremely blessed became supremely wretched. To be sundered from God, the fountain of bliss, is hell. When sin entered the soul of Adam that deep celestial spring ceased to send up its refreshing waters, and he became the subject of intense thirst. His posterity born in his fallen image share also his tormenting thirst. They all flew from spring to spring of sensual pleasure, but still they thirsted till Jesus stood up in this spiritual Sahara and cried, "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink." The satisfying nature and the inexhaustible abundance of the water of life are intimated in the fact that out of the believer shall flow, not drops as from a spile, not brooks which dry up "in the summer's heat, but rivers, Amazons and Mississippis of living water. Then John, in a blessed parenthesis, for which I mean to thank him when I shake hands with him in heaven, strips off the imagery and tells us in plain words that Jesus is describing the joy of the Holy Spirit, who was not yet given in Pentecostal fulness. To this fountain Jesus sets a perpetual finger-point in his last words in the Bible, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come . . . and take the water of life freely."

— Jesus Exultant, Chapter 7.

The Kingdom Realm of Peace

We may compare the kingdom of God to a three-storied temple founded on Christ, the corner stone. The first story is a basement partly underground, the region of shadow and darkness, the cellar-kitchen of this palace, where servants toil in fear and hirelings work for wages.

But a broad staircase leads up into the apartment of peace; while the Lord of this castle is constantly inviting those below to ascend, to exchange the place of servants for that of sons. For he is willing to adopt the whole crowd into his family, but only now and then one has the good sense to believe in the sincerity of the offer and to accept it, to doff the servants' livery and to don the many-colored robe of sonship and heirship. This room is spacious and sunny and resonant with songs. Yet its occupants do more work than the servants downstairs. But they do not work for wages, but from love to their adopted Father. They are sons; they belong to the royal family; the whole estate is theirs. This gives a new character to their labor, lifting it infinitely above the drudgery of wage-service. When the hired man marries the daughter of his employer he doesn't play the gentleman at leisure and cease working, but he works all the harder because he now is a member of the firm. This takes all the irksomeness out of his toil and bedecks it with roses. "And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." The filial feeling is suddenly breathed into the soul. Fear of a servile kind which brings torment is removed. Fear of death disappears and the fear of future ill. Child-like trust in the newly-found Father mostly banishes fear and enthrones peace. The habit of faith becomes fixed, love lubricates all acts of obedience and stern duty is dissolved in love. Service ceases to be a task and love knows no burdens. The beneficent law of habit now comes in to afford an additional safeguard to the gift of peace.

The Kingdom Realm of Righteousness

We may compare the kingdom of God to a three-storied temple founded on Christ, the corner stone.

The first story is a basement partly underground, the region of shadow and darkness, the cellar-kitchen of this palace, where servants toil in fear and hirelings work for wages. As servants, they are faithful, conscientious and true to their Master's interests. They are not drones, nor gluttons, nor drunkards, nor stewards wasting their Master's goods. Their service is voluntary. They have chosen it in preference to any other. Yet they are not joyful, but rather fearful that they shall fail to please their Master and so lose their wages. For they toil with an eye to the reward, and every day after twelve o'clock they often look over their shoulders to see whether the sun is not setting, so that they may quit for the day and draw their pay. While they believe that they are serving the best of masters, they sigh when they contrast their condition with that of his acknowledged sons and daughters in the parlors above. They are tempted to be sad and envious, not cheerful and songful. In this state of mind there is danger of discouragement and abandonment of the service. For it is natural for to escape from an irksome employment. The predominant motive of their service is fear, not love, and there is no magnetism in fear to attract and hold them steadfast.

Righteousness Among Those Ignorant of Christ

That righteousness may exist without conscious assurance of acceptance and peace and without even a knowledge of the historical Christ, is no new and strange doctrine, as may be seen in the introduction of Peter's sermon at Cæsarea: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him." Cornelius was in a state of acceptance as a servant, in doubt and fear without the Spirit of adoption, because he was ignorant of the giver, Jesus Christ. Says Paul: "When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness."

On this ground the pagans need no probation after death. They who by living up to their best light have put on the elements of Christ's character have the essential Christ, though ignorant of the historical Christ.

God Has Three Kingdoms

There is a sense in which God has three kingdoms. The first two constitute the platform or pedestal on which the third is erected. 

First, God reigns over the material world by the mechanical necessity of physical laws. In this kingdom there is no freedom. The subjects, whether floating atoms or blazing suns, bow to the law of necessity. To this kingdom our bodies belong. The laws of gravitation and of vital chemistry are ceaselessly at work in them, whether we will or not, whether we wake or sleep. 

In the second place, God presides over a moral government requiring obedience to the universal law of moral obligation. God did not give us the privilege of choosing whether or not we would be in this kingdom. We are in it by no vote or consent of ours. The moral law is imbedded in our very constitution. We can escape it only by escaping two beings, God and ourselves. We may disobey and suffer penalty; we may obey and enjoy the reward. 

But on the basis of these two kingdoms stands another. No one is in it of necessity, but everyone enters freely. The law of this kingdom is love of righteousness. All who love righteousness love God, its perfect embodiment, and belong to this kingdom, hence it is purely spiritual with an ethical basis. It was founded by the Father. When some method of making the wicked righteous was needed, he devised the scheme of the atonement. Hence he is no impersonation of mercilessness holding an iron scepter, as some falsely assert, but a tender Father devising the ransom of his banished ones. "God so loved the world," says the divine record. The atonement is a river of love rising in the heart of the Father, flowing through the self-sacrifice of the Son and emptying itself on the earth in the gift of the Holy Ghost to restore to human souls the lost image of God, righteousness and true holiness. The Son of God is the administrator of this kingdom. He is head over all things to his church. "My kingdom is not of this world." From the residence of a majority of its subjects it is called the kingdom of heaven. The census of that kingdom would be so great that the number on the earth are to the number in heaven as a handful of sand is to a continent, or as the planets of our system are to the milky way powdered with stars. 

— edited and adapted from Jesus Exultant, Chapter 7.

The Cross of Christ and Human Sin

"For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." — 1 Cor. ii. 2

Who is he who hangs thereon bowing his head in death? It is none other than the Son of God, who dwelt in his bosom and shared his glory before the world was. By him, "the image of the invisible God, were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions; all things were created by him and for him" (Col. 1. 16). Equal in power and glory with the Father, he says, "I and my Father are one." "He who hath seen me hath seen the Father." This person of infinite dignity is nailed to the cross, voluntarily laying down his life as a ransom for many. The cost of redemption is the measure of the turpitude of sin. Jesus died to antagonize sin, to neutralize its baneful effects and to arrest its consequences in such a manner as to afford no encouragement to sin, but rather to raise up the strongest safeguard against it. If Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man, it proves that in every man there is some fatal plague spot which must be removed, which nothing short of the death of the Son of God could effect. I need not tell you that this plague is sin which embitters and blights every human soul, casting an eternal eclipse upon its future existence.

The Anointing Teaches

"The anointing which ye recieve of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any one teach you: but as his anointing teacheth you concerning all things . . . abide ye in him"  — 1 John 2:27. R. V., marg.

Here χρῖσμα (chrisma) of the Spirit is twice used with emphasis on his teaching office... and his conditional abiding. He will abide in us so long as we heed the injunction, "Abide in him." When the Paraclete takes up his abode in the heart, he intends to stay forever, if the conditions are favorable. Neglect will obscure his brightness, weaving a veil of increasing thickness over his face; and unrepented willful sin will cause him to leave in grief, to return no more forever. "The sixth chapter to the Hebrews may affright us all," says Rutherford, "when we hear that men may take of the gifts and common graces of the Holy Spirit, and a taste of the powers of the world to come, to hell with them." There is no state of grace this side of glory from which the soul may not finally fall. Yet permanency is the peculiarity of the anointing in the case of the persevering believer. The presence of the Comforter in the sanctuary of the heart. filling it with light, love, and joy, strongly inclines the person to persevere. so that he may freely determine to persist in faith and obedience. Of those who truly receive this anointing, in the fullness of its illumination, strength, and bliss, few ever realize its entire withdrawal. We teach no antinomian anointing when we say this.

The Anointing and Orthodoxy

"And ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and because no lie is of the truth Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, [even] he that denieth the Father and the Son Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also." 1 John 1:20-23 RV

In connection with the word χρῖσμα (chrisma), St. John explains the origin of antichrist. All who have the chrism, or anointing, know and honor the Christ, the anointed. "As long," says Dr. Whedon, "as we possess the holy chrism we will adhere to holy Christ." All who do not receive and retain the sanctifying chrism reject or abandon the Christ, and become antichrists, because of the absence of the enlightening chrism. "No man speaking in the Spirit of God saith, Jesus is anathema; and no man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit." (1 Cor. 12:3, R. V.)

The doctrine of the supreme divinity of Christ, revealed to the soul only by the anointing, protects all the other doctrines of the evangelical system. Hence the Holy Ghost is the only conservator of orthodoxy. The thumbscrew, as a substitute, is a stupendous failure, as is proven by the ghastly history of the Inquisition. The soft doctrines of liberalism creep into churches which do not honor the Third Person of the adorable Trinity, except with their lips, while their hearts are without his indwelling. Departures from him, whether new or old, are always departures from the evangelical standard.

— Half Hours With St. Paul and Other Bible Readings Chapter 21.

The Believer's Anointing

"Now he that stablisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God who also sealed us, and gave [us] the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." 2 Corinthians 1:21, 22 RV

Anointing in the holy Scriptures is either material, with oil, or spiritual, with the Holy Spirit.

At his baptism Jesus was baptized with the Spirit, the first person in human history to receive this highest honor possible for men to receive or for heaven to bestow. For in the Old Testament, anointing was the official inauguration into three of the highest offices of the Hebrew nation — king and prophet (1 Kings 19:16), high priest (Lev. 16:32), and king (1 Sam. 9:16). These three offices were typical of a great personality to come in the latter days, called the Messiah, the Christ, or the Anointed One (Psa. 2:2; Dan. 9:25, 26; Luke 4:18). The nature of this anointing is foretold as spiritual: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me: because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek." Jesus of Nazareth appropriated this prophecy when he said, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." This spiritual anointing being one of his chief credentials, the fact is recorded in John 1:32, 33; Acts 4:27; 10:38.

Catching Corinthians by Guile?

QUESTION: Did St. Paul do right when he "caught the Corinthians by guile, being crafty"? See II Cor. 12:16.

ANSWER: His enemies slanderously said that he preached for money, not asking for it directly, but making Titus a cat's-paw to procure money for him craftily, while he was pretending to preach without burdening the people with the contribution box. Paul repeats their charge in order to refute it. All obscurity would have been avoided if he had written "They say," "I caught you," etc., as in 10:10.

— Steele's Answers, p. 169.

Prophets Die in Jerusalem (Luke 13:33)

QUESTION: What did Christ mean when he said in Luke 13:33, "For it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem"?

ANSWER: This is a sort of ironical rebuke of Jerusalem for its stupendous wickedness, implying that neither Galilee, where he was, nor any other country outside of Jerusalem, was sufficiently criminal to kill a prophet of the Lord. Jerusalem alone was capable of so great iniquity.

— Steele's Answers p. 169.

"Rest" in Matthew 11:28, 29

QUESTION: Says Jesus in Matt. 11:28, 29, "I will give you rest... and ye shall find rest." Is the "rest'" in both verses the same?

ANSWER: Some so teach. They are supported by the authority of Olshausen, a noted German exegete, who makes the rest given by Jesus the release from the burden of guilt by conscious forgiveness, and rest found under the yoke of guidance and discipline imposed by Christ, "the cessation of discord in man which is not immediately removed after his entering into the element of the good" — the state of the regenerate. It is a curious fact that the clause denoting the second rest is quoted from Jeremiah 6:16, "Ask for the old paths, where is the way; and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." This is the way the Hebrew reads, but if the quotation had been made from the LXX the Greek version quoted very often in the N.T. (ninety-nine times being in Matthew's Gospel), it would have been, "and ye shall find purification to your souls." This is the way the Hebrew reads, but it is the quotation from the Septuagist, because the word ἁγνισμός (hagnismos),  "purification," is used in the N. T. only once (Acts 21:26), and that is in a ceremonial sense descriptive of Paul's unwise attempt to conciliate the angry Jews by purifying himself in the Temple. Words in the course of centuries take on different shades of meaning. Christ kept as far as possible from teaching that mere ritualism can give soul rest. This comes only by crucifying "the flesh which lusteth against the Spirit," or by spiritual purification.

— Steele's Answers pp. 168, 169.

The Golden Rule in Business Dealings

QUESTION: A has a mortgage on B's farm, which he forecloses, and C bids it in at the public sheriff's sale and pays the debt, principal and, interest, getting the farm a little less than its value. Should C pay this little less to B?

ANSWER: The Golden Rule would seem to require it, especially if B's failure to pay arose from providential circumstances, such as sickness, or losses by fire or flood, or an unusual scarcity of money at the time of the auction, diminishing the number of bidders and perhaps excluding competition. Many considerations are to be regarded in such a case.

— Steele's Answers pp. 167, 168.

Leaving a Seeker at the Altar?

QUESTION: Is it proper for a Christian to lead a seeker to the altar and leave him there without trying to help him find salvation?

ANSWER: It is supposed that the preacher or evangelist is more competent to give the required instruction. It is sometimes true that the seeker is confused by advices from several persons. If the seeker is mature, self­possessed, and well acquainted, with the Gospel, it may be better to leave him alone with nothing to divert his attention from the Saviour whom he is seeking. If the seeker is young and timid, the person who has led him should kneel near him to pray for him audibly or silently, as the case may require. Many persons have been hindered more than helped by misleading advice at the altar, such as "believe that you are saved, in order to be saved," or believe this or that Scripture and you are saved, instead of "Submit to God and receive his Son as both Saviour and Lord," and keep at it till "the Spirit cries in the heart Abba, Father."

— Steele's Answers pp. 166, 167.

The Personal Devil

QUESTION: I cannot harmonize the existence of the personal devil with the goodness and omnipotence of God. Can you help me?

ANSWER: Your difficulty arises from several erroneous conceptions: (1) That the moral government of God is an appropriate sphere for the exercise of physical omnipotence. Free agency excludes it, having no more relation to it than the eye has to a symphony and the ear has to a rainbow, and an earthquake has to the shaping of a geometrical demonstration. A free agent is the first cause of his own moral acts. God can prevent the evil choice of a free agent only by uncreating him. (2) The devil is one personality. The scriptures teach that there is a multitude of evil spirits. (3) That the evil one, or the combination of fallen spirits, is omnipotent is a great mistake. (4) That Satan is omnipresent, because temptation to sin is going on everywhere at the same moment. For aught that we know the tempters may outnumber the tempted, a legion (6,000) besieging one soul (Mark 5:1, 15), the name Satan or devil being conceptually applied to the whole number, because our minds in this way more easily and vividly wield the total of bad spirits. Davenport, the ablest theologian of all the New England Fathers, in his catechism thus answers the question, "What is the devil?"

The multitude of apostate angels which, by pride, and blasphemy against God, and malice against man, became liars and murderers, by tempting him to that sin.

Eliminating from your mind these errors there is no more difficulty in believing that evil spirits exist in the spiritual realm than that they exist in the physical realm. It is true that a man may be drawn away by his own lust; but this does not explain the temptations of Christ. He talked with wicked spirits, not with something impersonal.

— Steele's Answers pp. 165, 166.