Do Not Be Anxious - Matthew 6:25-34

QUESTION: Explain "Take no thought for your life what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor for your body, what ye shall put on, take no thought for the morrow." (Matt. 6: 25-34).

ANSWER: The Revision is more exact: "Be not anxious." Perfect trust in God cannot dwell in the same heart with worry about the future. Where the great purpose of life is to promote the kingdom of God and to obtain the righteousness which he requires and bestows — if this is our chief good, the inferior good of material things will be added. For the Christian virtues are economic, promoting health, industry, frugality, a sufficiency, and often an overplus for Christian charities and Gospel missions.

— Steele's Answers p. 150.

Should People Be Compelled to Do Right?

QUESTION: Is  it in accord with a sanctified life to compel people in a public place to do right, when they are not willing to do right otherwise?

ANSWER: True virtue must be free; it cannot be compelled. But decent behavior in a public meeting may be righteously required by calling on the police in the last resort, and both the preacher and the police who collars the disturber may be entirely sanctified.

— Steele's Answers p. 139, 140.

Virtue vs. Holiness

What is the specific difference between virtue and holiness? Repression. Virtue is the triumph of right against strong inward tendencies toward the opposite. Jesus triumphed over outward temptations to sin, and was holy. Mary Magdalene, by divine grace, triumphed over strong inward tendencies toward vice, and was virtuous. The repressive theory of holiness, involving, as it must, the co-working of the human soul with the divine Represser, confounds the broad distinction between holiness and virtue, and banishes holiness from the earth, substituting virtue instead. In fact, we do not see any possibility, by this theory, for a fallen man ever to become holy in the sense of the entire extinction of inbred sin. If this is only repressed here it may be only repressed for ever hereafter. If the Holy Spirit cannot eradicate original sin now, through our faith in the blood of Jesus, what assurance have we that He can ever entirely sanctify our souls?

But if by repression is meant the right poising of the innocent passions of sanctified human nature after the extinction of ingratitude, unbelief, malice, self-will, and every other characteristic of depraved human nature which is sinful, per se, we accept it as Wesleyan and Scriptural.

— edited from Mile-Stone Papers, Part 1, Chapter 13.