Sanctification and Soul Winning

QUESTION: Does the experience of entire sanctification tend to lessen one's efficiency as a soul winner?

ANSWER; It is true that this experience is so wonderful and so all-absorbing that it tends to concentrate one's energies in the endeavor to promote the same experience in believers to the comparative neglect of the unconverted. He is apt to think that henceforth his chief mission is to Christians who have not had the glorious uplift which he enjoys. This fills his mind and gives direction to his study of the Bible and Christian literature. His preaching will be on this theme almost entirely, unless he takes special pains to diversify his pulpit ministrations by a frequent recurrence to "the first principles of Christ, repentance, faith, ...and eternal judgment," which in our personal experience we are exhorted to leave, as a child leaves his alphabet, by using it as a stepping stone to advanced learning. The preacher, like a teacher in an ungraded school, must often recur to the alphabet if he would minister to all classes of his hearers. The failure to do this in the case of some Pentecostal preachers affords a foundation for the criticism that their ministrations are not adapted to convict and convert unbelievers. The difficulty would be removed if the preacher had special meetings for special classes, saints in the morning and sinners in the evening.

— Steele's Answers pp. 90, 91. 

Can a Methodist Preacher Sell Life Insurance?

QUESTION: Can an ordained minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church be an insurance agent and not break his vows to God and the church?

ANSWER: Yes. He may have lost his health and be obliged to desist from preaching, or he may be a local preacher and preach without salary on Sundays and get his living, as Paul did, by secular work on week days. Insurance is as honorable as tent-making. We need more local preachers of the Pauline type in America. They are a tower of strength to the Wesleyans in England preaching in the streets and hamlets distant from the centers of population. 

— Steele's Answers p. 90. 

Faith and Feeling

"The power of God," says Fletcher, "is frequently talked of, but rarely felt, and too often cried down under the despicable name of frames and feelings."

"If I had a mind," said the eloquent George Whitefield, "to hinder the progress of the Gospel, and to establish the kingdom of darkness, I would go about telling people 'they might have the Spirit of God, and yet not feel it,' or which is much the same, that the pardon which Christ procured for them is already obtained by them, whether they enjoy the sense of it or not."

This is the kind of faith which multitudes of souls in utter spiritual barrenness are resting in for eternal life. They are exhorted to beware of looking for any changed feeling, that feeling is inconsistent with true faith.

Finding Forgiveness

QUESTION: That a seeker for pardon may find this blessing must he believe that God for Christ's sake does forgive?

ANSWER: Some preachers unwisely thus direct the seeker and some following this advice are saved not-withstanding the erroneous counsel, because they did trust in Christ. The error is the assumption that the teacher and the seeker both know that the conditions of salvation have been perfectly fulfilled, a fact known only to God. As soon as he knows it he does the work. By all means read Bishop Wm. Taylor's "Election of Grace" and his "How to Be Saved." He lets the light into this subject. Wesley's fourth step, "believe that he doth it" has been misunderstood by many teachers as a requisite to saving faith instead of being its sequel. this mistaken advice makes the way of salvation so hard as to repel some and mislead and disappoint others. The safe advice is to keep trusting in Christ till the spirit of adoption inspires the cry in the heart, "abba, Father." In so doing no earnest inquirer will fail to find justification by faith.

— Steele's Answers pp. 89, 90.

Antinomian Faith

We look in vain in all these writers of the Antinomian school, whether ancient or modern, any adequate definitions of saving faith. After a faithful and patient study, extending through ten years, I can find in these writings no better notion of faith than a bare intellectual assent to the fact that Jesus put away sin once and forever on His cross.

There is no preliminary to this mental act, such as a heart-felt conviction of sin, and eternal abandonment of it in purpose and in reality. Nor is there any test of this faith in the genuineness of its fruits.

The evangelical definition of saving faith is utterly ignored, — that it has its root in genuine repentance, its bud and blossom in joyful obedience, and its fruitage in holiness of heart and life; that in addition to the assent of the intellect, — the fruitless faith of devils (James ii. 19), — there must be the consent of the will, the Christward movement of the moral sensibilities, and an unwavering reliance on Him, and on Him alone, as a present Saviour.

Preaching Entire Sanctification

QUESTION: Will not an entirely sanctified preacher preach perfected holiness as a distinct blessing?

ANSWER: Yes, whenever he addresses believers who are panting after God. A wise fisher of men adapts his bait to the kind of fish he wishes to catch; to sinners and backsliders he preaches repentance, to hungry believers he preaches purity of heart inwrought by the Holy Spirit. In one of Wesley's conferences he raises this question, "In what manner should we preach sanctification?" His answer is, "Scarce at all to those who are not pressing forward; to those who are, always by way of promise; always drawing rather than driving." Jesus adapted his preaching to his hearers, holding back doctrines which his disciples could not then bear. Dr. C. G. Finney, writing at the close of his life, says: 

"I have never found that more than a few people appreciated and received those views of God and Christ and the fullness of his free salvation upon which my own soul still delights to feed. In every place where I have preached for many year I have found the churches in so low a state as to be utterly incapable of understanding and appreciating what I regard as the most precious truths of the whole Gospel. They are ignorant of the power of these truths. It is only now and then that I find it really profitable to the people of God to pour out to them the fulness that my own soul sees in Christ." 

Tactful preachers "give to each a portion in due season."

— Steele's Answers pp. 88, 89.

The Unspeakable Gift

QUESTION: Is the "unspeakable gift" spoken of by Paul eternal life?

ANSWER: Eternal life is included in the gift of the Son of God. See 1 John 5:11, 12, "And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life." The life is more than existence; it is well-being; and to all persevering believers it is eternal well-being. Says Alford, "believing and having eternal life are commensurate; where faith is, the possession of eternal life is; and when the one remits, the other is forfeited." Everlasting life is through Christ the Redeemer; everlasting existence is through God the Creator.

— Steele's Answers pp. 87, 88. 

On Reading the Mystics

QUESTION: Do you recommend the writings of the Mystics to those who seek the deepest Christian life?

ANSWER: All persons who are conscious of communion with God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit are called mystics by formalists and merely nominal Christians. Some of the so-called Mystics became extreme and used language more familiar than is usually addressed to God, but generally they are quite inspiring, such as Madam Guyon.

— Steele's Answers p. 87. 

A Deeper Death?

QUESTION: A lady says, "After I was sanctified, I felt the need of a deeper death." Is there any warrant in the Scriptures for such teaching?

ANSWER: There are experiences of a highly emotional character which this good woman mistook for entire sanctification. The spirit sometimes moves on the surface of the soul without making any great moral change; in some eases, as King Saul and Balaam prophesying, there is no change at all.

— Steele's Answers p. 87. 

The Witness to Entire Sanctification

QUESTION: Is there a definite witness to this grace [of entire sanctification]?

ANSWER: Yes, in general terms, I Cor. 2:21, "that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God," There is no specific text. The Spirit shining in our hearts shines on his own work. The sun that prints the pictures reveals it to us.

— Steele's Answers pp. 86, 87.