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.

Is a Sunday School Picnic a Means of Grace?

QUESTION: Is a Sunday school excursion and picnic a means of grace?

ANSWER: Yes, to the teachers and officers it is a means of the grace of patience and watchfulness against physical and moral harm to the children entrusted to their care. To the children themselves, especially to those shut up in cities, the picnic is a healthful change, affording a glimpse of nature in the grove, on the mountain top, or by the seaside. It is not exactly a religions institution, but is a proper device for holding the children and youths to a religious institution, just as the tailor's basting thread is necessary to hold the parts of his work together till he can put in the permanent stitches. When D. L. Moody began his Sunday school in the slums of Chicago, he used cakes and maple sugar with which to attach his scholars to his school, while he was endeavoring to attach them to Christ with an everlasting tie.

— Steele's Answers p. 103.

Should a Preacher Become a Lecturer?

QUESTION: What do you think of a Gospel preacher's entering the lecture field?

ANSWER: When Henry Ward Beecher visited Boston for the last time, the students of the School of Theology of Boston University invited him to address them. He gave them a rousing offhand speech and then invited the students to ask any questions. One asked if he would advise the preacher to prepare a few lectures. As quick as a flash of lightning, Beecher replied: "What do you want two nozzles to your hydrant for, when you have water enough for only one?"

— Steele's Answers p. 102.

Drink a Little Wine?

QUESTION: Explain I Tim. 5:23: "Be no longer a drinker of water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities."

ANSWER: Here are three facts: a total abstainer from intoxicants, a weak stomach needing a tonic, and a medical prescription of wine in homeopathic doses. There seems to be no moral peril in this advice by an apostle of the Gospel of Christ to a man who was not a reformed drunkard. It puts wine into the medicine chest where it belongs, and not on the sideboard, where it steals away the brains.

— Steele's Answers pp. 101, 102.

Once Saved Always Saved?

QUESTION: A class of people here teach that a person once saved cannot be lost. Their chief proof text is John 10:28, "I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand." Please explain.

ANSWER: All of God's promises of spiritual blessings are conditioned expressly or by implication. The implied condition here is strongly hinted to the Greek reader in the context by the use of the present tense, denoting continuance: "My sheep are hearing my voice and they are following me." Such persevering believers have eternal life. Says Bishop Westcott: 

"If any man falls in his spiritual life, it is not from want of divine grace, nor from the overwhelming power of adversaries, but from his neglect to use that which he may or may not use. We cannot be protected against ourselves in spite of ourselves. The difficulty in this case is only one form of the difficulty involved in the relation of an infinite to a finite being. The sense of the divine protection is at any moment sufficient to inspire confidence, but not to render effort unnecessary." 

So long as obedient faith continues, the spiritual life continues, but when faith lapses, the life, which might have been everlasting, also lapses. This is impressively taught in the parable of the vine in John 15:1-7. Fruitless branches of the true vine are burned. There is no other rational exegesis.

— Steele's Answers pp. 100, 101.

Will Christians be Included in the Last Judgement?

QUESTION: We are told by a class of teachers that true believers in Christ will not be judged in that last day; that only their works will be examined preparatory to giving their reward in the millennial dispensation. Is this so?

ANSWER: The distinction between the judgment of the person and the judgment of his works is a sophism invented to bolster up an unscriptural doctrine denying the General Judgment. Personality includes conduct. They cannot be separated and differently judged. The favorite proof text, John 5:24, "He that believeth . . . hath eternal life and cometh not into judgment," evidently meaning the condemnatory part of the judgment, as in verse 29, "they that have done evil (come) unto the resurrection of judgment." i.e., condemnation. The Greek word often means condemnation instead of judgement, as in Heb. 10:27, II Pet, 2:4, Jude 15. The saints are certainly included in the "all" who must appear before the judgment seat in Rom. 14:10, II Cor. 5:10, and in the "world" in Acs 17:31, "he will judge the world in righteousness."

— Steele's Answers p. 100.

Christians Have One Nature, Not Two

QUESTION: How would you answer the assertion that every Christian has two natures, that of the old Adam, which until physical death lives and sins day by day without ceasing, and that of the second Adam, the Lord Jesus, which nature cannot sin?

ANSWER: The Christian has only one nature called human. This nature is a fallen nature redeemed and reconstructed more or less perfectly, according to one's faith. But it has from the moment of the new birth the gracious ability to be victorious over every temptation and to verify John's description, "Whosoever has been born of God (perfect tense implying the continued similarity to God) is not sinning, because his seed (love divine) continues in him and he cannot be sinning because he has been begotten of God" (perfect tense including the present). That our annotated American version gives the exact meaning of the original is confirmed by the Twentieth Century Version, "No one who has derived his life from God acts sinfully, because God's very nature is always within him and he cannot live in sin, because he has derived his life from God." This precludes a career of sinning by a child of God, but it does not preclude the possibility of a single wrong act under the stress of sudden temptation, as in I John 2:1, "If any man sin (the tense denoting a single act) we have an Advocate," etc.

— Steele's Answers pp. 99, 100.

God's Justice and Our Ideas of Justice

Well does Professor Shedd say:

How can a man even know what is meant by justice in the Deity, if there is absolutely nothing of the same species in his own rational constitution, which, if realized in his own character as it is in that of God, would make him just as God is just? If there is no part of man's complex being upon which he may fall back with the certainty of not being mistaken in his judgments of ethics and religion, then are both anchor and anchorage gone, and he is afloat upon the boundless, starless ocean of ignorance and scepticism. Even if revelations are made, they cannot enter his mind.

Who can confidently adore and sincerely love a being who may, in the inmost essence of his being, be pure malignity in the outward guise of benevolence?

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

Repression or Purification?

It is a remarkable fact that while the Greek language richly abounds in words signifying repression, a half score of which occur in the New Testament, and are translated by to bind, bruise, cast down, conquer, bring into bondage, let, repress, hold fast, hinder, restrain, subdue, put down, and take by the throat, yet not one of these, συνέχω, κατέχω, κωλύω, συγκλείω, καταπαύω, is used of inbred sin; but such verbs as signify to cleanse, to purify, to mortify or kill, to crucify, and to destroy. When St. Paul says that he keeps under his body and brings it into subjection, he makes no allusion to the σάρξ, the flesh, the carnal mind, but to his innocent bodily appetites. In Pauline usage body is different from flesh. 

We have diligently sought in both the Old Testament and the New for exhortations to seek the repression of sin. The uniform command is to put away sin, to purify the heart, to purge out the old leaven, and to seek to be sanctified throughout spirit, soul, and body. Repressive power is nowhere ascribed to the blood of Christ, but rather purifying efficacy. Now, if these verbs, which signify to cleanse, wash, crucify, mortify, or make dead, and to destroy, are all used in a tropical or metaphorical sense, it is very evident that the literal truth signified is something far stronger than repression. It is eradication, extinction of being, destruction.

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

"To Have Sin" (1 John 1:8)

QUESTION: In I John 1:8, "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," is John speaking of Christians or of the unregenerate?

ANSWER: Of persons called Gnostics, who believed that their bodies only were defiled by sin, and that their souls were perfectly pure, having no need of the blood of Christ and of the new birth. The phrase "to have sin" is John's strongest expression of such a transgression of the law as entails guilt. If all Christians are guilty, the profession of justification by anybody on the earth is a sad mistake, and Paul's declaration, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are to Christ Jesus" is a stupendous falsehood.

— Steele's Answers, pp. 98, 99.