The Inward Revelation of the Spirit

Christian experience, especially in its higher phases, abundantly testifies to the certitude of the inward revelations of the Comforter. The burden of this testimony, all along the Christian ages, is not that dogmatic truth is inwardly revealed, but that the facts of personal justification and entire sanctification, fundamental to complete Christian character, are disclosed to all who perfectly trust in Him who is able to save to the uttermost.

Nor will the attestation of these souls, who with Moses have trodden the Mount of God, and conversed with Him face to face in spiritual communion, be invalidated in the estimation of the wise, by the fact that they have been stigmatized as fanatics, Pietists, Lollards, Mystics, Waldenses, Quakers, and Methodists. For in this series of opprobrious nicknames we find the real apostolical succession, and not in an unbroken chain of prelatical ordinations. The martyr fires, which illumined the dark ages, conserved our spiritual Christianity against councils and inquisitions. What was the heresy of Tauler, Suso, Eckhart, Madame Guyon, Luther, and Wesley, but the manifestation of Christ to the believer, through the Holy Spirit, certifying forgiveness, renewing and sanctifying the soul.

Church Entertainments

QUESTION: Is it wrong for a person entirely sanctified to attend. church entertainments; if so, why?

ANSWER: The phrase "church entertainment" is a solecism, an impropriety of speech, a contradiction in terms — suggesting the idea of a conglomerate of the church and the theater, or the ball-room, or the card party. A pure heart desires a holy place for worship dissociated from fun and frolic. He wants to take his children on the Lord's day to a temple consecrated to God., where the very place will inspire reverence. This cannot be in the edifice where the children and youth often assemble for amusement. There seems to be an incongruity between purity of heart and the frivolities of the so-called church entertainments. Many of the public readings in them are so low as to awaken disgust in a person of refined taste, to say nothing of a holy heart. For these reasons the writer gives them a tremendous letting alone. They lead downward. and not upward. Right-down Christian earnestness eschews them. They prevent the coming of a revival and they kill the revival that has holcome.

— Steele's Answers pp. 125, 126.

Esau's Failed Repentance?

QUESTION: Explain Heb. 12:17: "For he (Esau) found no place of repentance, though he sought carefully with tears.

ANSWER: If the questioner had read this text in a Bible which is up to date, the American Revision, he would not have wasted his postage stamp and his time by sending to the Christian Witness for light, for that version sets an electric light in it, thus: "For he found no place for a change of mind in his father, though he sought it diligently with tears." Esau could not by his whimpering persuade the old gentleman to recall the decision which favored Jacob by giving him the birthright, the lawful inheritance of Esau. The Twentieth Century version is: "Indeed, he never found an opportunity for repairing his error, though he begged. for the blessing with tears."

— Steele's Answers p. 125.

Does John 6:48-58 refer to Holy Communion?

QUESTION: Does John 6:48-58 have reference to the Lord's Sup­per, especially these words, "except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood ye have not life in yourselves"?

ANSWER: To say that it does would make that rite absolutely necessary as a saving ordinance. In the formal institution of the holy eucharist a year afterwards, no such idea is suggested. The idea is that as the body contains the blood and the blood contains the life we must appropriate Christ's entire humanity in order to receive and maintain spiritual life. We obtain this life, not by eating the symbols, but by eating or appropriating Christ himself. This view is that of Origen, Basil the Great, Augustine, Calvin, Luther most emphatically, and. Wesley with less emphasis, saying, "It refers remotely, if at all, to the Lord's Supper," and such modern exegetes as Adam Clarke, Moses Stuart, Alford and Meyer. On the other side of this question are all the ritualistic sacramentarians, both Roman and Anglican. We regret to say that American Methodism is committed to the ritualistic and not the spiritual interpretation by this prayer in the communion service: "Grant us. . . so to eat the flesh of thy Son Jesus Christ and drink his blood that we may live and grow thereby." If American Methodism ever backslides so far as to become ritualistic, it will be through this unfortunate connection of these words with the Lord's Supper, which is not the source of life, but a means of grace, as everything is which brings Christ into our minds as our atoning Savior.

— Steele's Answers p. 123, 124.

Purgatory?

QUESTION: What do you think of the following: "If a man will not let the Holy Spirit burn his selfishness out of him in this life, it will have to be done in the next"?

ANSWER: This is the doctrine of the Roman Catholics, who have borrowed from Grecian paganism purgatorial fires for curable sinful souls. It is also the teaching of modern Universalism that all the souls unfit for heaven when they leave the body will be purified by a limited punishment and will then be admitted to the life everlasting. The Scriptural basis for this doctrine is lack­ing. There is not the remotest hint that the work of the Holy Spirit in the sanctification of believers can be done after death, nor is there anywhere in the Bible any intimation that saving faith in Christ, followed by the new birth, is possible after the spirit becomes disem­bodied. There is positive proof that the sentences on the day of judgment are final and irreversible. It is equally certain that repentance and regeneration do not take place between death and the resurrection, for Christ says, "they that have done evil shall come forth unto the resurrection of damnation." The idea that good men will arise from bad men's graves implies the possibility that wicked men may arise from graves in which righteous men were buried! This is preposterous. The extension of probation till the day of judgment might solve some theological difficulties, but it would greatly weaken, if not destroy, the motive to repentance in the present life. Nothing that we have here said con­tradicts the possibility of a believer aspiring after perfect purity finding on his death-bed. All persevering believers belong to the new covenant which insures not only heaven but a fitness for heaven as the gift of God in probation.

— Steele's Answers pp. 122, 123.

Are the Sacraments Life-Giving?

QUESTION: I have recently heard a preacher describe the sacraments as "life-giving." Is this correct?

ANSWER: They are not the source of life, but rather the means of grace through which, when used with faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit may impart and sustain life. Baptism is the outward sign of the Spirit's inward work The Lord's Supper is a memorial of Christ's great love manifested in voluntarily dying for us. Whatever brings this event vividly to the mind of the believer is a means of grace. We should beware of resting in the symbol instead of the thing signified. Thousands of ceremonialists are trusting for salvation in symbols instead of the Savior — in the shadow instead of the substance. The sacraments alone, though administered by priests who claim to be ordained by bishops in succession back to the apostles, are not saving. Only Christ saves.

— Steele's Answers p. 122.

Would the Incarnation Have Happened Apart From Human Sin?

QUESTION: If sin had not come into our world, would the Son of God have been incarnate? 

ANSWER: All along down the Christian ages there have been some theologians who have given an affirmative answer. They say that the incarnation was not con­tingent upon man's sin, but that it was the original pur­pose of God for the exaltation of the human race, pro­moting their highest spirituality and felicity. They, moreover, dislike the doctrine expressed by the "felix culpa" ("blessed be the sin") which brought God into man and man into God. To the writer the idea is very distasteful and repugnant, that sin has been beneficial to our race. Those interested in this question should read Bishop Westcott's essay, "The Gospel of Creation," in his commentary on the Epistles of St. John; 87 pages.

— Steele's Answers pp. 121, 122.