PERFECT SALVATION: ITS PERMANENCE 1 Peter 1:5: “Who are kept by the power of God unto salvation.”

The experience of full salvation having been attained, may be maintained. It may become a fast color; a sustained, abiding life. Its permanence, however, is not irresistible, but contingent. Full salvation does not persist by any inherent quality of itself; neither its genuineness, nor its completeness, nor its blessedness, renders it permanent.

A complete salvation is forfeitable. The seraphic Fletcher lapsed five times from the experience of perfect love. Alfred Cookman lost this blessing several times. Persons sometimes say: “I want a conversion, or a full salvation that will last.” No salvation, however genuine or perfect, stays only as the believer stays with it.

There are perils which threaten the permanence of full salvation; yet these perils are neither so hidden nor so fateful as that he, who has entered upon this glorious life, must rejoice with trembling, or have his peace broken by a constant dread of spiritual failure.

Let us notice some of the perils to full salvation: 1 . Spiritual Assumption .

The soul having entered into the experience of full salvation may, either from imperfect knowledge or Satanic delusion, assume that this grace can not be lost. It is sometimes said: “I now have a salvation I do not have to keep — it keeps me.

There is in full salvation such a conscious revolt from sin, and such a strong affinity for holiness, that, like the magnet which holds the needle, so it holds the soul by the sweet attractions of love. It does turn spiritual gravitation so fully and strongly Christward and heavenward, as that it is held in the embrace of holy inclination; yet not so held but that the gracious influences which keep it hay be and will be ruptured, unless the soul reciprocally holds the grace attained by the same grasp of consecration and faith by which it was received. Not that to keep the soul in the experience of full salvation means a sort of tug, dint of will, and strained anxiety lest it may evanesce; not so: this experience has its life and richness in the presence of the indwelling Holy Ghost. He comes to abide. He is not sensitive; he is considerate and tender. He may be grieved and quenched, but he does not desert the soul for any mere slight or inattention, or even wound; only perverse resistance to his light, rejection of his help, or repudiation of his work in the soul, forfeits the sanctification of the Spirit.

So, while full salvation must be maintained in order to its permanence, as an experience, its perpetuity is not a distressful holding-the-fort, clinging-with-death-grip, or sweat-of-the-brow effort to keep it, but simply a thoughtful, prayerful clinging to, and cultivating of, the experience by sustained consecration, faith, and obedience, whereunto we have attained, walking by the same rule, and minding the same thing. 2 . Spiritual Testing .

The misconception that entering the Beulah-land of perfect love emancipates the soul entirely from temptations to sin, doubt, and discouragement, is a peril that it confronts, and not infrequently wrecks this experience. The conscious destruction of sin in the soul, transporting sense of purity, and the full assurance of faith which floods the soul as it enters in to full salvation, may easily lead it to suppose that all susceptibility to sin is annihilated, and that it is so removed beyond the range of temptation and the approach of Satanic power, — that, when the shadow of the black wing of the Satanic presence falls upon it, or the first hot breath of Satanic solicitation strikes it, their surprise and stagger the soul, and it may go down into despair thinking itself deceived, or may yield at once to the temptation, and fall into condemnation. Let every fully-saved soul remember that the grace given, still leaves it in the realm of probation, which means proving and testing, so that when temptations co me it may know — that no uncommon thing has happened to it; indeed, let not such a heart be at all surprised if assaulted by the newer, deeper, stronger forms of temptation than characterize the state of partial salvation. The great grace invites the greater testing. but insures, also, the greater victory, if met joyfully and believingly. 3 . Spiritual Failure.

Through inexperience and imperfect instruction, there may come spiritual failures to the fully-saved soul, such as temporary disobedience, inadvertent yieldings to temptations, impulsive indulgences in wrong feelings, occasional lapses into sin. While full salvation saves the soul from the sin principle, it does not save it from the power to sin or the liability to sin under some sudden and subtle attacks of the adversary. When such spiritual accidents occur, they are a great surprise and humiliation to the sanctified heart. The slightest yielding to temptation, the least indulgence of a feeling of impatience or selfishness or other unholy feelings, the smallest unseemly act, word, or manner after the heart has been cleansed, burns like a live coal upon the refined spiritual sensibilities of the purified soul.

There comes, as the results of these spiritual lapses, a veiling of the Divine face, a sense of condemnation commingled with a sense of spiritual sorrow and holy remorse. This bitter experience of failure is taken advantage of by the enemy to induce the soul to repudiate its experience of full salvation, either insinuating that it was mistaken as to having attained it, or that it has forfeited it, or that it is impossible, with its temperament, circumstances, and associations, to retain it. This peril has swept down many once fully-sanctified souls. The anchor that can hold the soul in this fierce storm, is to know that such spiritual repulses do not forfeit the gracious state of cleansing from all sin, unless they come from a precedent repudiation of its consecration and trust, or are immediately followed by the cancellation of the same. The soul must know, whenever such spiritual calamities come, that an immediate confession to God, and a reassertion of its trust in the all-cleansing blood, will prevent the forfeiture of its experience, and bring an immediate renewal of the witness to full salvation, just as, in a state of pardon, an act of disobedience or falling into a sin does not forfeit immediately the soul’s justification and adoption, unless it occurred of deliberate purpose, and may be put away by confession and continued faith in the atoning blood. So, also, the fully-sanctified soul does not forfeit the grace of purity by spiritual lapses that are not intentional but involuntary, providing the soul at once applies the antidote of confession and faith to the wound of heart which the poisoned fiery dart of the enemy has inflicted.

Some years since, in a revival meeting in Central Ohio, conducted by the writer, a teamster was converted, upon whom the wicked habit of profanity had a strong hold. His salvation was clear, powerful, blessed. About a week after he was saved, on a bitter cold night, as he was returning home with a heavy load, a bolt of the wagon became misplaced. He was compelled to stop and replace it. In doing so he struck his thumb with a wrench, crushing it. Involuntarily an oath leaped from his lips. He was alone, no one heard it; but it came back to his new soul like a voice of doom. He reached home late in the night. He could not rest, his heart was sorer than his thumb. He sought the pastor, told him his spiritual mishap.

He said: “I never supposed I would swear again. What shall I do; must I give up? I know the Lord did save me. We explained to him how it was an unintentional failure, occasioned by the momentum of old habit; for him to confess it. hold on to Jesus, and he would find that the Lord was still saving him. He went away comforted. The next morning he returned, saying: “O, I am happier than ever!”