PERFECT SALVATION: ITS CONCOMITANTS Matthew 5:6: “Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

Full salvation as a unit of experience has been set forth in these papers as such a freedom from sin — “the sin that dwelleth in us — as that the soul receives the fullness of the Holy Ghost, has its fruit unto (perfect) holiness, takes on accelerated growth in grace, enters into intimate communion with God, and exhibits a convincing manner of life As an experience it is distinctive and epochal — a conscious translation from a state of partial to a state of perfect salvation.

There are two indispensable concomitants to this experience of complete salvation; the one is precedent, the other subsequent to it. 1 . Enlightenment .

The sole condition of the believer’s eligibility to this experience is a rational persuasion of its necessity and attainability. Spiritual enlightenment alone can impart a perception of the existence of inbred sin, the provisions for its removal, and impel the soul to seek and find it. Such illumination is a John the Baptist, preparing in the renewed heart the way of the Lord, who is to sit as a refiner, making it a habitation of God through the Spirit. This illumination is threefold, including the light of adoption, the light of the Holy Spirit, and the light of Divine truth, constituting a compound spiritual flame by whose glow the hidden evil of the heart, and the Divine requirement that it be expelled, are revealed. The process of this enlightenment seems to be like this: The soul of the child of God, soon after receiving the witness of pardon, if he walk after the Spirit, will find the light of adoption develops a conscious uneasiness of heart, inward conflict, and a suspicion of something wrong. It is only a glimpse — just enough to know that the trouble is interior. Then, if in view of these unexpected heart disclosures, he will be true enough to himself and faithful enough to God to open his soul to the additional light of the Holy Spirit, the great heart-searcher, what had only been seen dimly as something unpleasant and disturbing to the peace of the soul will appear as a dark, foul state of the heart, dishonoring to his filial relation and displeasing to God.

The soul, hitherto disquieted, now becomes distressed by the revelations of itself. Should, then, the light of the Word, which is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, be turned in upon the soul, the inward darkening and disturbing state of the heart, already recognized, will become defined as the “carnal mind,” “the old man,” “the sin that doth so easily beset;” and were it not that at just this point of illumination the Word brings concurrently the assuring light that where sin abounds grace does much more abound, that “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin,” the heart, with all its conscious sense of pardon and good hope through grace, would sink into despair; so pungent and vivid becomes the conviction for inbred sin.

Let any converted man who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness, keeping the commandments, working out his salvation, is using the means of grace, and seeking to save souls, who is not fully saved, or thinks he was fully cleansed when regenerated, who is confused or even skeptical respecting the experience of full salvation, put his heart honestly for one-half hour alone with God under the full blaze of this threefold flame, and he will come from this faithful inspection no longer “perplexed” as to how a “new heart” can be an “unclean heart,” clearly discerning the need of heart purity, and deeply actuated to seek it. Sense of need, and ardent desire for it, render the soul eligible to full salvation. Having these, the soul may go up at once and possess the land of perfect love. Enlightenment is the pillar of fire that leads the soul to the borderland. How many die in the wilderness state, as Mr. Wesley calls it! How many of God’s people are sick and faint, and perish for lack of knowledge of the more excellent way!

Should, today, in the Church, the babes, the young men, the fathers in Christ, become rightly instructed as to the necessity, reality, and blessedness of this experience by their spiritual guides — pastors, teachers, class-leaders, parents, and friends — to whom is given the grand commission, “Feed my sheep,” instead of being exceptional, the Pentecostal salvation would become general in Christian life, adorning its morning, irradiating its noon, and making glorious its evening. Then would reappear in our day that Pentecostal wonder of the early Church, “All filled with the Holy Ghost.” 2 . Fullness . This is a Consequent accompaniment of perfect salvation:

First. It presents a fullness of life. The removal of the sinful tendency having cleared the way for the new, regenerate life of the soul, it becomes a life more abundant. The soul has a glory and a thrill of spiritual vitality hitherto unknown. A fullness of faith is observable. Saving faith, as a voluntary act of the soul by which it appropriated salvation, has, without surrendering any of its saving efficacy, graduated into a temper of faith that is “the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.”

All doubt and uncertainty as to things Divine and spiritual respecting the soul is expelled. It is full of faith, and sings, with Faber: “I know not what it is to doubt; My heart is ever gay.” A fullness of the Holy Spirit is a distinctive feature. The soul has come into a conscious, personal union with the Holy Ghost in the gift of himself to dwell in the soul, imparting a mode of experience distinguish able from any of his antecedent operations in regeneration, adoption, assurance. The consummation — the glory that excelleth all in this experience of full salvation — is the fullness of God it brings into the heart. What is the fullness of God? It is love. “God is love.” Love is the quality that floods the infinitude of his being. “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. When the heart is all love, up to its capacity of soul, might. mind, and strength, it is filled with all the fullness of God. Full salvation is a wonderful synonym. It embraces entire sanctification, for it means the removal of all uncleanness from the heart; it includes holiness, for it is the implantation of all the life of God and the impartation of the Divine nature; it covers perfection, because it is the full recovery of the soul from sin so far as provided for in this life, and completes it in love, enabling it to love God up to its finite capacity. Perfection anywhere is that which measures up to capacity.

Dear reader, does full salvation now, as compared with your experience of partial salvation in conversion, appear so colossal, and as being a new epoch, does it seem so removed in advance of you that there must necessarily elapse a long interval of time between these two experiences?

Not so; it is not a long-drawn process — a weary march. Full salvation may and ought to succeed initial salvation very speedily, and, indeed, does when the new convert, or the established believer, is rightly instructed as to the nature, necessity, and conditions of full salvation. The rapidity with which the work of salvation may be carried is exhibited by this impressive incident, which came under my own pastoral observation: A few years since I visited a lady member of my Church who was sick. She was not regarded by herself or by her physician as critically ill. She said to me: “I have been long a member of the Church, but I am not converted. I want to be saved.” I pointed her to Jesus, explained the way of salvation, and prayed with her. When I returned to see her, a few days hater, I found her very happy in the consciousness of sins forgiven, and in a clear sense of acceptance with God. Day by day she grew worse physically, but continued happy spiritually. About the third week after I began to visit her, as I entered her room one morning, I noticed a shadow over her countenance, and that her usual gladness was wanting, when she said to me with tears: “I know I have a new heart, and that God has accepted me, but I am not satisfied. There is some wrong feeling in my heart toward a neighbor, and impatience toward my husband and the children. This troubles me.” I explained to her that the Holy Spirit was disclosing to her the sinful tendencies of her heart, and that as God had given her a new heart, he would also give her a clean heart, if she would seek it and trust the word of Jesus for it as she had believed on him for pardoning grace. O, the eagerness with which she listened to this gospel of full salvation! I returned to see her the day following. So soon as I entered the room she exclaimed: “O, Jesus has cleansed my heart; it is all love now. Her ecstasy was boundless. She was fully saved. In this holy frame of mind she continued almost a week, when the Master came for her. As I held her hand, chilling in death, she said: “I did not think when you first came I was going to die; but Jesus has converted me and cleansed me, and now I am going home.”

About midnight she entered the heavenly rest. Here was a soul who in the brief period of four weeks found pardon, full salvation, and eternal redemption in heaven.