THE DOUBLE CURE.

"Let the water and the blood,

From thy wounded side which flowed,

Be of sin the double cure,

Save from wrath, and make me pure."

Jesus carries within himself the infinite sources of all healing. As the Creator and Upholder of nature, he is the immediate author of all the healing elements in the material economy. As the Ruler of the universe, he is the imperial well- spring of all healthy and pure government; as the author and Savior of man, he is the fountain of all physical, mental and spiritual curing. While he creates and gives to us extraneous and secondary properties for the healing of physical ailments, yet he does not thereby resign his immediate sovereignty over our bodies, but leaves a secret pathway open for himself, whereby, in answer to effectual prayer, he may flash the healing beam immediately from himself to the body of his suffering child.

Also in the ailments of the mind, he has ordained many medicinal aids and secondary forces; but when we reach the spiritual diseases of man, we find a department which is not wrought upon by mediate and secondary agents. The economy of healing which is spread over the spiritual nature is that of the immediate and direct operations of God. The process of spiritual healing — the modus-operandi of salvation, is not within the sphere of our understanding, but the conditions and facts of the healing can be intelligibly stated, as in the Bible, and the fact and the results of healing can enter into positive consciousness. The Bible presents every shade, every step and degree of the soul's disease and its marvelous and compound cure; but the Bible is a book from God's heart to man's heart; it is addressed emphatically to man's spiritual nature, and there fore can only be unlocked with the key of spiritual experience. Taking experience for the key, we are able to open with perfect transparency the wondrous words of God about sin and salvation. The Bible represents us as having a double disease, and over against this is presented a double cure.

In Jer. ii. 13 we find a statement of the two fold sin of man: "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns that can hold no water." There is first a deadness to the Divine Nature, and, secondly, the outward acts of disobedience.

Man's sin, then, is of two kinds: that which he commits of his own will in acts of disobedience for which he is responsible, and then that inner stain and proneness to sin which he derives by birth and not by his own will. The overt actions of disobedience to God, in thought, word or deed, constitute guilt, and the only remedy is pardon, which restores the soul to justified innocence. The inward weakness of the spirit, and its proneness to sin, constitute its stain and native unrighteousness; and the only remedy for this is cleansing, or a process of divine purifying. We find this double cure, which is so perfectly adapted to our double disease, running all through the Scriptures; and in many instances we find the practical application of this truth in the experiences of Bible characters.

In the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, it is said that Abram "believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness." And then in the seventeenth chapter, fifteen years later, God came to Abram again, and said to "Walk before me and be thou perfect," at which time his name was changed, and he received the sign of circumcision whereby self and the flesh were crucified, and he was dead to all but the life of God.

In the life of Jacob we find another instance of this double application of divine mercy. In the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis, God gives to Jacob the ladder-dream, and declares that he is with him to guide him; but twenty-one years afterwards, Jehovah meets him again, opens to him a richer and deeper manifestation of grace, at which time his name was also changed, and he, like his grandfather, was crucified to the flesh by the divine touch which lamed his body.

The remains of the patriarch's carnal nature, which had troubled him for a score of years, were now put to death, and henceforth he walks in cloudless communion with God.

In the case of the Hebrew nation, we see this double remedy of divine love, wrought out on a stupendous historical scale. We gather from the New Testament abundant evidence that Egypt was the type of sinful bondage and guilt, Mount Sinai the type of adoption in God's family and the reception of divine law and worship, and Canaan is the type of perfect establishment into the fullness of blessing. In the third and fourth chapters of the epistle to the Hebrews, the apostle makes this historic allegory the very basis on which he urges all Hebrew Christians to enter the perfect rest of faith.

Charles Wesley has with his inspired harp at tuned in seraphic song these grand allegories of salvation. His allegorical hymn on the sanctification of wrestling Jacob was the closet struggling of his own soul for the double cure.

His allegorical hymn on crossing the Jordan into perfect love is of the same order:

"O that I might at once go up;

   No more on this side Jordan stop,

     But now the land possess.

"O glorious hope of perfect love,

   It lifts me up to things above;

     It bears on eagles' wings."

The Holy Ghost has in the Scriptures given great emphasis to the fact, that there ought not to have been any long interval between the crossing of the Red Sea and the entering of Canaan. In that immortal pyramid of faith which the Spirit rears in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, we find two grand acts of faith put side by side in their true spiritual order. Heb. xi. 29, 30: "By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days." Here the Spirit has omitted all mention of the forty years' wanderings, for they were abnormal, just as the great majority of Christians to-day are living abnormal lives, out of Egyptian guilt, but not in the promised fullness; but in the divine arrangement, the act of faith by which we leave Egypt is to be followed, as soon as possible, by the other act of faith by which we claim the glorious land of the fullness of blessing.

Let us now look at some of the texts in which divine grace has a double work ascribed to it. The early writers on holiness did not deem it necessary to ransack the Scriptures to find a war rant for preaching a second blessing; for that was not the point of dispute; the point they had to argue was whether God would save us in this life from all sin.

But now there is a new phase to the argument. Nearly all nominal Christians will admit that we can be fully saved from sin, and yet deny any definite work of grace subsequent to conversion; and thousands who claim to read the Bible say they can not find any "second grace" (2 Cor. i. 1 5) or double cure taught therein. Well, let us see.

HEALING.

2 Chron. vii. 14: "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." Here God first promises forgiveness, which is a distinct and a complete act of its own; and then he promises another subsequent and definite act of healing. Pardon always applies to guilty actions, and never to an innate or hereditary disease; and, on the other hand, healing always applies to an inborn evil, and not to actions. They are two works applying to two needs. Ps. ciii. 3: "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases." Here it is distinctly stated that forgiveness and healing are each complete acts. Forgiveness takes every one of the guilty acts in its sweep, but it does not touch on the sphere of healing. And then when the act of healing is performed, it is not done gradually, but it sweeps away all diseases at a stroke.

In the fourth verse we see this double blessing repeated under another form: "Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies." Here is first a saving from wrath, from God's anger, bringing us into a justified relation with God; for no one can escape hell without being justified. Then there is a pentecostal crowning and holy anointing, which makes the soul not a born child of God, but an anointed priest also. Mai. iv. 2: "But unto you that fear my name, shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings." This promise does not belong to any except those who fear God. To "fear God," in the Bible sense of that term, is to be a child of God. To those converted souls who fear God, there is promised a second blessing, a fullness of healing, when the Holy Ghost shall cleanse the innate stain, and then take the things of Jesus and so reveal them to the heart that the Sun of righteousness will deluge the entire nature. The "wings" in this text may refer to the wings of the cherubim which stretched over him who entered the "second vail" of holiness; or it may refer to the wings of the dove, the symbol of the sanctifying Spirit. It is well known to modern science that sunlight is the most healing agent in nature's rich laboratory; but the Holy Ghost knew this truth before man did, and gave us this rich promise.

SALVATION.

In many of the texts which refer directly to salvation, we find the twofold work of grace set forth.

Zech. xiii. 1: "In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for un- cleanness." The margin reads "for sin, and separation for uncleanness. " The all-knowing Spirit here sets forth the blood of atonement in its twofold efficacy; first for the guilt of sin which is accumulated by our actions, and must be pardoned to restore us to innocence; and then in addition to this, the atonement is to go deeper, and separate (not suppress and choke down, as some carelessly teach) from the soul the inherited unclean bias which Adam planted in the heart.

Acts xxvi. 18: "That they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. " Surely no unbiased mind, and it seems that no really honest and sound mind can read this text with out seeing two definite blessings in it. The word "and" certainly means in addition to what pre cedes it; and we see here that the words "sanctified by faith " are subsequent to and in addition to "forgiveness of sins."

2 Tim. i. 9: "God, who has saved us and called us with an holy calling." God never calls us to holiness until we are saved from guilt and wrath. To sinners, God says repent; to penitents, God says believe and be saved; to all believers, God says, "Be ye holy. " When Jesus says, " Be ye perfect, as your Father is perfect," he is addressing God's children, not Satan's. There is not a text in the entire Bible commanding sinners to be holy. They must first be saved, and born again; then, and not till then, does there come that deep voice of the Spirit, piercing the unplumbed depths of the soul, calling it to positive holiness.

Titus ii. 14: "Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and (in addition to that) purify unto himself a peculiar people." As a rule, people never get "peculiar" until they get over into the last half of this verse, and find that second blessing of purity which is here so distinctly taught.

1 John i. 9. Here the act of forgiveness pre cedes that of cleansing from all unrighteousness.

LIFE.

When the Scriptures speak of eternal life, they often represent that life as coming to us in a double degree.

John x. 10: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." When God pardons, he gives life; but when he sanctifies, he gives life more abundantly; that is, in a wave, overflowing the banks.

John vii. 38, 39: "He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his inmost soul shall flow rivers of living water. (But this he spake of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given)." Jesus was talking to believers, and teaching them of the second blessing of fullness of life in the fullness of the Spirit. See Isa. xii. 3; xiii. 3.

Eph. ii. 5, 6: "Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ." There is first the giving of life, the quickening, then an enlargement of that life; lifting it into the Holy of holies, making it thoroughly a "heavenly" life. These are only a few passages of the multitude which teach a double cure in salvation. In all such passages we see that pardon, quickening, conversion, always comes first; and that cleansing, purity, fullness, is always put subsequent to pardon.

Because the Holy Ghost has so often closely conjoined these two blessings, separating them often only by the word "and," that does not authorize us in the least to confound them as one blessing; but it does authorize and teach us to lead the converted right on to entire purity and perfect love.