THREEFOLD HOLINESS TRUTH.

There is a threefold aspect to the subject of Christian holiness, viz.: Doctrinal, experimental and practical; and the subject is incomplete unless received, known and propagated in this threefold form.

1. There must be a clear, definite, Scripture doctrine of holiness. According to the Scriptures, holiness, i. e., moral wholeness, completeness of love, takes place after justification, and consists in purifying the believer from all remaining hereditary carnality; is received in a moment by faith, and attested by the Holy Spirit. Any statement of the doctrine of sanctification that essentially differs from this has never produced the actual result of holiness. God does not own and bless error, even though an angel should preach it, and God will own soul-saving truth, though preached by a wicked spirit, but when the pure doctrine is preached by a pure messenger it is immeasurably powerful. Some say it does not matter about the doctrine, so you live all right; but the fact is, no one can live right in heart with God, except it be according to sound doctrine.

2. There is a clear experience of holiness as it is set forth in Scripture. While there is a peculiar technicality about the doctrine of sanctification, there is also a peculiar power about the experience of it. There are certain specific, ex act laws in a summer storm, but these technical laws are all swallowed and covered out of sight by the actual rolling, rushing thunder-storm. So there are certain specific holiness truths entering into the process of every heart purification, yet the experience itself covers up the mere doctrine with life, and feeling, and power. There is a conscious experience of utter interior yielding of self to God, a conscious rest in the perfect will of God, a conscious purity of heart, a feeling of cleanness in affections and desires, an inward soul-light and power, which can be put into words just about as the actual breaking of the heart can be put into a book on physiology.

The technical doctrine of holiness is melted and fused into the living, conscious motion of the soul, just as the exact rules of trigonometry are melted and fused in the actual powerful motions of the heavenly bodies.

3. There is a practical form of holiness; the outward manifesting, in the details of life, of the inner fact of holiness in the soul. There can be no outward practice of true holy living, until after a work of conscious holiness has been wrought within by the power of God. Many are trying to lash and coerce themselves into holy living without having the fact of conscious purity produced in them.

Hundreds of preachers who are prejudiced against entire sanctification, are blindly urging their poor unsaved congregations to live practical holiness, and yet turn around and oppose the getting of entire heart holiness, which is the only thing in the universe that produces the true practice of it. In order to practice holiness we must have it. The practice of sanctification refers to prayer, secret and social, reading God's Word and good books, confessing our faith, adjusting our attire as becometh purity, laying aside worldly trinkets and "outward adorning," visiting the sick and prisoners, giving of our substance to do good to souls and bodies, fasting, self-examination, and the practice of love in all its forms and to all creatures. This is the threefold form of holiness truth.

If we have the mere doctrine by itself, we will be formalists; if we hold only to the experience apart from the doctrinal and practical, we will be fanatics; if we insist on the practical de tails of life, apart from the other two, we will be harsh critics, measuring every one by our con science and mode of life. But if all three of these are preserved in full proportion, then holiness must spread without either formalism, fanaticism, or bitterness of spirit.