DEFECTIVE HOLINESS
Holiness belongs especially to the Lord.
In Him it is pure, unmixed and underived. Hence He is called THE HOLY ONE, as
if the name Holy and God are the same.
"They have provoked the Holy One of Israel." -Isa. 1:4.
"But shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel." -Isa. 10:20.
The Messiah in like manner is called the Holy One.
"Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." --
Ps. 16:10.
"I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God." -- Luke
4:34.
Holiness in man is often defective. It may
be wanting in some of its essential elements. Hence in the Scriptures we find
some qualifying terms applied to holiness when used in connection with human
beings.
"Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness
and true holiness." -- Eph. 4:24.
This implies that there is a false holiness -- that which passes for holiness
though wanting in some of its essential properties.
"That we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might
serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days
of our life." -- Luke 1:74, 75.
The phrase, "before him," is the highest form of
a superlative, and denotes a holiness and righteousness which will bear the
scrutiny of God's all-searching eye.
The holiness of the day is so ineffective because
so much of it is defective. The load does not move because so much of the
steam is lost. The medicine does not cure because it is combined with so many
neutralizing substances. The gold is not current because mixed with so much
alloy. Let us see to it that we have true holiness.
Much of the current holiness is wanting in
spirituality. It has a worldly aspect. Generally it talks after a worldly
manner. It keeps up a profession of holiness where it is popular to profess
holiness. But in general its conversation is of the earth, earthy. It lacks
the odor of sanctity. It does not bear the solemn, heavenly aspect of one who
holds communion with God. Notwithstanding its efforts to the contrary it
carries it with it and diffuses wherever it goes a worldly spirit.
Much of it is wanting in loyalty to God. While
God is nominally acknowledged as Sovereign, the supreme allegiance is given to
self, or to society, or to the church. Some yield to the claims of holiness
until they appear to interfere with their worldly interest. They give a
positive testimony to holiness until they discover that some whose good opinion
they covet treat them with coldness in consequence. Then they are guarded or
silent. They set out to meet the requirements of the Bible on dress; but when
they find it brings upon them reproach and persecution, they go with the
multitude and are conformed to this world.
Some meet the requirements of holiness as far as
they can and keep in harmony with the authorities of the church. They have
their convictions clear and positive. As far as the usages of the church are
in harmony with these convictions, they stand by them firmly. But let them be
expressed ever so plainly in the standards of church doctrine, yet if the
church disregards them in practice, they readily fall in with it and act
directly contrary to the clearest convictions that God gives them. A wealthy
member of the M. E. Church saw clearly that the practice of renting or
selling seats in the house of worship is contrary to the Scriptures. They
needed a new church. He was asked to head the subscription. He offered to if
they would make the seats free. The preacher insisted they could not build a
free-seated church. The Christian man offered to build one himself if they
would make the seats free. His offer was accepted and he built a large,
convenient church. Only a few years elapsed before the preachers persuaded him
to consent to rent the seats in that very church.
By artful management the most iniquitous
decisions are obtained in the church tribunals against some of its most devoted
and godly ministers. Men claiming to be advocates of holiness, who would have
defended these proscribed ones if they had chanced to be in a majority, close
their ears to the strongest testimony, and give to the merest phantoms of the
imagination all the authority of Sacred Writ. A holiness that ignores the
claims of justice only as they are sanctioned by the majority, a holiness that
acknowledges no higher fealty than loyalty to the church, that makes it its
highest duty to stand by those in power, do what they may, is treason to God.
It is a refined, subtle idolatry -- but an idolatry not less damning than that
which leads its votaries to bow down to stocks and stones. A saint yields his
highest allegiance to God. Truth and justice he recognizes as attributes of
God, and however they may be trampled in the dust he knows he cannot be false
to them and at the same time be true to God.
It was this disposition to stand by the truth of
God in each other when the authorities of church and state were arrayed against
it, that made the primitive Christians invincible. Paul writes,
"But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye
were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; partly whilst ye
were made a gazing stock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst
ye became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion of me in
my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves
that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance." -- Heb.
10:32-34.
Lucian was a celebrated Greek writer and an enemy
of the Christian religion. He flourished about the year of our Lord 176. In
speaking of Christians he says: "It is incredible what expedition they use when
any of their friends are in trouble. In a word they spare nothing upon such an
occasion; for these miserable men have no doubt they shall be immortal and live
forever; therefore they contemn death, and many surrender themselves to
sufferings. Moreover their first law-giver has taught them, that they are all
brethren, when they have turned and renounced the gods of the Greeks, and
worship that Master of theirs who was crucified, and engage to live according
to His laws. They have a sovereign contempt for all the things of this world,
and look upon them as common."
If this doctrine of supreme loyalty to the church
had prevailed in our Saviour's time, Christianity could never have been
established. For Christ was crucified by the authorities of the church: and
that too, not by one church among many, but at the instigation of the chief
priests of the only church of God then on the earth -- a church founded by
Abraham and sanctioned by the working among them from age to age of wonders and
miracles, and made rich by the wisdom and illustrious, by the piety of prophets
whom God raised up among them from time to time.
If loyalty to the church be our first duty, then
were Luther and Wesley heretics and schismatics and not the reformers we are
accustomed to consider them. The very foundation principle of the reformation
is, that every soul owes its first and highest allegiance to God. On no other
principle can the reformation be defended.
Preachers and churches are helps in their
appropriate places but when they require one to do what God forbids then, cost
what it may, God must have the preference.
If masonry be, as is clearly shown by the late
President Finney, by President Blanchard and others, and in our tract entitled
"False Religion," a rival and hostile religion to Christianity, then that
holiness is defective which closes its eyes to this great fact and sustains
Masonic preachers in its churches.
If selling or renting pews in houses of worship
is a plain violation of the prohibition to have respect of persons in seating
congregations, and is contrary to the spirit and teaching of the Gospel, then
that holiness is defective which gives its sanction or support to this
anti-Christian practice.
If the Bible requires plainness of dress and
forbids Christians to adorn themselves with "braided hair or gold or pearls or
costly array," then is that holiness defective which pays no attention to these
plain commands, but conforms to the fashions of the world in things plainly
forbidden by the Word of God.