Evidences of Perfect Love Part 5

108. Will Christian perfection make all persons act just alike, and appear to equal advantage?

Christian perfection removes all sin, and makes the soul perfect in love; but it is no part of its office to destroy personal distinctions or innocent peculiarities. It will give a good, sincere, pure heart; and, other circumstances being equal, it will invariably impart, in all respects, real and manifest superiority. In the essentials of Christian character it will make any man superior to what he was without it.

109. Will a state of entire sanctification clearly evidence itself by the absence of all sin?

It will; and any sin, whether of motive, of will, of the desires, or of the life, Negatives its existence. Men may know as surely that they are in a sanctified state as that they are in an unsanctified state, and may know it in the same way by consciousness and by the testimony of God. Those who are pure in heart, and filled with the Holy Spirit, obey God decidedly, constantly, unhesitatingly, unreservedly, cheerfully, and easily: to such the will of God is supreme the end of all controversy. The question of obedience is never raised, but is settled.

110. Will entire sanctification enable me to pray, believe, and rejoice every moment, even in the severest trials?

It will, doubtless, so far as it is naturally, or perhaps I should say physically, possible. While the soul may have seasons of heaviness, sore conflicts, and protracted trials, which are often very necessary, it may still possess a heaven of peace, and love, and light in its ocean depths. This enables the sanctified soul to pray, and believe, and rejoice, every moment, or to "rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in every thing give thanks."

"I worship thee, sweet will of God
And all thy ways adore,
And every day I live, I seem
To love thee more and more."

111. Are deep grief and sorrow of soul incompatible with perfect love?

They are not; and although grace in the depths of a sanctified heart secures abiding peace, light, and love, yet it does not exempt from occasions of grief and sore trial. It affords grace to endure all things, even joyfully, through the presence of God. The sanctified soul is never without comfort. It has in the fullest sense the "Comforter."

Mr. Wesley says: "Nay, the mind itself may be deeply distressed, may be exceeding sorrowful, may be perplexed, and pressed down by heaviness and anguish, even to agony, while the heart cleaves to God by perfect love, and the will is wholly resigned to him. Was it not so with the Son of God himself? -- Plain Account, p. 73.

Mrs. Hester Ann Rogers says; "Satan suggested I ought not to have felt any grief; but the Lord teaches me I may feel grief very sensibly and keenly, consistent with pure love and entire resignation."

We must let the idea of holiness stand alone in our minds -- separate entirely from all accidents of joy or sorrow, or indeed any other state of the emotions. If the soul is now consciously disentangled from every sinful affinity, and in a state of present positive concurrence with the will of God, that is holiness.

The purest of men are sometimes in heaviness of spirit; they often wade through deep waters of affliction sometimes they pass through fiery trials from sickness or poverty, or from the bereavement of friends, and they may be grieved, depressed, and afflicted; but they are not without grace, and comfort in the Holy Ghost. The quiet of their spirit is untouched, and they are never destitute of peace.