Notwithstanding the grave mistakes and misunderstandings of the Bible which may be laid to the charge of the sanctification people, they deserve, wherever they are sincere in their purpose, due honor for the exaltedness of their aim and for being dissatisfied with the worldliness and the easy-going standards of the average church membership. While it is our duty to oppose errors, it is our privilege as Christians to adopt good wherever it is found--to take, in this case, the rebuke implied against Christendom in the modern sanctification movement strictly to ourselves; to seek, the more intelligently, as we claim to occupy higher ground of knowledge, the same high plane to which they aspire. The brethren who labor to convince us that we can not live without sinning (alas! we have found it so only too plainly in our own experience, and are only too prone already to excuse [126] ourselves on such grounds)--those brethren could do us a good turn if instead they would show us how to meet the temptations of life and to attain to the high standards God has set for us in his word. Can we attain them? Let us be assured that what God requires of us he will give grace and means to perform. Wherefore "let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, pefecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Cor. 7:1).

      June 3, 1909.

[TAG 126-127]