By G.D. Watson
The great prerequisite of perfect love is the thorough emptying of the heart of every principle and disposition contrary to love. No one can love God with all the heart, while original sin remains, for the carnal mind resides in the heart, and it is evident that if a part of the heart or moral nature is taken up with evil, the entire heart cannot, at the same time, be in conformity to God's will.
This seems a very simple and self-evident proposition, yet it is so difficult to convince the most of professing Christians of this truth when it comes to actual experience. I have observed the following things to be true:
1. That a great many will agree to the doctrine of loving God with all the heart, and many profess to be doing it who are utterly averse to the doctrine of heart purity, and repudiate the idea of being sanctified. If such persons understood the true Scriptural meaning of loving God with all the heart they would know that such language implied the thorough purification of the heart from the carnal mind. There is so much loose and disjointed religious thinking abroad in the church, that hardly one in a hundred seems to have any definite Scriptural view of actual and original sin, of regeneration, or heart purity, and kindred subjects. The whole of Bible doctrines seems thrown together in a sort of a theological hash, and it is common to hear people announcing and denying the same truth in the same breath, affirming that they want to be whole-hearted Christians (which really means holiness-hearted) and in the next breath denying the very condition of purification by which whole-heartedness is reached. If a glass of water contains one grain of sand, it cannot be filled with water, for to be filled with water it must contain no other substance.
2. I have observed that some teach the receiving of the full baptism of the Spirit, while at the same time, strongly denying the destruction of inward sin. But, according to the Word of God, the two things are utterly contrary to each other, and I have never in all my travels found or heard of a person actually receiving the baptism of the Spirit under such teaching.
3. That the depth and perpetuity of religious experience is in proportion to the depth of heart excavation. The higher the edifice, the deeper and broader must the foundation be. This principle is true everywhere in nature, mind and morals. If the great work of heart sanctification were a mere blessing, which so many think it to be, it would not require such a deep foundation. Many think the work of holiness, like a traveler's tent, which can be readily pitched without a foundation, whereas it is a groat palace of inward life built to last through the ages, and must needs have a foundation broad and deep in the very bed-rook of our nature. I have heard that when the great Corn Exchange of New York was built, the expenditure upon the foundation was so immense that the contractor reckoned the building about half done when the basement story was finished. The greatest part of the work of full salvation is the digging away the hindrance to God's grace out of our being. It is very easy for grace to fill a clean vessel.
4. To be filled with the positive graces of the Spirit, is always a popular thought among religious people; but to be crucified, emptied, cleansed in order to be so filled is exceedingly unpopular. If a reporter should go through the Christian churches reporting all the prayers offered, nearly all of them would be prayers to be filled and rarely would there be one offered for complete cleansing from inward sin. Mr. Wesley found that the people readily accepted his preaching on being filled with faith, resignation, hope, love, gentleness, good works and such; but when he expounded the necessity of being entirely cleansed from all sin in both root and branch, there was much outcry against his teaching. So it is now, and so it will ever be. Old Adam, the fallen nature, clings tenaciously for a little space in our being.
The story is told of an old Scotch lady, who thought that grieving over heart depravity was the highest possible state of grace, and is reported to have said, "If you take away my original sin, you take away all my religion." As odd and contradictory as this may seem, yet multitudes of professing Christians seem to view it in that light. When we read the lives of eminent saints whose graces and toils and triumphs made them the chandeliers in the visible church, who seemed more like celestial visitants than the plodding mortals of our world, we crave to be flooded with the warm fervor of their hearts, the bold heroism of their testimony, the fervency and faith of their prayers. and the luster of their dying triumphs. But are we willing to pay the price they paid, to go through such crucifixions, to endure the self-denials, the heart emptyings, the fastings and wrestlings in prayer, which laid the foundations of their loveliness and were the steppingstones to their heavenly greatness?
If we want Pentecostal power we must pay Pentecostal prices. To be filled with converting grace we must pay the price of giving up MI our actual sins. To be filled with pure love, we must pay the " upper room " price, of giving up our whole being, life and destiny to the will of God. The deeper we die the deeper we live. The lower we excavate the higher we build.
