PERFECT SALVATION: ITS BLESSEDNESS Psalm 51:10,12,13: “Create in me a clean heart … restore unto me the joy of thy salvation … then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall he converted unto thee.” 3 . Full salvation is essential to sustained and intimate communion with God.

Sin is the only thing that can separate, between the human soul and God.

Where sin exists in any degree in the soul, there is a conscious dread and distance from God. When sin is removed, there is a conscious drawing toward and delight in God. The guilt of sin having been canceled, the smile of God’s pardoning favor immediately greets the soul, and it ‘instinctively begins to sing, “With confidence I now draw nigh, And ‘Father, Abba, Father,’ cry.” Let this be followed by the cleansing of the soul from the defilement of sin, and the intimate Communion with God lost in Eden is restored. The heart exultingly exclaims, “O, blessed fellowship divine O joy, supremely Swept!” Many of God’s children — some eminent even for their zeal, earnestness, and usefulness — say to us: “Why, after these years of religious life and effort, have we so little real enjoyment in God, and are so much without a sense of his presence? Clouds and darkness frequently veil his face from us. Now and then a rift in the skies, a glimpse, a momentary exultation to the rapture of an open vision of glory; then hours, days, months of weary going on under leaden or blackened skies.” The clouds and darkness, which thus obscure the soul’s vision of God to the justified, obedient Christian hearts, are not the shadows of sorrow, of temptation, or Satanic influence which may envelope the soul of the most saintly at times; for under just such clouds as these, saved souls have known and enjoyed the richest, clearest communion with God, and walked through such darkness in the light of the sweetest, holiest Divine fellowship.

The clouds which are impenetrable by the Divine presence to the soul, or which are impervious to the soul’s gaze upon God, when the believer is not under conscious condemnation for disobedience or unbelief, are those darknesses which the inbred sin of the heart generate. Remaining carnality, the unremoved depravity of the heart, exhales the doubts, fears, and dissatisfactions which overcast the celestial uplift of the soul. Let the unhealthful and unseemly bog of inward uncleanness become supplanted by an ocean of purity, through the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus, and his spiritual sky becomes clear from nadir to zenith. “Not a cloud doth arise To darken his skies.” He pitches his tent on the plains of light. God’s presence becomes a constant quantity. Old variablenesses — sometimes up, sometimes down — disappear. The soul ascends into the hill of the Lord. The mountain-top becomes the staple experience. On these heights of purity the soul walks with God, has Jesus with it all the time, and knows the Comforter as an abiding presence. Such communion with God is vital. It is indispensable as an inspiration to Christian warfare, and a necessary preparation for heaven.

It is heaven, There is no other heaven than to know and enjoy God. In this Beulah-land of perfect love the soul sings, “‘Tis Thee that makes my paradise, And where thou art is heaven.” A present heaven in the soul, as a fitness for a heaven beyond. is a Pauline truth which it has been the glory of Methodism to revive, re-state, and proclaim. It is a serious fact that many Christians have come to the very gates of the heaven for which they have striven, conscious of an incompleteness and unfitness which made them reluctant to pass on to the everlasting joy, in hope of which they had often rejoiced. Why? Because, without the heaven of a perfect salvation, and of Divine communion in their souls. During a ministry of over twenty years, the writer has had enforced upon his attention the singular but awfully suggestive revelation, that the majority of Christians to whom he has been called to minister in the closing hours of life have felt themselves not meet for the inheritance of the saints in light, and had to seek on dying beds a consummation of the work of grace in order to a hopeful and peaceful departure. Not a few of these had been esteemed pillars and patterns, some public headers and able ministers. They had lived without the heaven of perfect love and Divine communion in their souls, either through a misapprehension of its necessity or an indisposition respecting its attainment. Full salvation is the white robe which prepares the soul for the palace of God. Having it, the child of God, when he passes into the shadow of Death’s dark presence, and hears the rustle of his black wings above him, looks up undismayed, and says to the last enemy, as did Christmas Evans, the great Welsh evangelist, when dying, “Drive on,” while he leaves lingering on the air of time the heavenly music of his soul. “O, hear my longing heart to Him Who bled and died for me; Whose blood now cleanses from all sin, And gives me victory.” 4 . Full salvation is essential to the passion and power winning souls.

It is the propulsive force of the Christian life. Its ordinary love for souls becomes a passion for souls. The love of Christ constrains it; a supreme enthusiasm for the work of salvation possesses it. The baptism with the Holy Ghost puts in to the soul a ceaseless push; it compels it to go; then it “will teach transgressors Thy ways.”

A full salvation that does not impel to, and put into the life of its professor, a restless zeal for soul-saving is not quite full. Our observation in the twenty-five years of labor, seeking to promote the experience of full salvation, is that those who have given evidence of receiving it, have had a consuming love for souls, and have given themselves to ceaseless effort in that direction.

Full salvation is not only a propulsive force, but also a promotive force. It not only moves us to rescue the perishing, but enables us to move melt toward the kingdom. It is not only the aggressive element, but the achieving element in Christian life. He who has it does not spend his strength for naught; his labor is not in vain for souls; “whatsoever he doeth prospers;” “he comes rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him;” barren lives become abundant lives, fruitless ministries become fruitful ministries. As rapidly as the experience of full salvation possesses the ministers and the people, so great becomes the evangelizing success of the Church. The people today that are in the slums, in the rescue-mission work, and the highways and hedges of life, searching for and saving souls in any considerable degree, are those who are driven on by the passion for souls imparted by a full salvation.