understand the seeming contradiction in Psalm cxvi. 16, “O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid: Thou hast loosed my bonds." But when every faculty is energised, every capacity filled, and the whole nature pervaded with this transcendent gift, the bondage, the irksomeness, the subtle legalism which more or less characterise the service of incipient believers, are entirely removed. The yoke of Christ no longer

chafes, the last trace of servile feeling is gone, and the will of God becomes our free, spontaneous, delightful choice. We can sing then, not as mere poetic fancy, but as a glorious experimental reality

"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."

But do you ask, "How am I to enter into this blessed experience? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to copy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch, we pray; but these things do not bring the fulness of love into our souls." Love is never produced by straining and struggling, or by any direct action of the soul upon itself. "A man in a boat cannot move it by pressing it from within." Love is an effect, and here is the cause. We receive love when we receive God. If we would have love we must seek Him. God is love, and love is God. More love means more of God. Perfect love means that we have opened all the avenues of our being, and that He has come and taken possession of every chamber. Some writer has said, "Take love from an angel and you

have a devil, take love from a man and you have a brute, take love from God and there is nothing left." When Sir James Mackintosh was dying, a friend saw his lips move, and when the ear was put down it caught the whisper, "God-Love-the very same." Yes, love is the only word convertible with God. It is not His mere name, but His nature-His being-Himself. When He comes to the heart, He comes not emptyhanded. He brings His love with Him, and that consciously received, produces a corresponding and answering love in our hearts to Him. Says Lange, "When God's love to us comes to be in us, it is like the virtue which the loadstone gives to the needle, inclining it to move towards the pole." There is no need to ask whether the Perfect Love of which St. John speaks means Christ's love to us, or our love to Christ. It is both. The recognition of His love, and the response of ours, are the result of His entering and abiding in the heart. "He that has made his home in love, has his home in God, and God has His home in him."

T

CHAPTER X

Evangelical Perfection

HE Scriptural terms " holiness," " perfect love," perfection," may be used synonymously, because they all point to the same state of

grace. John Fletcher says: "We frequently use, as St. John, the phrase 'perfect love' instead of perfection; understanding by it the pure love of God shed abroad in the hearts of established believers by the Holy Ghost, which is abundantly given unto them under the fulness of the Christian dispensation." But while these terms may be used indiscriminately in speaking of full salvation, each one indicates some essential characteristic and emphasises some different aspect of the truth. Perfect love is expressive of the spirit and temper, or the moral atmosphere in which the entirely sanctified Christian lives. Perfection signifies that spiritual completeness or wholeness into which the soul enters when the last inward foe is conquered, and the last distracting force harmonised with the mighty love of Christ, every crevice of the nature filled with love, and every energy employed

in the delightful service of our adorable Saviour. This implies not only complete deliverance from all spiritual pollution, but the possession of the unmixed graces of faith, humility, resignation, patience, meekness, selfdenial, and all other graces of the Spirit.

It

No word has been the occasion of so much stumbling and controversy among Christians as this word "perfect." But the term is a Scriptural one, and is used more frequently in the Bible than any other single term to set forth Christian experience. occurs one hundred and thirty-eight times in the Scriptures, and in more than fifty of these instances it refers to human character under the operation of grace. Early in Divine revelation, we find Jehovah saying to Abraham, "Walk before Me, and be thou perfect," and to Moses, "Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord." Forty-five times the Israelites are commanded to bring sacrifices without blemish, and every time the word should have been translated perfect. By such impressive symbols, God would teach that the heart of the offerer must be perfect before Him. Opening the New Testament, we find the word "perfect" dropping from the lips of Christ, and from the pen of St. Paul, seventeen times, as descriptive of fitness for the kingdom of God; while the cognate noun perfection is twice used, and the verb to perfect fourteen times. Instead of finding fault with a word which the Spirit of inspiration sees fit to use with such persistency from the book of Genesis to the Epistles of St. John, should we not rather endeavour to arrive. at its true Scriptural meaning?

That the term needs to be guarded against fanati

cism and superstition we do not deny. We are not to regard it in an absolute sense, nor without due discrimination. Absolute perfection, which is the combination of all conceivable excellences in the highest degree, belongs only to God, and to that perfection no mortal or seraph can ever attain. Between the highest degree of human perfection and the perfection of God, there must ever be all the difference which there is between the finite and the infinite.

"Holy as Thou, O Lord, is none."

Nor can we in this present life attain the perfection of the celestial world. The love of a glorified saint will burn with an intensity, and his service be performed with a precision and rectitude impossible on earth. In the third chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians, St. Paul seems to breathe hot and cold with the same breath to those who do not read carefully. First, he declares that he is not perfect (Phil. iii. 12), and then immediately afterwards speaks of himself and others as being perfect (Phil. iii. 15). But there is really no contradiction, because two different kinds of perfection are spoken of. He was referring to the perfection of the glorified state when he said, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect." Bengel says, "Crowned with a garland of victory, his course completed." This is evident from the context. "I count all things but loss, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." None who examine the chapter closely and without prejudice will dispute that the apostle speaks here of a perfection which will follow