Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

Is not the following description of the "remains of the carnal mind," given by Bishop Foster, about
as vagueless and definite as the average definition of sin, depravity, or regeneration? He says:
"I note, third, that dissatisfiedness of the soul with itself is a common experience of all regenerate
souls, varying from intense distress at times to mild regret. Its experience is not satisfactory. It has
a prevailing consciousness of inexcusable defects. It does not reach its ideal. It feels the chidings of
the Holy Spirit. It lashes itself with chidings. It often carries an unhealed wound because of its
unfaithfulness, or failure to be what it feels it ought to be. There is the abiding consciousness that
there is something better for it. When it is upheld and sustained in an average experience, and others
think well of it, and there is no external failure visible to other eyes, it discerns inward poverties
which grieve and distress it ... There are holy yearnings in it after something higher and nobler. There
is often a distressing sense of remaining evil in it. I think I am safe in saying this is universal
experience subsequent to the experience of regeneration."
And we think our Lord's teaching as to what remained in the heart of the "thorny ground" hearer
is fully as definite and as explicit as it is as to what was in that heart before it received the seed of
truth, or as to the nature of the plant of regeneration which springs from that seed.
3. It is asked with a degree of confidence which indicates that the questioner feels that his position
is impregnable, "How can we go from infancy to manhood at a leap?" And the answer is, that, in the
sense indicated by the objector, we can't do it at all. And, so far as we know, no intelligent writer
teaches any such thing. Does the healing of a babe's physical disease or deformity make him a
developed or mature man? Yet it does make him a pure, healthy, or perfect specimen of man; or
humanity, using the term generically. He is perfect in the sense of being free from defect or
imperfection of nature or quality, just as a seed or plant may be called perfect, although neither of
them has been developed into the fruit-bearing tree. And, as a healthy lamb is a perfect sheep -perfect
in nature -- so is it with the spiritual babe. By the baptism or circumcision of the Spirit in
sanctification his spiritual disease is healed, his spiritual deformity is removed, and he becomes a
perfect or healthy in all the elements of his nature. As already suggested, his growth from that time
to spiritual maturity, like that of the plant or lamb or physical babe, may be more rapid and healthy.
But why speculate about the matter when we, at Pentecost, see men who had up to that time been
spiritual invalids and weaklings, leaping into healthy and vigorous manhood? -- a weak, vacillating,
and cowardly Simon transformed in an hour into the strong, sturdy, and heroic Peter? It was not
growth that brought this strength and courage, but a baptism of purity and power. The oft-quoted
parable about the "blade," the "ear," the "full corn in the ear," etc., does not contradict this theory.
For the question is one of health and not of growth. The former is instantaneous in its development,
while the latter is gradual.
Can't we remember that this is not a question of human strength -- strength that comes from
growth or anything else that is human? It is one of divine "power" or "strength," imparted directly
to the soul: "God is our strength;" "Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might" -- not ours.
"Strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man" -- it is strength from the Spirit to the inner
man -- not from the latter or from growth. It is "power" received from God, "after that the Holy
Ghost is come upon" us -- not from our developed resources. "When I am weak" in myself, "then am