Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

We heartily endorse the following from Bishop Foster, in his Philosophy of Christian Experience:
Preach the great doctrine of holiness, not technically or disputatiously, but in the spirit of love;
not to repel, but to attract and win. Preach it naturally, as you preach every other truth. Let it live and
breathe through all your teachings and in all your services in due proportion and out of the heart of
love. Avoid unholy holiness. Encourage aspiration after a beautiful and blameless life. Let your
gospel so build men in truth and love, and all your services be so intoned with unction of sacredness,
that hungry souls will be fed, and that cravings after less nutritious food will find no occasion. Deal
gently with the weak and erring. Aspire, yourselves, after greatest sacredness of character -- the
highest soul experience. Set an example of meekness and modesty in your own professions, and of
true and sublime character in your devotion to the work which has been committed to you."
He then addresses especially those who do not make it profession of sanctification:
A word to those believers who do not make great professions of attainments in grace. You profess
to be Christians. That itself is a great profession. It places you among the children of God. It brings
you under the obligation of a righteous and holy life. Recognize that fact. Especially beware of
thinking it a praiseworthy thing -- a virtue -- not to profess much. More yet, beware of imagining that
it lessens your obligations to a holy heart and a holy life; rather lament the conscious deficiencies
which restrain you. Above all, do not allow yourselves to take an attitude of hostility to high
experience because you do not yourselves enjoy it, or because of prejudice against some who seem
immodest, and whose lives, to your thinking, contradict their professions. Justify not your
delinquencies because of their unseemliness. Think of the noble examples of the best saints. Be
charitable and forbearing. Do not permit the frailties of others to be a hindrance to you. Deal
faithfully with your own soul. Remember you are a disciple of Christ; you represent him before men;
you bear his name; no man can stand for you; no man's delinquencies can excuse you. Do not
scandalize him by your unfaithfulness. If it is modesty that restrains you, pity the forward; if it is
conscious shortcomings, be not censorious of others, but be quick to remedy your own faults.
Remember your obligations; do not forget your responsibility. See to it that your example is faultless.
Be not content with anything short of utmost salvation."
The good bishop addresses the following wise words to those who make a profession of perfect
love:
"To begin with, remember there is no difference between you and your brethren that marks an
essential distinction. You are brethren in the Lord -- servants of the same Master, participants of the
same life, members of the same family, journeying to the same heaven. Why should you fall out by
the way and vex one another? The difference is one of more or less experience, not of kind. Have
you more graces? have you experienced more of the deep things of God? is your brother less
advanced? Then the greater reason that you should be gentle and kind. You have been lifted into a
greater experience; to you has been revealed more of the deep things of God; a deeper life has come
into your soul.
"Is there not reason that this great experience should make you an example of every grace? and
more especially of the grace of humility and self-forgetfulness? If God has filled you thus with his