181108 JAN 22 1914 CF ·T27 TO MY WIFE WHO IN THE CHARM OF A PURE AND NOBLE life has FOR FORTY YEARS EXEMPLIFIED THE BEAUTY OF THE NEW AND LIVING WAY PREFACE. THIS treatise aims to supply a desideratum in our religious literature, and yet it covers a series of topics on some of which more books and discussions have been written than on almost any other set of related themes. Our desire is to furnish a brief but comprehensive statement of the main facts of Christian experience, to formulate them in true logical order, and to expound them after the method of a strictly biblical theology. At the same time each doctrine is treated with due regard to its proportionate claims to the attention of the Christian believer. In order to appreciate fully these expositions of vital doctrine and to profit by the study, the reader ought to have his Bible (Revised Version) constantly at hand, and to note the position and relations of the chief proof-texts employed. Only as we observe how a biblical statement is set in its context, and how much it may be affected by the personality of the writer who put it on record, are we always able to judge of its real value as a proof-text of fundamental doctrine. Strictly speaking, our present work is a piece of biblical dogmatics rather than a section of systematic theology. The above statement is in substance our apology for offering a new book on a group of doctrines already so extensively treated in the current literature of the Church. So far as I know, they have never been treated altogether in this conspicuously scriptural way. We have almost any number of separate discussions of the doctrines of sin, justification, personal assurance, sanctification, and the sacraments; and so it has come to pass that some of these subjects have received a notably disproportionate share of attention. We have scores of books on sanctification 5 or on holiness to one on some other aspects of Christian experience that stand in equal need of exposition. Bishop S. M. Merrill's little volume on Aspects of Christian Experience (Cincinnati, 1882) stands quite alone as an attempt to set forth all these related doctrines in their logical relations, and to give each topic its due proportion of attention. Bishop R. S. Foster's lectures on the Philosophy of Christian Experience (New York, 1891) cover much the same ground, but, as the title indicates, they assume the form of a philosophical discussion. All these subjects are treated also more or less fully in the standard works on systematic theology. But on the doctrine of sanctification we possess an exceptionally large amount of literature, and much of it, strange to say, is of a decidedly polemic character. Among the books of special value, written by Methodist authors, we mention The Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection, by George Peck (New York, 1842); The Central Idea of Christianity, by Jesse T. Peck (Boston, 1856); Christian Purity, by R. S. Foster (New York, 1869); Possibilities of Grace, by Asbury Lowrey (New York, 1884); Growth in Holiness Toward Perfection, by James Mudge (New York, 1895); Sin and Holiness; or, What Is It to be Holy, by D. W. C. Huntington (Cincinnati, 1898). Back of all these, and holding a noteworthy authority among Methodists, is John Wesley's Plain Account of Christian Perfection, and also his various sermons on this subject and on other related doctrines. Among the many special treatises on justification we need name only the extensive discussions of Faber, Owen, and Ritschl. In all this literature, and in very much more of the same class, we fail to find a treatise in which these vitally related doctrines are presented in due propor |