Chapter 2

Country Preacher to College President (1895-1910)

In 1892, when H. Orton Wiley was fifteen years old, his family followed his uncle's family and grandparents to Medford, Oregon. It was here that Wiley attended and graduated from Medford High School. Wiley acquired a considerable amount of practical experience through various endeavors between his 1895 high school graduation in Oregon and the beginning of his career in higher education at a small Bible college in southern California fifteen years later. Wiley first considered pharmacy as a career prior to attending college at the University of California at Berkeley. He also ministered in various venues from small rural churches to urban missions. During this time, he married, started a family, expanded his professional experience, and persisted in his academic studies. Wiley also gained the attention of a visionary church leader with an interest in building a church college. Much happened in Wiley's life between 1895 and 1910, as this "country preacher" developed into a college president.

Going to College

Wiley attended high school after moving to Medford, but there are no documents detailing his experience until his senior year. During his last year of high school in 1895, H. Orton Wiley, now age 17, began working in Strang's Drug Store, a pharmacy near his family's home in Medford, Oregon. Within two years, Wiley passed the required battery of tests to become a fully certified pharmacist earning the Oregon's State Board Diploma. Still ambitious, Wiley moved to Ashland, Oregon and enrolled in the Oregon State Normal School (now, Southern Oregon University).[73] According to one biographer, Wiley "could not be satisfied unless he was studying."[74] Wiley completed the nine-month teacher certification program and returned to Medford and his job at Strang's Drug Store. He was now 20 years old.

According to Ronald Kirkemo, Wiley was feeling "unsatisfied with pharmacy and restless spiritually and intellectually."[75] Finally, at 23 years of age, Wiley left home and family and traveled south to Berkeley, California to enroll at the largest state university in the region in order to begin his college career. He roomed in Oakland and rode his bicycle down Telegraph Street to attend class.[76] His ride to school took him by the Peniel Mission, a small evangelical Christian church led by a motivating preacher, C. W. Ruth. Ruth later became a prominent leader in the fledgling Church of the Nazarene. Wiley regularly attended worship services at Ruth's urban mission.

During these months, Wiley learned more about and experienced for himself the central doctrine of the American holiness movement--entire sanctification.[77] By the end of the spring semester, Wiley's parents moved to Berkeley, to be closer to their son, and buy a partial interest in a small general store.[78] Wiley worked part-time at the store during his sophomore year at Berkeley, but dropped out to help his parents full-time. [79] One day while Wiley was working, a young woman named Alice House entered the store. She invited Wiley to a young adult Sunday School picnic.[80] It was 1902. By the end of the year, the 25 year old Wiley was married to Alice, licensed to preach within the United Brethren Church, and within the same month preached his first sermon on the United Brethren Church's Feather River Valley circuit north of Sacramento.[81] These events set the stage for Wiley's intellectual and professional career as an educator and leader in Nazarene higher education.

"A Country Preacher from a Poor Circuit"

On November 8, 1952, Alice and H. Orton's fiftieth wedding anniversary, Wiley gave a brief historical sketch of his entrance into marriage and the ministry. A recording of this gathering was taped in Pasadena, California. The following is a synopsis of Wiley's personal record of events.[82]

On November 8, 1902 at 8:00 p.m., Alice House and H. Orton Wiley were wed at the home of Jacob House in Berkeley, California. It was a double wedding with a relative of Alice (possibly her sister) also getting married. Rev. E. A. Girvin, pastor of Berkeley Church of the Nazarene and close friend of Phineas F. Bresee, conducted the wedding ceremony. That night the young newlyweds stayed at the home of Rev. G. Bromley Oxnam, a local Methodist pastor and later bishop, and attended a worship service the next morning since it was Sunday.

The Wileys rented a three-room apartment in Berkeley for a month. For a short period of time, Wiley was employed in non-church work. By December, he was offered pastorates in the Methodist and United Brethren denominations. Wiley said, "Since our people were United Brethren and I was president of the Christian Endeavor Society at the First United Brethren Church in Oakland-we chose the latter." Wiley's grandfather and his experience in the United Brethren Church remained influential into Wiley's adult years. Wiley was offered and accepted a three-church circuit in Gridley, Live Oak, and Bangor, north of Sacramento only a few days after his was licensed as a UBC minister.

After five months, Wiley was transferred to Berkeley and then to the Esparto circuit northwest of Sacramento. They stayed here for three years. The parsonage was not yet built. After Wiley finished their home, Alice and their daughter, Pearl, came to live in Esparto. Two years later, while still in Esparto, Lester their second child was born. In 1905, the presiding elder suggested to Wiley that he finish his seminary work. Wiley began seminary classes through commuting by rail to Berkeley each week from Esparto.

During his seminary studies, Wiley preached at Berkeley Church of the Nazarene, served at the time by E. A. Girvin who had married the Wileys. Girvin often traveled to Sacramento and Los Angeles as a clerk for the California Supreme Court.[83] Girvin, as pastor of the second Church of the Nazarene[84], was also involved in successful attempts to consolidate and expand the young denomination with other church groups.[85] Wiley was asked to serve as an associate pastor, and at times interim pastor, at Berkeley Church of the Nazarene in 1906. It was here that Wiley endured a "time of stress" from two major events-the San Francisco earthquake on April 18 and the birth of their third child, Ward, a year later.[86] Bresee asked Wiley to minister in a new church project in San Jose in 1909. Wiley then entered headlong into the ministry of the Church of the Nazarene and also welcomed Ruth, his youngest daughter, into the family.[87]

Phineas F. Bresee

Phineas F. Bresee was born in upstate New York in 1838, and was deeply influenced by the Methodist Episcopal Church. In later years, he wrote, that the Methodist church was the "church of his fathers."[88] Bresee entered the Methodist ministry as a teenager on a small rural circuit in Iowa and eventually led large urban churches in southern California. Bresee was noted for his evangelical fervor in promoting the Wesleyan spiritual experience known as entire sanctification and for his commitment to higher education.

After serving as a pastor and presiding elder in the Methodist church from 1857 to 1866, Bresee returned to the pastorate in Chariton, Iowa, a small town south of Des Moines. It was in this congregation that Bresee experienced what he referred to in later years as entire sanctification. Bresee's account of this experience was recorded, in part, by E. A. Girvin.[89]

There came one of those awful, snowy, windy nights, such as blow across the Western plains occasionally, with the temperature twenty degrees below zero. Not many were out to church that night. I tried to preach a little, the best I could. I tried to rally the people to the altar, the few that were there, and went back to the stove, and tried to get somebody to the Lord. I did not find any one. I turned toward the altar; in some way it seemed to me that this was my time, and I threw myself down across the altar and began to pray for myself. I had come to the point where I seemingly could not go on. My religion did not meet my needs. It seemed as though I could not continue to preach with this awful question of doubt on me, and I prayed and cried to the Lord. I was ignorant of my own condition. I did not understand in reference to carnality. I did not understand in reference to the provisions of the atonement. I neither knew what was the matter with me, nor what would help me. But, in my ignorance, the Lord helped me, drew me and impelled me, and, as I cried to Him that night, He seemed to open heaven on me, and gave me, as I believe, the baptism with the Holy Ghost, though I did not know either what I needed, or what I prayed for. But it not only took away my tendencies to worldliness, anger and pride, but it also removed the doubt. For the first time, I apprehended that the conditions of doubt were moral instead of intellectual, and that doubt was a part of carnality that could only be removed as the other works of the flesh are removed.[90]

Carl Bangs noted that Bresee's memory explained the experience of entire sanctification within the context and language of the American Holiness Movement. Phrases particular to the holiness movement need to be explained, particularly, "altar," "carnality," "baptism with the Holy Ghost." Kneeling at the altar rail was a common practice of the Holiness Movement. Methodist churches usually had an altar rail for receiving Communion. The communicant approached the altar at the front of a sanctuary and knelt for prayer. Holiness preachers encouraged persons responding to an evangelistic message to kneel at an improvised altar, using an empty bench placed near the pulpit. These "mourner's benches" and altars became places for persons to make decisive public religious commitments.[91]

One of these decisive commitments was known as the "baptism with the Holy Spirit," a phrase sometimes interchanged with entire sanctification. Although these theological phrases are not strictly synonymous, Bresee focused upon the "victory" over the "flesh" (or carnality and tendency toward sin). This-worldly temptations and sins were overcome through the "indwelling of the Holy Spirit."[92] Bresee displayed a "Victory" banner over the altar rail in the front of the sanctuary at the First Church of the Nazarene.[93] In 1917 and 1952, Wiley cited Divine Power, a sermon by Bresee, to emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit in relation to this inner spiritual victory. Wiley quoted Bresee:

The baptism of the Holy Ghost is the baptism with God. It is the burning up, of the chaff, but it is also the revelation in us and the manifestation to us of Divine Personality, filling the being.It is true then,--there is a baptism of fire.no man [or woman] can have the baptism of God which means the entrance of the Divine Presence into the soul as its abiding King, enthroned for two worlds, who does not receive the heart of infinite fire into his being. Oh, no; he who needs that needs all; he who could desire it does not know the billows of glory which His fulness of presence is.[94]

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is understood by Wiley to be subsequent to an evangelical conversion that "makes love sole and supreme" in a Christian's life.[95] According to Bresee's testimony, a moral, and not just an intellectual, doubt hindered the experience of entire sanctification and living in the Spirit. Bresee's view of higher education reflected this emphasis on moral and spiritual needs.

Bresee served on the board of trustees for Simpson College in Iowa and the University of Southern California. Both were church-related schools sponsored by Methodists. In his last report as general superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene, Bresee expressed his concern for the moral and religious development of youth. He wrote:

While the evangelization of men [and women] and their building up in holiness is our great commission and our first work, it also inheres in our commission to train and educate those, who through our labors, are brought into this great salvation.Higher education is of such a nature, that the church which turns such work [of religious and moral education] over to the state, or to others, will soon find itself robbed of its best inheritance. Especially is it necessary for us to educate our own youth. Spiritual religion is quite usually dispensed with, and often worse, in the colleges and universities of the land, and almost entirely holiness is tabooed and a seeker after it, or a professor of it, is regarded as a crank.[96]

In his last educational address, Bresee further crafted the image of a Nazarene college student's spiritual education. He extended the educational emphasis beyond moral training, but conceptualized religious education as a time when students experience the depth of relationship with God that precedes ethical understanding or moral action. Bresee wrote, "A man [or woman] is far better off as a child of God without any culture than he is with all the culture that all the schools can give him without being a child of God."[97] The building of a spiritual environment that was "pregnant with the divine glory and heavenly presence" later suited the educational vision of H. Orton Wiley, one of Bresee's protégés.

Wiley gained the attention of Bresee, who was looking for someone to build a respectable liberal arts college out of a small, struggling Bible school in Pasadena, California. Wiley was soon invited to be the Dean of Nazarene University and later elected its president at the age of 36. This "country preacher from a poor circuit"[98] soon took on the task of shaping young lives. According to Bresee's educational vision, Wiley's task was to "care for young life.and young personality" and "all ambition and all love . . . made pure" through a spiritually-focused means of higher education.[99] Bresee was only one influence in Wiley's professional life, the other was his intellectual development at the Pacific Theological Seminary.

From College Student to College President

H. Orton Wiley left Oregon to enter college. During a break from classes at the University of California, he met Alice House, the woman who later became his wife. He continued his studies, even while entering the ministry of the United Brethren church and beginning a family. It was in Berkeley, California, where Wiley came into contact with the Church of the Nazarene. Soon, he was serving in a local church while finishing his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of the Pacific and Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Pacific Theological Seminary. Wiley's work with Nazarenes led him into contact with Phineas F. Bresee, founder of the first Church of the Nazarene congregation in Los Angeles. Bresee became a lifelong mentor-figure for Wiley and the one who offered him the opportunity to begin a career in higher education.

The Value of a College Education

by H. Orton Wiley

From the Nazarene Messenger,

the official newsletter of Northwest Nazarene College, January 1918

Our young men and women should be encouraged to rest in nothing short of a college education. They should understand that God requires of them, not only all that they are, but all that they may become through growth and development as stewards of the grace of God.

Under the old dispensation Malachi, the last of the prophets, in an arraignment of the Jews of his time said, "If ye offer the blind for a sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and the sick, is it not evil? offer it now to thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the Lord of hosts." Mal. 1:8. This is the test, offer it now to thy governor, will he be pleased with thee? The young people of the world in order to fill positions of responsibility and trust spend years in study and research, and shall young people who have devoted their lives to God do less? If earthly interests demand such extended preparation, should not the interests of the kingdom of God demand still greater? Will the Lord be pleased if He is offered that which an earthly ruler would not accept?

We seek therefore to impress upon young men and women not only the personal benefits to be derived from a college education, great as they may be, but also the obligation resting upon them. If a physician must spend much time in preparation before being considered competent to minister to the bodies of men how much more those who are preparing to minister to immortal souls destined to spend an eternity in heavenly bliss or outer darkness? We desire to offer the following for the serious consideration of those who feel called to the various lines of Christian activity.

Personal Benefits

The college period is one of self-discovery and is full of significance to every young man or young woman. It is the time when the horizons lift and the vision is enlarged-when new fields of usefulness come into view, when the widened horizon gives proper prospective and distance sets things in their proper relations. It is during this period that the student forms a proper standard of judgment, both as to the relative value of the many interests which clamor for recognition and of his own peculiar fitness or lack of fitness for certain undertakings. "Whatsoever they hand findeth to do, do with thy might" may better be rendered "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do with thy might.-do that." Much of the dissatisfaction of life is due to the fact that people have not found their work,-that which calls out into activity, their whole being.

The Christian college provides for the symmetrical development of the whole person, spiritual, moral, mental and physical. A well-balanced college curriculum awakens new powers and discovers new fields of thought to the earnest student. Every subject is valuable,-literature, the classics, science, mathematics, history and philosophy,-all these to him who knows God, are but sources of communion with Him and from communion comes strength. "The people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits." As knowledge increases and the horizons widen, the truly Christian student sinks into greater humility as he perceives himself but a speck in the infinitudes about him, and with this realization of his own insufficiency comes the sufficiency of God.

The college not only awakens a student to a knowledge of his powers, but its discipline puts him in possession of himself. With powers awakened and disciplined, with a proper symmetry of character and a just estimate of the values of life, there is more of the person to think, to feel and to walk. In the supreme tests of life when moments are of infinite worth, the man who has so disciplined himself that he can bring to the situation his clearest thinking, his deepest feeling and his highest volition, is the man of the hour,-one who is able to lead the people to new conquests or voice public sentiment in great sorrows or exigencies. Should we not better appreciate the demands which are upon us when those who are best educated continually affirm that their preparation is altogether inadequate?

The college course, earnestly pursued, gives the student an appreciation of the hard work necessary to success. He soon comes to realize that it is not by "sudden flight'' but by nights of patient, plodding toil that the great heights are to be reached and kept. It begins to dawn upon him that he should not look for an "afflatus" or a short and easy method.-rather that he should adopt the method of the great Dr. Johnson, who when asked how he could best receive the inspiration for producing a great work replied, "Sit down doggedly." With this insight into the history which lies back of the truly great, he gives up the vain hope of easy success and settles down to "develop his genius by hard work."

The college not only gives a love for knowledge but also a love for good books. Like the saintly Fletcher, the student views his books as his truest friends and most constant companions, and this love for them he carries into his work, using them like the bee does the flower, extracting the sweetness with which to build up his own life and satisfy the needs of others. Many fail, especially in the ministry because they lack freshness and sweetness. Many might succeed, would they but learn to study,-the habit of prolonged and close attention to a subject until it is understood both in itself and in its relation to other subjects.

Objections Considered

We desire also to encourage those who have hesitated before what they consider a great undertaking. Perhaps the most serious obstacles in the way of securing a college education are the following,-at least these are the objections which are most often put forward.

First, the limited amount of time. The student often feels that the "limited amount of time" which he has at his disposal demands a briefer course than that outlined in the regular work of the college. In many instances this is a valid objection. For young people of proper school age it is never valid, but grows rather out of a failure to properly appreciate the preparation necessary to meet the demands of life. Perhaps no single utterance, of the sainted Dr. Bresee was more often repeated to the student body than this.-"Were I a young man, called to the ministry and knew that I had but ten years in which to live and preach, I would take five years for preparation and with the added skill, would be enabled to accomplish more in the remaining five than in the entire period without that preparation."

Secondly, the desire to earn money. The "money-earning power" or the "bread and butter'' test of an education is one which every young person must face. The glitter of gold has lured many a young person away from college to a circumscribed life and a hard lot for the remainder of their days. No severer test of true worth was ever made than this, "Take no thought, saying "What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? Or Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" For after these things do the Gentiles seek." It is the fruit of the materialistic education of the day and the essence of worldliness. True worth will seek the spiritual things of the kingdom of God.

Lastly, the lack of financial support. The most commonly urged objection is the lack of financial support. This is no excuse at all. God who calls to the work, calls also to its preparation, and will provide for every need. The lessons of faith and obedience must be learned somewhere, and if not learned during the college period, will likely never be learned. An educator of note, and of wide experience in dealing with young people, not long ago said, there not a young person who cannot make his way through practically any college or university in this country if he but make the attempt. The hesitancy comes in making the attempt,-after this there is greater assurance. And it there should prove to be many difficulties, and such there will be, the tact and perseverance necessary to succeed in college, will form one of the most important elements of success in after life.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION

Lecture notes from Wiley's Psychology of Religion course. Miscellanous Lecture Notes in the Wiley Collection, Point Loma Nazar ene University Archives. Undated.

1. Various Kinds of Conversion

a. Intellectual Conversion. (J.S. Mill converted through a study of Wordsworth's poetry. This is a good illustration of the fact that conversion is a movement confined within the limits of the ideas in the mind of the person converted.)

b. Moral Conversion. A deeper conversion than that of the intellect in which man is driven by the compulsion of his moral nature to seek peace with God. Cf. Carlyle in Sartor Resartus. Also Tolstoy in "My Confession."

c. Christian Conversion. This is more than an intellectual conversion or a moral reform. It is the passing from a condition of estrangement and indifference to one of friendship and trust in God. It is a change in the personal relation of the individual to God. This brings about a moral revolution but this moral revolution must be considered more as the result of conversion than as conversion itself. The fundamental experience is union with Christ, but this union has two phases; (1) a new relation to God's favor; (2) a new spiritual life in the sinner himself, this new life being obtained by a new relation to the Holy Ghost.

2. The Correlation of Christian Experience with the Moral Nature

The only adequate explanation of duty is that it is the reflection of the personal will of God. Conscience is the voice of God in the soul. To make conscience an impersonal communication of an impersonal law would argue an impersonal God and leave duty an orphan. But if duty is thus personal and conscience revelatory, there must be some relation here to Christ the personal Revealer of God. This then is the relationship of Christ to conscience without which it would be impossible to reconcile our Christianity with our psychology.

There is, however, an element in regeneration which is not felt in the ordinary processes of life, a sense of divine support and of spiritual communion which lifts the soul into purer atmosphere. Conversion raises the whole content and detail of life into spiritual and personal relations with God. Obedience to duty becomes obedience to God; the behests of conscience become the promptings of Christ. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this difference between the merely moral life and the regenerate life* ([J. W.] Buckham) Cf. John 5:5 The teaching of this verse is that there must be a new birth, a birth which begins with repentance and is accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit.

3. The Human Side of Conversion

a. Repentance. "Repentance is a personal sorrow for personal sin as against a holy God,"

b. Faith. "Faith is a personal venture by which we create that confidence in an ideal which is necessary to satisfy our entire being."

Note: In normal faith the person makes the venture with a satisfied mind, he never lets go of reality for an instant. In presumption the mind is never satisfied, a man of presumption being determined to have his own way if he does violence to every fact in the universe. A man of faith wants nothing at the expense of reality but he does believe that reality is vast enough to thoroughly satisfy an entire man, heart as well as intellect.

Note: There are two things which differentiate one kind of faith from another, relation to conscience, and the nature of the ideal object.

4. An Analysis of the Work of Conversion

The word "conversion" is a term usually applied to the entire work wrought in the heart when the sinner turns from sin to righteousness. It is the work by which he is transformed from a sinner to a Christian. There are three phases of the work included in the term: "conversion."

a. Justification. This is the legal phase of the work and is concerned with the forgiveness of sin and restoration to righteousness. It is strictly an act in the mind of God and is done for the sinner when he "believes in Christ.

b. Regeneration. This is the subjective side of the work and takes place in the sinner's heart. It is the renewal of the heart which corresponds to the new state. He is declared righteous in justification; he is made righteous in regeneration. "There is a real as well as a relative change." (Wesley). It is the impartation of a new life, which when the soul is subsequently cleansed from sin, becomes supreme.

c. Adoption. This is the social phase of the work by which we become members of the family of God. It especially emphasizes our personal relationship to one another, as justification represents a new attitude, and regeneration a new motive.

It will be perfectly evident that regeneration is the only phase of the work with which psychology is immediately concerned.

5. The Scope of Conversion

Conversion is concerned with the person, i.e., with personality rather than individuality.

It is exceedingly important that we make the distinction between personality and individuality. Conversion is concerned with personality only. Sanctification is concerned with individuality.

Note: "Before a babe come to self-consciousness he has a fundament of being with a complex of characteristics, some physical and some psychical. The sum total of these characteristics is the individuality of the child. This individuality is developed and even modified as the child grows.

Indeed the whole complex of native characteristics is at last treated from the standpoint of self-consciousness. And the ultimate man is, as I have said before, "the individual personalized by the self-decisive rejection and endorsement of original traits." (Curtis, p.200)

This basal individual life of man is inorganic; this is the psychological explanation of depravity. The native characteristics are a clutter of items as unrelated as the odds and ends found in an attic. No organic man was ever born. Every man comes inorganic into the world. Depravity is therefore: (1) universal; (2) inherited. Personality is the result of volition and can never be repeated or transmitted. But the individual has his complex of traits under the law of heredity. Individuality is a racial matter. Personality is not.

6. A Psychology of Regeneration

(1) The Motive. When a repentant sinner comes into union with Christ there is a twofold relationship. Christ has a place in the affections and in the conscience of the sinner. There is a heart interest in Christ and a sense of obligation toward Christ. This introduction of Christ into the motive life is an event of large psychological possibility.

(2) The Vitalizing of the Motive. The Holy Spirit takes this new motive and vitalizes it, and organizes the sinner's entire motivity, his entire range of interest about it to this extent, that in every full mood of self-consciousness the regenerate man cares more for his Lord than for all other things. The whole being is not yet organized but the whole plan of the new manhood is established and the center of this plan is loyalty to Jesus Christ, (Cf. "Faith is trustful, heart-loyalty to God." Dr. Bresee)

(3) The Permanence of the Vitalized Motive. This new plan of organization kept vital in the heart of the believer by the actual indwelling of the Holy Ghost. When a sinner is actually united to Jesus Christ, then the Spirit of God makes his home in that man, and it is the Holy Spirit who completes the union with Christ, and vitalizes the new motive, and remains in the man sending pulses of power through his whole being. (Scripture References: Rom.8:9; Gal.4:19; 2.Cor.5:17; Eph.4:25-24; 1.Pet.1:23; 1.John 5:1; 2:29; 3:9; 4:7.)

(4) Regeneration Defined. ''Regeneration is the primary reorganization of a person's entire motive-life by the vital action and abiding presence of the Holy Spirit so that the ultimate motive is loyalty to Jesus Christ."

PERSONAL HOLINESS

1. A Psychology of Personal Holiness

a. Holiness is much more than perfection in motive. It is personal holiness because it is holiness from the standpoint of self-consciousness and self-determination. It is holiness in personality.

b. The Transformed Motive. This is the key to the problem. In regeneration the being was organized around the motive of loyalty to Christ But this motive was not a simple motive. Loyalty is made up of two elements, love and duty. These elements are both in the consciousness but usually duty is paramount, the common remark of the regenerated man being, "I will be true, I will not deny my Lord," seeking to do his duty in every typical situation.

c. This loyalty is different from that of morality, for it is loyalty to a person, and it is grounded in personal affection. Yet it has the same weakness, for duty always implies a conflict, a civil war. The moral ought is a bugle call intended to call the person to battle, and while this battle is great, it is less than the highest mood.

d. As long as duty is paramount in the consciousness, even the most noble sense of duty, the personal task is done under fear, and fear is never an organizing motive. In personal holiness this motive of loyalty is transformed into the simple motive of pure love. All the ethical quality is there, but the whip of the ought is gone. The holy person does things because he loves to do them. His being is now fully organized for the entire self-conscious mood is filled with love, and all the person's motivity is nothing but love in a variety of shapes. There is no antagonism in his personal life, no civil war whatsoever. He may be tempted but not by his own depravity. It is not the vastness of love, but love entirely filling the self-conscious mood that marks the state of personal holiness.

2. The Possibility of Falling from Personal Holiness

If the motives are exhausted, is it possible to fall away from this grace? No man falls in the same way that a regenerated person does by yielding to a motive tat springs out of individuality into consciousness in antagonism to the moral ideal. Holiness is spiritual self-assertion, and out of this there may come motives which may bring on the struggle with a possibility of personal defeat.

a. Spiritual Discouragement. There is a sort of spiritual discouragement which grows out of love to Christ. We are in a world where Christ is not triumphant but there is great peril in giving place to a mood of discouragement because of this.

b. Spiritual Pride. No person is beyond this temptation. This was peculiarly the temptation by which Satan assailed our Lord.

c. Spiritual Ambition. A person may have an ambition to be a great worker in the Church or in the kingdom, and this may have grown out of pure love to Christ. This ambition may become so interesting that it stands over against the very love which created it. There may come such a turn of affairs that will be compelled to choose between his ambition and his Lord.

THE CONSUMMATION

1. The Personal and Individual Elements

The personal and individual elements are both recognized in the consummation of religion. Religion is intended to satisfy not only the personal or assertive side of our nature, but also the individual or quiescent side. There is in the individual, deeper than any self-consciousness, an instinctive craving after God; and as the moral person craves an active relation to God, to know him and to serve him, so the individual wants to have a passive relation to him, to be nothing in him, to rest in him forever.

2. The Final Union with God

When the individual life is thoroughly personalized, the probational struggle is over, and the person's motivity has become such that he can and does yield his whole being to God. There is a series of decisions and yet there is a final commitment. "In all the eternities, a man will never cease to be his own personal self; he will never come to be precisely like any other creature in the universe. In individuality the man is conjoined with God; in personality he is separate in self- consciousness and yet also conscious of his union with God."

"As a mote floats in the sunbeam, so this bit of manhood quietly rests in God; but he rests there as a person who has deliberately chosen his everlasting home. True it is he will remain, that "he shall no more go out"; yes, true it is that he must remain, not because he is established by coercion, but because he himself has freely exhausted every motive to go, and nourished every motive to stay. And even his present establishment in rest is personal and not automatic, for it throbs with the supreme joy of self-consciously choosing to live forever in God. In this manner, the two antipodal features of man's nature find at last their harmonious coincidence. Absolute personal unification with the Infinite God, this is the consummation of religion." (Curtis)

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