There is another part of it that covers the question of our pardon;
that takes all my past sins and wipes them out; that gives me a new
chance for righteousness. Now mind: That pardon, that new life, that
new chance works out all the time necessarily from my finger-ends; it
shows itself in my life, absolutely, as certainly as it is there; and
if I cannot find the fruit of it in the fruits of the Spirit, in the
interest in God's cause, in patience and teachableness, in gentleness
and love, I have the absolute demonstration that I have not the thing
itself. Saved by faith, kept alive, kept saved by work, in work, by
grace in work. Let me touch that theology just a little. If you
are pardoned, you are pardoned by the Lord in a second, through
faith--when you believe, that is. Pardon is an operation in God's mind
concerning myself; you cannot pardon yourself. God pardons. If we are
pardoned He can do it in a second, when we believe.

The next step in the case is, that there is not anything in the Book
of God that gives us any ground to believe that in that same faith, or
believing, or pardon, we will be instantly lifted up into the stature
of a man in Christ Jesus. What I mean to say is this: That there is
not one word in this Book that will justify any man in believing that
he may be brought by any process to the stature of a man in Christ
Jesus in a minute. But some good brother will say: "Oh! now I am just
a little afraid that you are striking against that blest old Methodist
doctrine of sanctification." No, I am not. I haven't said anything
about sanctification. But I will. If you are sanctified, or cleansed,
that is God's work, through faith, and He can do it in a second. Now,
understand me definitely, you cannot cleanse yourself. God cleanses
you through faith in the cleansing blood of His Son. It is His work.
You cannot grow into it. You can grow in it, but if you don't grow in
it you may know you are not in it--you are in something else. But you