THE PHILOSOPHY OF SANCTIFICATION by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1881

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SANCTIFICATION.

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Philosophy is a great thing; equal in greatness to “Diana of the Ephesians.” And it has more worshipers than the great goddess. If they are not always as noisy, they are much more persistent; for those were quieted after about two hours’ vociferous crying. But where is the town clerk who can appease the spirit of the devotees of science and philosophy?

The wisdom of this world never gives full proof of its folly until it invades the domain of Bible truth. When an attempt is made to explain the mysteries of godliness on a scientific basis or in a philosophical manner, our reverence is startled at the temerity of presumptuous man. We copy the following, it being only one paragraph of a philosophical dissertation on Christian holiness:—

“If a conjecture may be hazarded as to the modus operandi of the Holy Spirit’s revolutionary processes, it is this: Recalling the statement on pages 49, 50, that the human spirit stands in the relation of a higher nerve-center to the peripheral ends of the nerves of communication of the hemispheres of the brain, sending down its influences through all the complicated mechanism of which the hemispheres are the crown; so, we suppose that the Holy Spirit in connection with the human spirit stands in the same relation. And, just as the nerves may be made pathways for the electric current to travel over, intensifying nervous energy as it goes, so that the powerful shock of a forty-cell galvanic battery annihilates apparently incurable sciatica at a blow; so, the current of divine life sweeping down upon the hemispheres, enveloping the sensori-commune and the cerebellum, piercing through the medulla, thrilling along the spinal cord, and permeating and exalting every nervous center, may instantaneously dash neuralgias of habit and sciaticas of desire clear out by the organisms in which they have rooted apparently for life.”

If this were the vagary of some Spiritualist medium we should throw it aside without remark. But it is not. It is the serious explanation by a professed Christian writer of the method or modus of the operations of the Holy Spirit in its work of the sanctification of the believer in Christ, which we find in one of the most highly esteemed of our religious exchanges. We cannot refrain from recording our firm protest against such “conjectures” in regard to the mode of the Spirit’s operations. Conjectures are not admissible on the subject. They cannot enlighten us, because they are only conjectures. They belittle the subject, making that a matter of philosophical speculation which should not be desecrated at all by any speculations.] It is holy

ground. It is a matter not revealed, and certainly cannot be searched out, more than by searching we can find out God. Better be satisfied with seeking the aid of the Holy Spirit, and knowing its gracious operations on our hearts, than to uselessly and, as we think, irreverently and presumptuously speculate on the methods of its operation. J. H. W.