Letters and Letters by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 25, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 13.

Letters and Letters

By Editor

Letters and Letters.—Many of them are excellent, breathing a Christian experience and sweetness in their words of encouragement and counsel. Many are for information. A few are critical. One came to-day, burning, blistering in its caustic criticism, because of a short quoted article in the SIGNS, advising girls not to marry men to reform them. The critic thought it unchristian, because it struck against intemperance, and did not take in the whole category of sins and the sinful nature. His contention is that God never helps a man to overcome only one sin; that where only one sin is overcome the individual becomes self-righteous; that the self-righteousness is more malodorous in God's sight than the sin. And this may be true in many cases. But it is also true that God helps, unconsciously perhaps, to the person involved, to overcome single sins. Later that person saw that it was God working. The sin overcome left the man where the Spirit of God could impress the person with truth, whereas if failure had come in the struggle with this one sin, never would that person have been reached. Yet we agree with our critic that God's normal method of reaching the sinner is the crucifixion of the carnal nature, and the creating of a new heart. And the soul must be so changed before man sees the inside of God's kingdom. But to bring men there, God meets them where they are, helps in every way He can consistent with man's free-will, and saves even by piecemeal if the person keeps his face toward God. If therefore we can save a man from one accursed sin, let us do it, and let us let him know that every true, moral uplift is from God, and not of a sinful heart, which must be transformed by divine grace.