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 can grow in it, because it is God’s work, and He will do it when you believe.  But what of that?  What are you after you are cleansed?  I will tell you.  You are a clean baby:  that is all.  You are not a man in Christ Jesus; you are only a babe—­cleansed, indeed, and greatly improved by the process, too, but you are not matured.  Do not miss, now, the broad distinction between purity and maturity.  You are purified, through faith, in a second; you are matured through many a struggle and many a year.  God cannot make a twenty-one-year-old saint in one second less than twenty-one years.  There is no platform marked over with faith upon which a man may step and be lifted up into the perfect stature of a man in Christ Jesus in a minute.  It is not the teaching of the Book.  But all the year, loving, and giving, and fighting, and praying, and walking in righteousness, you will mature characters, and by and by you will grow into the manhood in Christ Jesus that is set before us in the gospel.  Now,