1. “James the slave of God and Lord Jesus Christ.” In the Greek Testament we have two words translated “servant,” oiketees, a hired servant, and doulos, a slave. The New Testament is expository of the old. The Hebrew slaves all went free at Jubilee, every fifty years. However, the law of Moses provided for its indefinite perpetuity if the slave was unwilling to go free and preferred to remain with his master; but in that case, the master must draw him up to the door-post, drive a nail through his ear, by this painful tragedy, nailing him fast, thus indicating that he is to be his slave forever. Now let us see the verification of this grand symbolic truth in the Gospel economy. All sinners are the devil’s slaves. Sanctified Christians are God’s love slaves, while the unsanctified are His hired servants. This we see constantly evinced by their speech and deportment. Our Savior forbade His apostles to go and preach under the Gospel dispensation till they received the sanctifying fiery baptism of Pentecost. If the Church had remained true and obedient to this heavenly mandate, she would have escaped the withering and blighting curse of the hireling ministry. The Holiness Gospel blows the jubilee trumpet, which is the signal to all the hired servants in the Lord’s kingdom to go free, i. e., to go back into the devil’s country, whence they came, and be perfectly free to commit all manner of sin, or go forward into the experience of entire sanctification. The Jubilee proclaimed to all the Hebrew slaves a decisive emergency, i. e., they must either accept their freedom or have their ears bored and enter into perpetual slavery. Even so the sanctified Gospel brings to all the Christians who hear it an inevasible ordeal. They can not reject the call of the Holy Ghost to go forward into sanctification without forfeiting justification. If they stay with their good old Master, they must let the Holy Ghost, their Sanctifier, pull them up to the door-post, the cross of Calvary, and nail them fast. There Adam the first must bleed and die, thus consummating their love slavery forever. Sanctified people, like the Hebrew love slave, no longer serve God for a reward, but for love alone. They only regret that they can not do, bear and suffer enough for Christ’s sake. They are more than willing to give everything in their power, and wait till they enter the pearly portal for every iota of recompense. O, how happy this love slave, free from care and solicitude as an angel in heaven. All responsibility for soul, mind and body, in time and eternity, devolves on his Master. Now, contemplate the Divine ownership! Do you not see that a truly wise master will always conserve his own interest in the welfare of his slave? I belong to God unreservedly and eternally. I am perfectly becalmed in Him. I know He manages me all right, spiritually, providentially, physically, temporally and eternally. Hallelujah! I am lost in God’s will as free as Gabriel.

2. “My brethren, consider it all joy when ye fall into many temptations.” How striking the contrast of Apostolic preaching with the puny, timorous, howling religion of the present day. Doubtless temptation is the grandest source of blessing this side of heaven, for it simply opens the way for a fight with the devil, in which we are sure to conquer if we are true to our Great Captain. The soldier that fights no battles wins no victories, lives and dies a coward, receiving no diadem. The terrible conflicts with the strong intellect of Satan constitute our grandest means of grace this side of heaven.

5. Wisdom here is generic for the gracious economy, and means experimental religion. When Solomon says, “Get wisdom,” he means to get God’s religion. Heaven is full of salvation; you have nothing to do but tap the ocean by faith and you will get full. You need not be afraid of asking too frequently, nor for too much. You have nothing to pay but your sins.

6. “But let him ask in faith doubting nothing for he that doubteth is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed by the tempest.” Faith is the hand by which we receive the salvation of the Lord. Doubt is a paralysis, more or less affecting that hand, and defeating our efforts to receive the needed grace. Sanctification is the only doubt-killer. We here have a nautical metaphor presented by the Holy Ghost for our instruction. The unsanctified man, beleaguered with doubts, is the ship on the stormy sea, tossed by the merciless waves and driven by the angry tornadoes, while the sanctified soul is the ship safe in the harbor, secure from the raging tempest, never again to drift, the sport of the stormy billows.

ARGUMENT 5
PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY
25. Egypt is sin land; the wilderness, law land; Canaan, grace land; and heaven, glory land. Pharaoh emblematizes the devil, who rules the sinner with a rod of iron, so long as he remains in the brick kilns and mortar yards of his galling slavery. The law was given from Mt. Sinai in the wilderness because all the people who live in that country have depravity, i. e., the man of sin, in their hearts, who must be held in subjugation by the law, otherwise he will break out and commit actual sin. The law not only holds him in subjection, but condemns him to die “The soul that sinneth it shall die” thus providing for the utter extermination of the sin principle out of the heart and the complete sanctification of our spiritual being. Into Canaan, i. e., grace land, Adam the first never can come. Hence the inhabitants of that land are as free as if there was no law, from the simple fact that there is nothing in their hearts antagonistic to the law of God; neither is there anything which needs the law to hold it in subjugation. Hence all the inhabitants of grace land enjoy this perfect law of spiritual liberty. While grace land is free from sin and unutterably delectable because of perfect spiritual liberty, yet it is everywhere encumbered with infirmities, i. e., sins of ignorance, which, though perfectly compatible with Christian perfection, must all be eliminated by the subsequent action of the Holy Ghost in glorification, when this mortal puts on immortality, thus wafting us out into glory land, disencumbered of every infirmity, similitudinous to the angels.