Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Vol. 2-» Poetry. O Lord my God infuse this clod, With thine own holy spirit, Send light to me that I may see, And joy with thee inherit. Fill me with love from thee above, My heart to overflowing; That X by grace may run this race, o And to thee, Lord, be sowing. ' -Acquaint me Lord with every word, Thy con sei and thy pleasure. That while I walk, of thee I’ll talk, About this heavenly treasure. And now to thee all glory be On earth as it is in heaven* Let all my ways make up thy praise, As to me thou hast given. Morgan Brown. Woodburry, Ga. Blasphemy Against The Holy Ghost. Cecil, Ga., May 29th, 1895. Eld. S. Hassell: Dear Brother:*—l now have a mind and feeling to want to write to you. I very much regret that I did not meet with you when you traveled through, and preached for the churches in our country; but, oweing to my much affliction from a wound, I had not for several months previous to your coming been able to travel—not even to my own church meetings. At the time you preached at Cat Creek, which was the time of my own church meeting, I decided I was able to go. I expected, alter Saturday’s meeting, to have gone back and met you at Cat Creek, but the brethren of Unity per suaded me to stay and try to meet with you on Tuesday at our own church, but I afterwards decided 1 could not so much travel. Now I think, brother Hassell, that your coming into our midst to see how we do, and for our people to hear from you and to be instruct ed.and built up, and established in a Gospel way,will prove a blessing to all of us, and me in particular, though I never met you, since I have read your account of your journey through, seeing how faith ful and honest you have been where you found anything like briers or weeds that Lai come up in the crop, you have faithfully pointed out. This is not common with our preachers that are ac customed to travel away from home, but it is certainly right. And among the many things that you discovered that the Baptists have imbibed, when scripturely measured, that are found to be wrong, some of which you have called our attention to, it is pos sible that I am one of the men, and if so I am more than willing to have my mind disabused, or in other words, converted. I have no desire to persist in error. I never expect to grow in the knowlege ol the truth to that extent that I would not be liable to error. In reference to the sin or blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, there were fifteen years or more of the time I have been serving as a teacher or leader among the Primitive Bap tists, when asked by the Baptist what this particular scripture ment, I would answer them I did not know. I would at the same time say that none of the redeem ed people of God would ever com mit this sin, and I would quit at that. But some years back, while traveling to meeting, there was a passage of scripture that seemed to engage my thoughts. The scripture is this: ••If we sin wil fully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there @ljc Jhltjriiit's fanner. “THOU HAST GIVEN A BANNER TO THEM THAT FEAR THEE, THAT IT MAY BE DISPLAYED BECAUSE OF THE TRUTH.”— Psalms 60: 4. remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain, iea’-ful looking for of judgement and fiery indig nation which shall devour the adversaries”(Heb.x. 26,27). While my mind was exercised upon that scripture, I was brought to see, as I think, that the spiritually taught people of God could transgress the perfect law of liberty, 1 mean the Gospel law, not the law of sin and death, neither the law of Moses, the law which is our rule of life to govern the subjects of the Gospel kingdom. So you may see that I found out, while my mind was thus exercised, that the child of God who sins wilfully or knowingly has to pay the debt in the way of punishment. You may not think I am right, but you see the works of the- adversary shall be destroyed, or the adversary himseif. You know, my brother, that the only kind of a God that the child of God has that has sin ned wilfully is the God that is a consuming fire, and he will con tinue to be such till the adversary is burnt out, and then he changes to them to be the same good, and merciful, and lovely God that he used to be when the child was walking uprightly. Now I have said this little about the scripture so that you may understand why I drifted off or got hold of the idea myself that it was possible that it was the child of God that blas phemed against the Holy Ghost. Now I confess to you that there is the biggest kind of a chance for me to be wrong, and I am not like a heap of preachers that I re member in the past that got wrong and that were labored with a great deal that could’nt be convinced; they seemed to be in a condition they did not want to be convinced. I want all my works tried if it is by fire;and whatever gets burnt up, et it burn; nothing will burn, you know, accept that which we get up such as hay, wood, or stuble. I want to be saved by a gospel sal vation as well as the eternal salva tion; and, as such, I am going to ask you to do me the kind favor to work on my own case and I prom iseyou this I will do like a sick person that has called in the doc ter; the docter prescribes the med icine that is necessary; it is then the duty of the sick person to take the medicine. So I will anxiously listen to you if you will undertake to disabuse my mind. Now as I may have you in the dark. In the first place, I am at a loss to understand how the unre generate could sin against the Holy Ghost. I can understand how the non-elect or unregenerate sinned against God inAdam. Again I am at a loss to know how the non-elect could make their case any worse since Adam transgress ed the law. It some way looks like that before the non-elect blasphem ed the Holy Ghost, there was a chance for them, and not until they had blasphemed against the Holy Ghost was their chance a hopeless one. Perhaps I have said all that is necessary in order to show to you the several points upon which I am difficulted. Now as I believe that you are as well posted as anyone among all our ministers in understanding the Bible, I hope you will feel free to let me hear from you. Use all plainness in talking to me about this matter that you may think necessary, and you will not lessen my love for, or my fellowship or confidence in you. Now I dont wish for you to think that I have DEVOTEDTO THE CAUSE OF CHRIST VALDOSTA, GA., JULY 1, 1895. written this in the way of offering an argument in order that I might vindicate my idea;l only intended to explain to you how came my mind to get hold of such an idea. Now, in conclusion, if it is your choice, you can answer me back through the PiLgßiM’s Banner, as it might be beneficial to others. It will make no difference if others know that I have asked you to disabuse my mind on this sub ject, and that you have responded to my request. I will close for this time. T. W. Staj.iings Reply to Elder T. W. Stallings. But for two reasons I would an swer brother Stallings privately, and not in one of our periodicals. The first is, his suggestion and ap parent preference, for the sake of others, that I should reply in the Pilgrim’s Banner; and the second is the rare, gentle, baautiful, lov ing, self-sacrificing, Christ-like spirit of humility that shines all through his letter, and that is far more important for every child of God than the knowledge of all mysteries. 0 that I and every subject of grace might be at all times animated by this blessed, spirit! Then would unbroken peace,loved and fellowship abound in the dear Zion of our God. I de sire to call the universal and earn est attention of Primitive Baptists to the loving and lovely spirit ex hibited in the letter of our beloved brother, and to exhort them to a manifestation of the same spirit to wards afl persons, members of the body of Christ, at all times and all places. If no other good results from the publi cation of this correspondence, the readers will certainly be benfited by the views thus offered them of the blessed operation of the spirit of Christ. I no longer wonder that brother Stallings is’ called the “Peace-maker” among the Prim itive Baptists in his section of Georgia. If all the dear brethren among whom I have traveled of lata years had been equally hum ble and equally desirous of having all the weeds and briers rooted out of their crops by the mattock of eternal truth(lsa. vii. 25,) I would lave been spared many painful heart-thrusts, and there would be much less confusion and division a mong Old School or Primitive Bap tists than exists at present in some sections.of our country. Er ror and persistance in error can do no real good to any human being; and I believe that the most of new things iir religion since the first century of the Christian Era are errors. I am far from wishing to set up my poor, unwisp, and sinful self as an infallible judge or standard of divine truth. I deeply realize that,' in and of myself, I can do nothing, and less than nothing, and vanity; and that, especially in spiritual things, if I see at all, I see very imperfectly. But I be lieve that, unless I am wretchedly deceived, I long to know and love and do the truth; and, in arriving at an imperfect but approximate knowledge of the true meaning of any Scripture, it seems clear to me that the context and the gen eral teaching of the Scriptures will perfectly accord with the light of the Spirit on the subject, and that the general belief of the people of- God in former ages and at present in regard to the meaning of a text is rarely errone ous, for the mind of the Lord is with His people (1. li. 16; John xvi. 13-15; 1 John li. 27). As I have tried to show, in the ; Gospel Messenger for Feb., 1894 > it a new a monstrous, and a ruin ous thilg to apply everything said in t|e Scriptures to the trm people of God, and thus to abolish . the distinction made by the grace -of God, £nd between the belovedj blessed, <lect, redeemed, regenerat ed, peniient, believing, lov • ing and Saved, on the one hand, and the hated, cursed, non-elect, unredeemed, unregenerate, im penitent*unbelieving, hating and lost, on the other hand-—between the Publican and the Pharisee— the wheat and the tares—the sheep and the goats-—the vessels of mer cy and g'e vessels of wrath. As we can J<W)k only on the outward life, and cannot read the heart, we can not now distinguish, with per fect certainty, between these oppo site characters that come under our personal onservation; and some times it requires very close atten tion to the connection and to the general teaching of the Scriptures to distinguish between these char acters as alluded to in the Inspired Volume, j So far is I have been able to learn, nearly all the true people of God in ages have believed, and nearly all at present do believe, that the children of God are kept by divine'grace from blaspheming the Holy Ghost—from committing the dreadful sin that never will be forgiven. And if we carefully ex amine the connection in Math.xii. 22-37, and Mark iii. 24-30 (see al so Luke xii.. 10), it seems clear that none but. the proud, bitter, scoffing malignant, determined, vs ■Gllriet, such as and Scribes, are alludaUp as committing or as near comifittihg the unpardonable sin of Waspheming the Hcly Gnost Christ had just healed a poor blin4, and dumb demoniac, and. had,|h so doing, exhibited such divide mercy and power that all the pggple were satisfied that He Son of David, the Messiah God, the Hope and Consolatffljof Israel; but the car nal, selfisfc jealous, ambitious, re ligious rulfts of the Jews, as they had already done in the case of John the paptist(Math. xi. 18) work of tO Divine Spirit in Christ to Satan; ins declaring Christ to be the ip wnation, not of God, but of the )evil, the instrument and repre ©ntative, not of the Kingdom* of Light, but of the Kingdom ’ Darkness, and the Ho ly Ghost i Christ to be an un clean or icked spirit. We see, from mnection, that those guilty of tlis sin were not good trees bearilg good fruit, but cor rupt trees fearing evil fruit; had evil heartslhat brought forth evil things-; we® not for, but against; were, a geniration of vipers, filled with the peison of their fathers, ; the Old S ?psnt, utterly hating - truth, hold >ss, and God[Math, xii. 30-35]. Ad it was not any other sin, not sh in general, of which they were | lilty on this occasion, but it Wi THE SPECIAL SIN OF SPEAKING A VINST THE HOLYGHOST J thb only leaning of the word BLASPHEMY 6 SPEAKING against — it does not lean evil conduct, but it means e’l 1 speech. Neither the real meaning of the word, nor any thing whawer in the connection, gives us th< slightest right to gen eralize this In, and apply it to all forms of sii Blasphemy against the Holy 'Ghost is speaking against the Holy Ghost, nothing less andjm Jung more; and it is mournf 1 evidence of a seared reprobate mind, giv en up by thlLord to everlasting ob duracy, and unbelief, , and doomed to endless perdition. • (1. Tim. iv. 2; Rom. i. 28; 2 Tim. : iii. 8; Math. xii. 32; Mark. iii. 29). 1 Christ does not say that the com mission of this specific sin makes the condition of the blasphemer worse than it already is; but He plainly intimates that it manifests that condition to be as bad as it can be, a condition of utter and everlasting ruin. Iwould not dare to add to, and thereby virtually deny, the language of the Divine Redeemer, by saying this most aw ful sin can be expiated by any thing that the guilty wretch can do or can suffer in this world or in eternity. Not the faintest in timation of such an addition ap pears in any of the contexts in the inspired history; we must rever ently and submissively leave theun pardoned and unpardonable sinner where his Righteous Judge,the Son of God, leaves him. Instead of re quiring the indwelling, it requires the absence of the Spirit of God for a man to commit this never-to be-forgiven sin of calumniating, reviling, vilifying the Holy Ghost —the sin of calling Him an un clean or unholy spirit. In both the Old and New Testiment times, not the regenerated people of God, but the stiff "necked and uncircum cised in heart and ears resisted the Holy Ghost in the prophets and m Christ, persecuting and killing thpse in whom the Holy Spirit dwelt( Acts. vii. 51,2; Neh. ix. 29, 30); and though, as in the case ,of Saul of Tarsus, a man might resist the Holy Ghost in other men, and seek to murder flKem, and yet afterwards be regen erated and repent and be forgiven, it is the solemn declaration of God manifest in the flesh that no MAN CAN HATE AND MOCK AND SLAN- der the Holy Spirit, and ever AFTERWARDS OBTAIN FORGIVNESS. The unforgiven are the impenitent, and the impenitent are those who are destitute of the Spirit of God (Isa. Iv. 7; Acts ii. 13-38; Zech, xii 10; Jude. 16-19). Jesus atoned for all the sins of His people, and gives them repentance and forgivness foi them all, and cleanses them from them allflsa. liii; Luke. xxiv. 47; John, i. 29; Eph. i. 7; Acts. v. 31; 1 John. i. 7; Rev. i. s]. The idea that the children of God can com mit the unpardonable sin and then must atone for such sin by their own sufferings, involves, to my mind, a denial of the faith fulness and power of God to keep His people; a denial of the suffi ciency of the atonement of Christ; and a denial of even the necessity of His atonement, for, if the suf ferings of sinners in this world or in eternity can atone for their sins, there was no need of Christ’s dying for sin, and the whole hu man race will finally be saved, not by the atonement of Christ but by their own sufferings. Os course, our dear brethren do not believe these apparently certain conse quences of their idea of the un pardonable sin; they do not at all mean to depart from the vital, central doctrine of the Christian religion—salvation by grace alone, justificatson by faith alone, re demption by the blood of Jesus alone; and they do not mean to fall into the Roman Catholic her esy of Penance and Purgatory—the the doctrine that sins committed after regeneration can be expiated only by involuntary or voluntary punishment or suffering, such as providential afflictions, or fasting, watching, abstinence from pleas ure or business, repeating forms of prayer and creeds, wearing hair, shirts, whipping oneself, alms to the poor, gifts to the church, pil grimages, exile, and perpetual re- i. tirement to a monastery. And yet i. the idea into which our brethren . have unintentionally drifted seems - to me to be of this nature. s The children of God not only r can, but do sin even Knowingly as ■, ter their regeneration, as both the j experience of believers and the ’ scriptures abundantly testify; but i it cannot be proved that any i where in the Scriptures such sins are called blasphemy or speaking evil of the Holy Ghost ;• and unless the sins after as well as before regeneration were atoned for and made an end of by Christ, His work and sacrifice will be of no avail to us, we shall be condemned at.the last day by His infinitely holy law, and we shall sink down under the weight of our sins into everlasting woe. The only real, efficacious, divinely appointed and and accepted sacrifice for sin mentioned in all the Scriptures is the atoning death of Christ. As will be seen in our dear brother’s letter, the cause of his referring the unpardonable sin to the children of God is his under standing of Heb. x. 62, 27. But the most spiritual, the most intel ligent, and' the best informed ser vants of God in all ages, who have explained this passage, maintain that the Apostle here speaks, not of the regenerated children of God, but only of His merely professing people, who, after professing to be lieve and trust in Christ, re nounce that profession, and go back to the law for justification. The wheb* scope of Apostles’ argument in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the parts of the 10th chapter preceding and following this passage and the general teaching of the scriptures prove this view to be correct. In the 26th verse Paul uses the first per sonal pronoun “we” to avoid the appearance of personal severity to those whom he addresses, and to show that God is no respector of persons—to emphasize the great fundamental doctrine of the epistle and of Christianity, that there is no salvation for any hu man being out of Christ. The “sin” to which the Apostle alludes is, as shown by the 23rd verse, a renounciation of the profession of Christ, a falling away from the doctrine of salvation by grace (Heb. vi. 6; Gal. v. 4.), the work of “an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God” (Heb. x. 39). And the Apostle solemnly declares that to one who renounces Christ there is no more sacrifice for sin, hut an unpurged conscience fearfully looking for the righteous judgment of God (see Rom. i. 32, iii. 19), and a fiery indignation(not a looking for fiery indignation, but fiery indig nation itself—the word rendered “indignation” is in the nominative case, the subject of remaineth”) which shall devour, not the sins but the sinners who have thus shown themselves to be the proud, scornful, spiteful, contempteous adversaries of God, richly deserv ing, not only the temporal death justly inflicted upon a presump tions violator of law given by Moses, but much sorer punish ment, even everlasting vengeance and destruction, eternal perdition, for giving himself up freely to Satan, and treating with the ut most contempt the blessed medi ation of the glorious Son of God, and the precious blood with which He was consecrated to His eternal priesthood, and the Holy and (Continued on 4th page.) No. 13.