Standards of Life and Service

by Thomas Henry Howard

In our Holiness Meetings we often speak of Full Salvation as a blessing to be obtained, and also a blessing to be retained; but I want now to turn the truth the other way round, and speak about 'losing the blessing'. These words of Haggai about the man who lost his earnings through a faulty bag will serve me as a text, and are very significant.

As a figure of speech, the words are well understood. From the boy who, by holding a horse, or running errands, earns threepence, and puts it into a pocket with a hole at the bottom, to the man or woman who puts the savings of years into a rotten speculation, all know the literal meaning of Haggai's text, 'He that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes'.

The central idea is that something gained by hard effort has been lost, and that the loss was due to the man's own fault. The man had earned his wages, and then let what he had won by toil slip through holes in the bag into which he put it. The possibility of this in relation to spiritual blessings is a danger we are warned against in God's Word, and the necessity for guarding against such losses is one of the important lessons to be learned.

This text reminds me of an incident and parable in the Book of Kings. During the progress of a battle one of the leaders, having captured a prisoner, called to a subordinate and placed the captive in his care, to be kept at the risk of his life. Later, the man had to give an account, and when admitting the loss of the prisoner he said, 'As thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone'. Alas! there are many whose spiritual acquisitions have slipped away like that.

The spiritual application of this thought is brought home to us by a verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 'Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip'. If you look in the margin of your Bible, you will see the words, 'run out as leaking vessels', and in the Revised Version the words read, 'drift away from them'. You see the idea is, that unless you are careful you will lose your blessing after having enjoyed it.

Looking round my audiences I can with fitness use these figures, and apply the idea to many who, after tears and agonies of heart, secured the Salvation of their souls, and the heavenly treasure which only the pardoned sinner knows; but, alas! through the faulty bag, or pocket with holes, their earnings slipped away, and they are now spiritual bankrupts, their latter state being worse than the first. Thank God, if those who have thus lost their Salvation and peace will truly repent and do their first works, they may again obtain heavenly treasure, and with it grace and wisdom to prevent the repetition of past follies. Let others learn and take heed lest they also drift away, as the Apostle puts it.

My chief purpose, however, relates to those who, though they once had the blessing of a clean heart, have lost it. Their present lack is not due to their having exhausted their earnings in lawful pursuits, or because they invested their treasure in sanctified enterprises, but because they have let the blessing slip; or, turning back to Haggai's words, they have been as him 'that earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes'. The experience is a thing of the past. At times they are tempted to say that they were deluded, and never had the blessing, or that they were as a man who only dreamed that he had his wages; but that is not so. The wages were earned, but lost.

So you must not regard your experience as the sensations of a dream. You had the blessing right enough, and some of you had secured it at no small sacrifice; but, alas! you let it slip out of your possession, and you woke up to find it gone.

It is remarkable how many sanctified people have to testify that before they settled into the regular experience of Full Salvation they lost the blessing which they had received; in fact, some eminent saints have recorded repeated experiences of loss before they learned how to carry themselves and guard against the dangers.

Perhaps here I ought to say definitely, that the Bible does not tell us of any stage in our heavenward journey at which we can be saved from the possibility of losing the blessing. This blessed treasure of perfect purity, peace which passeth all understanding, and joy unspeakable, is only ours so long as we maintain that entire consecration and faith which are the conditions on which the blessing is received. There is no spot where the advice is not necessary—'Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life'. Paul put it clearly, 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall', and showed how seriously he regarded the matter when he declared that he had to keep his body under and in hand, lest after preaching to others he should himself become a castaway.