(1) The law of God demands perfection. It is a transcript of God’s nature. Its object is to reveal God. Anything less than the demand of perfection would misrepresent God. God could not give a law which a sinner could obey. In the very nature of the case there can be no sinlessness in this life for those who have once sinned. Sin brings incapacity as well as guilt. All men have squandered a part of the talent intrusted to them by God, and therefore no man can come up to the demands of that law which requires all that God gave to humanity at its creation together with interest on the investment. (2) Even the best Christian comes short of perfection. Regeneration makes only the dominant disposition holy. Many affections still remain unholy and require to be cleansed. Only by lowering the demands of the law, making shallow our conceptions of sin, and mistaking temporary volition for permanent bent of the will, can we count ourselves to be perfect. (3) Absolute perfection is attained not in this world but in the world to come. The best Christians count themselves still sinners, strive most earnestly for holiness, have imputed but not inherent sanctification, are saved by hope. (_b_) That the theory finds no support in, but rather is distinctly contradicted by, Scripture. First, the Scriptures never assert or imply that the Christian may in this life live without sin; passages like 1 John 3:6, 9, if interpreted consistently with the context, set forth either the ideal standard of Christian living or the actual state of the believer so far as respects his new nature. _1 John 3:6_—“_Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him_”; _9_—“_Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God._” Ann. Par. Bible, _in loco_:—“John is contrasting the states in which sin and grace severally predominate, without reference to degrees in either, showing that all men are in one or the other.” Neander: “John recognizes no intermediate state, no gradations. He seizes upon the radical point of difference. He contrasts the two states in their essential nature and principle. It is either love or hate, light or darkness, truth or a lie. The Christian life in its essential nature is the opposite of all sin. If there be sin, it must be the afterworking of the old nature.” Yet all Christians are required in Scripture to advance, to confess sin, to ask forgiveness, to maintain warfare, to assume the attitude of ill desert in prayer, to receive chastisement for the removal of imperfections, to regard full salvation as matter of hope, not of present experience.