Holiness: The False and the True - SECONDS

For the first six years of Harry Ironside’s Christian life, he was involved with a group that taught that sinless perfection could be obtained by the believer with an experience called the “second blessing.” Ironside believed that if he strove hard enough, zealously resisted temptations, and used a variety of methods taught him by the group, he could reach this state of perfection.

During this time period, Ironside became aware that many who were on the same path to perfect holiness fell into despair and even mental breakdown, and he himself finally became tormented that he had perhaps lost his salvation and was doomed to be eternally lost because he failed to reach this level of perfect holiness. 

Finally, young Ironside came to the realization that he had become wholly dependent upon himself rather than on Christ. He saw that he “had been looking within for holiness instead of without.”

In this book, Ironside gives us a two-fold treasure: First, he describes in detail the six years of bondage, followed by disillusionments, and then the glorious freedom and life of grace that follows. Second, Holiness: The False & the True provides valuable insight based on Scripture on holiness, sanctification, and how to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord.

Part 1: Autobiographical

Ironside: It is my desire, in dependence on the Lord, to write a faithful record, so far as memory now serves me, of some of God’s dealings with my soul and my strivings after the experience of holiness, during the first six years of my Christian life, ere I knew the blessedness of finding all in Christ. This will make it necessary at times, I have little doubt, to “speak as a fool”—even as the apostle Paul did: but as I reflect on the need for such a record, I think I can say with him, “Ye have compelled me.”

If I may be privileged to thereby save others from the unhappy experiences I passed through in those early years, I shall feel abundantly repaid for the effort it will take to thus put these heart-experiences before my readers.

Part 2: Doctrinal

• Sanctification and its meaning
• Sanctification by the Holy Spirit: Internal 
• Sanctification by the Blood of Christ: Eternal
• Sanctification by the Word of God: External Results
• Relative Sanctification
• Dead to Sin, and Perfect Love
• Perfection, as Used in Scripture 
• Cleansing From All Sin, and the Pure in Heart 
• “Whosoever Is Born Of God Doth Not Commit Sin”; or, The Believers Two Natures 
• Concluding Remarks on “The Higher Christian Life”