All this is as plain as it is encouraging; but it leaves wholly untouched the question of the human will, and its impious workings in connection with the service and worship of God. All such workings must inevitably call down, sooner or later, the solemn judgment of a righteous God, who cannot suffer His claims to be trifled with. "I will be sanctified in them that come nigh Me, and before all the people I will be glorified." Men will be dealt with according to their profession. If men are honestly seeking, they will assuredly find; but when men approach as worshipers, they are no longer to be regarded as seekers, but as those who profess to have found; and then, if their priestly censer smokes with unhallowed fire--if they offer unto God the elements of a spurious worship--if they profess to tread His courts, unwashed, unsanctified, unsubdued--if they place on His altar the workings of their own corrupt will, what must be the result? Judgment! Yes, sooner or later, judgment must come. It may linger, but it will come. It could not be otherwise. And not only must judgment come at last, but there is, in every case, the immediate rejection on the part of Heaven of all worship which has not the Father for its object, Christ for its material, and the Holy Ghost for its power. God's holiness is as quick to reject all "strange fire" as His grace is ready to accept the faintest, feeblest breathings of a true heart. He must pour out His righteous judgment upon all false worship, though He will never "quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised reed." The thought of this is most solemnizing, when one calls to mind the thousands of censers smoking with strange fire throughout the wide domain of christendom. May the Lord, in His rich grace, add to the number of true worshipers, who worship the Father in spirit and in truth. (John iv.) It is infinitely happier to think of the true worship ascending from honest hearts to the throne of God, than to contemplate, even for a moment, the spurious worship on which the divine judgments must ere long be poured out. Every one who knows, through grace, the pardon of his sins through the atoning blood of Jesus, can worship the Father in spirit and in truth. He knows the proper ground, the proper object, the proper title, the proper capacity of worship. These things can only be known in a divine way. They do not belong to nature or to earth. They are spiritual and heavenly. Very much of that which passes among men for the worship of God is but "strange fire" after all. There is neither the pure fire nor the pure incense, and therefore Heaven accepts it not; and albeit the divine judgment is not seen to fall upon those who present such worship as it fell upon Nadab and Abihu of old, this is only because "God is in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." It is not because the worship is acceptable to God, but because God is gracious. The time, however, is rapidly approaching when the strange fire will be quenched forever--when the throne of God shall no longer be insulted by clouds of impure incense ascending from unpurged worshipers--when all that is spurious shall be abolished, and the whole universe shall be as one vast and magnificent temple, in which the one true God--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--shall be worshiped throughout the everlasting ages.
"Grateful incense this, ascending Ever to the Father's throne; Every knee to Jesus bending, All the mind in heaven is one.
All the Father's counsels claiming Equal honors to the Son, All the Son's effulgence beaming Makes the Father's glory known.
By the Spirit all pervading, Hosts unnumbered round the Lamb, Crowned with light and joy unfading, Hail Him as the great 'I AM.'"
For this the redeemed are waiting; and, blessed be God, it is but a little while when all their longing desires shall be fully met, and met forever--yea, met after such a fashion as to elicit from each and all the touching confession of Sheba's queen that "the half was not told me." May the Lord hasten the happy time!
We must now return to our solemn chapter, and, lingering a little longer over it, endeavor to gather up and bear away with us some of its salutary teaching; for truly salutary it is, in an age like the present, when there is so much "strange fire" abroad.