4. Divine grace is well typified by fire. There is nothing which gives such an idea of vital energy as fire. Of all forces, when you think of power, it is the most powerful. And this fire of Divine grace is kindled in the heart, and acts upon every portion of it It is the Divine life. It comes like light to the intellect, and illuminates it; it comes like heat to the heart and inflames it; it comes like strength to the will and energizes it and gives it strength; it comes with all its soothing influence, also, to the conscience, and purifies it and gives it peace. And so this Divine fire is that in which we live the Christian life. We cannot live it without it. No determination of our natural will will enable us to live without it. And we cannot manufacture it ; if we try to do 80, if we try to live our lives by ofifering sacrifice to God, like Nadab and Abihu, with strange fire, it is a powerless, it is an unacceptable thing. Christian life can be lived only in the energy of that Divine fire, that life of God communicated to every portion of the inner spirit, permeating it, influencing it, trans- figuring it like a flame.
^ It is said to be the prerogative of genius to light its own fire. But we have not to originate the flame of spiritual desire in ourselves. Some spark from the heavenly altars has reached each one of us. We describe ourselves at times as seekers after God, but the truth is we seek God because He first seeks us. Our upward yearnings and strivings are the answering movement of our spirits to the touch of His spirit. It is an old tradition that the fire which burned for so many ages upon the altars of Israel without going out was first conveyed from heaven. The Divine * Lnther, WtUchwords for the Wwrfare of Life, 364.
LEVITICUS VI. 13 341
aspiration is itself a Divine gift. The need of God and the feeling after Him, which are the root and support of all religious observ- ances, are not instructed into existence ; they are not of human invention, but of human nature — that deeper nature which is begotten, not made, born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The appeal of religion and of the literature which interprets religion is to the intuitions of the race. We first feel within us what we discern to be without us. The recognition of God is the soul unfolding to spiritual realities and relations. We call Jesus, Lord — confess Him to be the Master of the Divine life through the awakening in ourselves of a kindred spirit : —
Held our eyes no sunny sheen.
How could sunshine e'er be seen?
Dwelt no power Divine within us,
How could God's Divineness win us?*
^ How much more beautiful and suggestive is the thought of that ever-burning fire on the altar of burnt-offering than the so-called miracle of the " Holy Fire," which is enacted annually in our time at Jerusalem ! On the eve of the Greek Easter Day all the lamps in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are solemnly extinguished. Afterwards, in the course of the night, a bright flame suddenly appears in the Chapel of the Sepulchre, and this, it is said, has been kindled by God Himself. Then the Greek Patriarch lights a candle at the " Holy Fire " ; and this candle is passed, amidst intense excitement, over the heads of the crowd of pilgrims, each of whom lights his own taper at the sacred flame, that he may carry it with him to his distant Eussian home.^
Summe up at night what thou hast done by day, And in the morning what thou hast to do; Dresse and undresse thy soul; mark the decay And growth of it; if with thy watch that too Be down, then winde up both : since we shall be Most surely judg'd, make thy accounts agree.*
ni
How IS THE Fire Maintained?
The fire on the altar of Israel, though kindled from heaven had to be kept constantly burning by natural and human means
^ John Hunter. * 0. Jerdan.
■ George Herbert, TJu (^tvrek Porch, Izxri
342 THE CONTINUAL FIRE
The priests had to lay wood on the altar every morning, and, like the vestal virgins of Rome, to watch day and night with sleepless care lest the holy flame should die out. It is a parable of which the spiritual experience of mankind writes large the meaning. The religious sentiment, which is an essential element of human nature, needs cultivation as certainly as the power to think, or the love of the beautiful, or our affection for parents and friends.
1. The Removal of the Ashes. — What had the priest to do ? First of all he had to go to the altar every day, take away the ashes and carry them to the place where the sin-offering was burnt without the camp. Tlie ashes were that part of the wood that was laid upon the altar to feed the fire, which is of the earth earthy ; that which could never mount up towards God, blending with the atmosphere, and become an offering in His presence.