The great glory of the gospel is to cleanse men's hearts by raising their temperature, making them pure because they are made warm ; and that separates them from their evils. It is slow work to take mallet and chisel and try to chip off the rust, speck by speck, from a row of railings, or to punch the specks of iron ore out of the ironstone. Pitch the whole thing into the furnace, and the work will be done. So the true way for a man to be purged of his weaknesses, his meannesses, his passions, his lusts, his sins, is to submit himself to the cleansing fire of that Divine Spirit.
^ Did you ever see a blast-furnace ? How long would it take a man, think you, with hammer and chisel, or by chemical means, to get the bits of ore out from the stony matrix ? But fling them into the great cylinder, and pile the fire and let the strong draught roar through the burning mass, and by evening you can run off a glowing stream of pure and fluid metal, from which all the dross and rubbish is parted, which has been charmed out of all its sullen hardness, and will take the shape of any mould into which you like to run it. The fire has conquered, has melted, has purified. So with us. Love " shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us," love that answers to Christ's, love that is fixed upon Him who is pure and separate from sinners, will purify us and sever us from our sins. Nothing else will. All other cleans- ing is superficial, like the water of John's baptism.1
^[ Beautiful colours, rich gold-work, exquisite designs, and artistic skill may be seen on the unfinished porcelain vase, but a careless touch may spoil them, there is a needs-be that the vase should be placed in the fire, that the artist's skill may be burnt in, and then the colours become permanent. The Holy Spirit is the Artist and the Fire. He alone can produce the beautiful
1 A. Maclaren.
42 THE TWO BAPTISMS
"lours of a holy life and make the character impervious to the .it tacks of evil. He alone can make us resolve with Jonathan Edwards, who wrote in Ins diary these words: " If I believed that il were permitted to one man — and only one — in this genera- bion to bead a life of complete consecration to God, I would live in every respect as though I believed myself to be that
one
" i
2. The fire will destroy everything that is not sterling metal. This is the alternative before every human being — either to be pari lied by the baptism of fire, or else to meet that central Holiness as a flame of judgment. Of course it must be so. For the holiness of God cannot change its character. It is man's heart that must be changed. To the obedient it is a savour of life unto life, to the evil a savour of death unto death ; to the one remedial, to the other retributive. The Spirit of God must sanctify, or else it must destroy.
The gold is gold, and cannot be anything worse if it would. The chall' is worthless by nature, not by fault. The fire must of necessity purify the one and burn the other. Neither gold nor stubble can change. But that which is tested by the fire of the Divine Holiness is the will and the character of moral and respon- sible beings. Man can become pure as the gold or worthless as the stubble. From the same material issues the sinner and the saint. It must depend upon the soul itself whether the Divine Holiness shall be to it the fire which purifies or the fire which destroys. God cannot deny Himself, or be anything else than moral Perfection, or He would no longer be God. It is the creature that must change. The human will must change. The human will must so submit itself to the action of the grace of God that the evil shall be burnt out and the good refined. Our destiny is in our hands. The love and mercy which created us has no pleasure in our ruin. And if any soul hereafter meet that holiness of God in the form of unquenchable fire, it will be because that soul has refused to meet Him as the power which cleanses.
^| The same pillar of lire which gladdened the ranks of Israel as they camped by the Eed Sea shone baleful and terrible to the Egyptian hosts. The same Ark of the Covenant whose presence blessed the house of Obed-edom, and hallowed Zion, and saved
1 F. E. Marsh, Emblem* <: . 122.
ST. MATTHEW m. n 43
Jerusalem, smote the Philistines, and struck down their bestial gods. Christ and His gospel even here hurt the men whom they do not save.1
IV.
The baptism of fire imparts to the life an unmistakable glow and ardour and enthusiasm. This certainly is one very prominent trait in the life of Jesus Himself. The spirit of holiness in Him included a great zeal in the service of the Father. Once at least it blazed up even fiercely — when the desecration of the Temple had stung Him to the quick, and in wrath He overthrew the money-changers' tables and drove the offenders before Him. But it was not only in an instance so dramatic as this that " the zeal of his Father's house" was apparent in Him. It was the habit of His life and it appears all through. The holy enthusiasm — if we may use the word reverently of Him — in which He had given Himself at the first to the work that brought Him here never flagged during all the years He was engaged in it. Occasionally we see it manifesting itself in short-lived gleams of thankfulness at what has been accomplished for the Kingdom or of anticipation of its future triumph. Of tener it takes the form rather of a quiet, invincible, sustaining power that enables Him to hold on His way. It comforts His heart under the disappointments He meets with, strengthens Him under His heavy burden, and carries Him through all opposition ; so that, because of His zeal for the truth and the kingdom and the glory of God, He did not fail nor was discouraged till He had set judgment in the earth.