end than
John had yet recognized as his mission or object; for obedient love in
the heart of the poorest he healed or persuaded, was his kingdom come.

Again, observe that, when the Pharisees came to John, he said to them,
'Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:' is not this the same
as, 'Repent unto the sending away of your sins'?

Note also, that, when the multitudes came to the prophet, and all, with
the classes most obnoxious to the rest, the publicans and the soldiers,
asked what he would have them do--thus plainly recognizing that
something was required of them--his instruction was throughout in the
same direction: they must send away their sins; and each must begin with
the fault that lay next him. The kingdom of heaven was at hand: they
must prepare the way of the Lord by beginning to do as must be done in
his kingdom.

They could not rid themselves of their sins, but they could set about
sending them away; they could quarrel with them, and proceed to turn
them out of the house: the Lord was on his way to do his part in their
final banishment. Those who had repented to the sending away of their
sins, he would baptize with a holy power to send them away indeed. The
operant will to get rid of them would be baptized with a fire that
should burn them up. When a man breaks with his sins, then the wind of
the Lord's fan will blow them away, the fire of the Lord's heart will
consume them.

I think, then, that the part of the repentant man, and not the part of
God, in the sending away of sins, is intended here. It is the man's one
preparation for receiving the power to overcome them, the baptism of
fire.

Not seldom, what comes in the name of the gospel of Jesus Christ, must
seem, even to one not far from the kingdom of heaven, no good news at
all. It does not draw him; it wakes in him not a single hope. He has no
desire after what it offers him as redemption. The God it gives him news
of, is not one to whom he would draw nearer. But when such a man comes
to see that the very God must be his Life, the heart of his
consciousness; when he perceives that, rousing himself to put from him
what is evil, and do the duty that lies at his door, he may fearlessly
claim the help of him who 'loved him into being,' then his will
immediately sides with his conscience; he begins to try to _be_;
and--first thing toward being--to rid himself of what is antagonistic to
all being, namely _wrong_. Multitudes will not even