who are seeking for spiritual elevation, for intellectual
enlightenment, for the fire of a noble enthusiasm, for the consecration
of pure hearts, anywhere but in Christ your Lord, will you not listen to
the majestic and yet lowly voice, which blends in its tones grave and
loving rebuke, gentle pity, wonder and sorrow at our blindness, earnest
entreaty, and divine authority--'If thou knewest the gift of God, and
who it is that speaketh to thee, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He
would have given thee living water'?

Here are we cold, foul, dark, dead: there is that fire of God able to
cleanse, to enlighten, to give life. How is true contact to be effected
between our great need and His all-sufficient energy? One voice brings
the answer for every Christian soul, '_I_ will send the Comforter.'
Brethren, let us cleave to Him, and in humble faith ask Him to plunge us
into that fiery stream which, for all its fire, is yet a river of water
of life proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. '_He_
shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and in fire.'

III. That fiery baptism quickens and cleanses.

In John's mind, the difference between the two baptisms, his and the
Christ's, expresses accurately the difference between the two ministries
and their effects. As has been truly and beautifully said, he is
conscious of something 'cold and negative' in his own teaching, of which
the water of his baptism is a fit representation. His message is divine
and true, but it is hard: 'Repent, do what you ought, wait for the
Kingdom and its King.' And, when his command has been obeyed, his
disciples come up out of Jordan, at the best but superficially cleansed,
and needing that the process begun in them should be perfected by
mightier powers than any which his message wields. They need more than
that outward washing--they need an inward cleansing; they need more than
the preaching of repentance and morality--they need a gift of life; they
need a new power poured into their souls, the fiery steam of which, as
it rolls along, like a lava current through mountain forests, shall
seize and burn every growth of evil in their natures. They need not
water, but Spirit; not water, but Fire. They need what shall be life to
their truest life, and death to all the death within, that separates
them from the life of God.

So the two main effects expressed here are these: quickening and
cleansing.

Fire gives warmth. We talk about ardent desires