se kindled by the
inextinguishable blaze of His love who gave Himself for us. 'He shall
baptize you in fire.'

Then, dear brethren, if we profess to have come into personal contact
with Jesus Christ, here is a sharp test for us, and a solemn rebuke to
much of our lives. For a Christian to be cold is sin. Our coldness can
only come from our neglecting to stir up the gift that is in us. People
reproach us with extravagant emotion: let us confess that we have never
deserved that reproach half as much as we ought. The world's ideal of
religion is decorous coldness--has not the world's ideal been our
practice? We are afraid to be fervent, but our true danger is icy
torpor. We sit frost-bitten and almost dead among the snows, and all the
while the gracious sunshine is pouring down, that is able to melt the
white death that covers us, and to free us from the bonds that hold us
prisoned in their benumbing clasp.

No evil is more marked among the Christian Churches of this day than
precisely the absence of this 'spirit of burning.' There is plenty of
liberality and effort, there is much interest in religious questions,
there is genial tolerance and wide culture, there is a high standard of
morality, and, on the whole, a tolerable adherence to it--but there is
little love, and little fervour. 'I have somewhat against thee, that
thou hast left thy first love.'

Where is that Spirit which was poured out on Pentecost? Where are the
cloven tongues of fire, where the flame which Christ died to light up?
Has it burned down to grey ashes, or, like some house-fire, lit and left
untended, has it gone out after a little ineffectual crackling among the
lighter pieces of wood and paper, without ever reaching the solid mass
of obstinate coal? Where? The question is not difficult to answer. His
promise remains faithful. He does send the Spirit, who is fire. But our
sin, our negligence, our eager absorption with worldly cares, and our
withdrawal of mind and heart from the patient contemplation of His
truth, have gone far to quench the Spirit. Is it not so? Are our souls
on fire with the love of God, aglow with the ardour caught from Christ's
love? Does that love which fills our hearts coruscate and flame in our
lives, making us lights in the darkness, as some firebrand caught up
from the hearth will serve for a torch and blaze out into the night? 'He
shall baptize with fire.'

'O Thou that earnest from above,
The pure celestial