fire to impart,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart.'

Then there is another thought expressed by this symbol, namely, that
this baptism gives cleansing as well as warmth, or rather gives
cleansing by warmth. Fire purifies. That Spirit, which is fire,
produces holiness in heart and character, by this most chiefly among all
His manifold operations, that He excites the flame of love to God, which
burns our souls clear with its white fervours. This is the Christian
method of making men good,--first, know His love, then believe it, then
love Him back again, and then let that genial heat permeate all your
life, and it will woo forth everywhere blossoms of beauty and fruits of
holiness, that shall clothe the pastures of the wilderness with
gladness. 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 golden 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 cleansing is
superficial, like the water of John's baptism. Moralities and the
externals of religion will wash away the foulness which lies on the
surface, but stains that have sunk deep into the very substance of the
soul, and have dyed every thread in warp and woof to its centre, are not
to be got rid of so. The awful words which our great dramatist puts into
the mouth of the queenly murderess are heavy with the weight of most
solemn truth. After all vain attempts to cleanse away the stains, we,
like her, have to say, 'There's the smell of the blood still--will
these hands ne'er be clean?' No, never; unless there be something
mightier, more inward in its power, than the water with which we can
wash them, some better gospel than 'Repent and reform.' God be thanked,
there is a mightier detergent than all these--even that divine Spiri