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which Christ gives, and that divine forgiveness which Christ brings.
There, and there alone, dear brethren, we can lose all the guilt of our
faultful past, and receive a new and better life which will mould our
future into growing likeness to His great purity. Oh do not resist that
merciful searching fire, which is ready to penetrate our very bones and
marrow, and burn up the seeds of death which lurk in the inmost intents
of the heart! Let Him plunge you into that gracious baptism, as we put
some poor piece of foul clay into the fire, and like it, as you glow you
will whiten, and all the spots will melt away before the conquering
tongues of the cleansing flame. In that furnace, heated seven times
hotter than any earthly power could achieve, they who walk live by the
presence of the Son of Man, and nothing is consumed but the bonds that
held them. His Spirit is fire, and that Spirit of fire is, therefore,
the Spirit of holiness.

But take one warning word in conclusion. The alternative for every man
is to be baptized in the fire or to be consumed by it. The symbol of
which we have been speaking sets forth the double thought of purifying
and destruction. Nothing which we have said as to the former in the
least weakens the completing truth that there is in it an under side of
possible terror. One of the felicities of the emblem is its capacity to
set forth this twofold idea. There is that in the divine nature which
the Bible calls wrath, the necessary displeasure and aversion of holy
love from sin and wrong-doers. There is in the divine procedure even
now and here, the manifestation of that aversion in punishment. 'The
light of Israel becomes a flaming fire.'

I have no panorama of hell to exhibit, and I would speak with all
reticence on matters so awful; but this much, at any rate, is clear,
that the very same revelation of God, thankfully accepted and submitted
to, is the medium of cleansing and the source of joyful life, and,
rejected, becomes the source of sorrow and the occasion of death. Every
man sees that aspect of God's face which he has made himself fit to see.
Every gift of God is to men either a savour of life unto life, or a
savour of death unto death. Most chiefly is this so in regard to Christ
and His gospel, who, though He came not to judge but to save, yet by
reason of that very universal purpose of salvation, becomes a judge in
the act of saving, and a condemnation to those in whom, by their own
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