How then can we become excellent men, like St. Peter?  By being baptised, as St. Peter was, with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

Baptized with the Holy Ghost, to put into our hearts good desires; to make us see what is good, and love what is good, long to do good:  but baptized with fire also.  ‘He shall baptize you,’ John the Baptist said, ‘with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’

Does that seem a hard saying?  Do not some at least of you know what that means?  Some know, I believe.  All will know one day; for it is true for all.  To all, sooner or later, Christ comes to baptise them with fire; with the bitter searching affliction which opens the very secrets of their hearts, and shows them what their souls are really like, and parts the good from the evil in them, the gold from the rubbish, the wheat from the chaff.  ’And he shall gather the wheat into his garner, but the chaff he shall burn up with unquenchable fire.’  God grant to each of you, that when that day comes to you, there may be something in you which will stand the fire; something worthy to be treasured up in God’s garner, unto everlasting life.

But do not think that the baptism of fire comes only once for all to a man, in some terrible affliction, some one awful conviction of his own sinfulness and nothingness.  No; with many—­and those, perhaps, the best people—­it goes on month after month, year after year:  by secret trials, chastenings which none but they and God can understand, the Lord is cleansing them from their secret faults, and making them to understand wisdom secretly; burning out of them the chaff of self-will and self-conceit and vanity, and leaving only the pure gold of his righteousness.  How many sweet and holy souls look cheerful enough before the eyes of man, because they are too humble and too considerate to intrude their secret sorrows upon the world.  And yet they have their secret sorrows.  They carry their cross unseen all day long, and lie down to sleep on it at night:  and they will carry it for years and years, and to their graves, and to the Throne of Christ, before they lay it down:  and none but they and Christ will ever know what it was; what was the secret chastisement which he sent to make that soul better, which seemed to us to be already too good for earth.  So does the Lord watch his people, and tries them with fire, as the refiner of silver sits by his furnace, watching the melted metal, till he knows that it is purged from all its dross, by seeing the image of his own face reflected in it.  God grant that our afflictions may so cleanse our hearts, that at the last Christ may behold himself in us, and us in himself; that so we may be fit to be with him where he is, and behold the glory which his Father gave him before the foundation of the world.

SERMON XIX.  ELIJAH

(Tenth Sunday after Trinity.)

1 Kings xxi. 19, 20.  And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? and thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.  And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?  And he answered, I have found thee:  because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.