The words before us signalise at once John’s lofty conception of the worth of his work, and his humble consciousness of its worthlessness as compared with Christ’s.  ’I indeed baptize you with water, but He with fire.’  As is the difference between the two elements, so is the difference between His ministry and mine—­the one effecting an outward cleansing, the other being an inward penetrating power, which shall search men through and through, and, burning, shall purge away dross and filth.  The text comes in the midst of a triple representation of our Lord’s work in its relation to his, each portion of which ends with the refrain, ‘the fire.’  But these three fires have not the same effects.  The first and last destroy, the second cleanses.  These are threatenings, but this is altogether a promise.  There is a fire that consumes the barren tree and the light chaff that is whirled from the threshing-floor by the wind of His fan; but there is also a fire that, like the genial heat in some greenhouse, makes even the barren tree glow with blossom and loads its branches with precious fruit.  His coming may kindle fire that will destroy, but its merciful purpose is to plunge us into that fiery baptism of the Holy Ghost, whereof the result is cleansing and life.  Looking at the words before us, then, they lead us to think of that emblem of the Spirit of God, of Christ as bestowing it, and of its effects on us.  I venture to offer a few considerations now on each of these points.

I. The Holy Spirit is fire.

It would scarcely be necessary to spend any time in illustrating that truth, but for the strange misapprehension of the words of our text which I believe to be not uncommon.  People sometimes read them as if the first portion referred to those who trust in Christ, and who therefore receive the blessings of His sanctifying energy, whilst the latter words, on the other hand, were a threatening against unbelievers.  Now, whatever may be the meaning of the emblem in the preceding and subsequent clauses, it can have but one meaning in our text itself—­and that is, the purifying influence of the Spirit of God.  Baptism with the Holy Ghost is not one thing and baptism with fire another, but the former is the reality of which the latter is the symbol.

It may be worth while to dwell briefly on the force of the emblem, which is often misunderstood.  Fire, then, all over the world has been taken to represent the divine energy.  Even in heathendom, side by side with the worship of light was the worship of fire.  Even that cruel Moloch-worship, with all its abominations rested upon the notion that the swift power and ruddy blaze of fire were symbols of glorious attributes.  Though the thought was darkened and marred, wrongly apprehended and ferociously worked out in ritual, it was a true thought for all that.  And Scripture has from the beginning used it.  It would carry us too far to enumerate the instances which might be adduced.  But we may quote a few.