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 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