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 Spirit 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 faults, that purpose is not fulfilled.