them out of the house: the Lord was on his way to do his part in their
final banishment. Those who had repented to the sending away of their
sins, he would baptize with a holy power to send them away indeed. The
operant will to get rid of them would be baptized with a fire that
should burn them up. When a man breaks with his sins, then the wind of
the Lord's fan will blow them away, the fire of the Lord's heart will
consume them.

I think, then, that the part of the repentant man, and not the part of
God, in the sending away of sins, is intended here. It is the man's one
preparation for receiving the power to overcome them, the baptism of
fire.

Not seldom, what comes in the name of the gospel of Jesus Christ, must
seem, even to one not far from the kingdom of heaven, no good news at
all. It does not draw him; it wakes in him not a single hope. He has no
desire after what it offers him as redemption. The God it gives him news
of, is not one to whom he would draw nearer. But when such a man comes
to see that the very God must be his Life, the heart of his
consciousness; when he perceives that, rousing himself to put from him
what is evil, and do the duty that lies at his door, he may fearlessly
claim the help of him who 'loved him into being,' then his will
immediately sides with his conscience; he begins to try to _be_;
and--first thing toward being--to rid himself of what is antagonistic to
all being, namely _wrong_. Multitudes will not even approach the
appalling task, the labour and pain of _being_. God is doing his part,
is undergoing the mighty toil of an age-long creation, endowing men with
power to be; but few as yet are those who take up their part, who
respond to the call of God, who will to be, who put forth a divine
effort after real existence. To the many, the spirit of the prophet