ardent enthusiasm and the like, that we are scarcely aware of using
figurative language. We do not usually ascribe emotion to God, but
surely the deepest and most sacred of the senses in which it is true
that fire is His emblem, is that He is love. His fire is in Zion. He
dwells in His Church, a storehouse of blazing love, heated seventy times
seven hotter than any creatural love, and pouring out its ardours for
the quickening and gladdening of all who walk in the light of that fire,
and thaw their coldness at its blaze.

Then, if so, how comes it that so many Christian Churches are ice-
houses instead of furnaces? How comes it that they who profess to live
in the Zion where this fire flames are themselves so cold? If God's
blazing furnace is in Jerusalem, it should send the thermometer up in
all the houses of the city. But what a strange contradiction it is for
men to be in God's Church, the very focus and centre of His burning
love, and themselves to be almost down below zero in their temperature!
The Christian Church ought to be all aflame in all its members, with the
fire of love kindled and alight from God Himself. Every community of
Christian people ought to radiate warmth and light which it has absorbed
from its present God. Our love ought to answer His, and, being caught
and kindled from that mighty fire, should throw back to its source some
of the heat received, in fervours of reflected love, and should pour the
rest beneficently on all around. Love to God and love to man are
regarded in Christian morals as beams of the same fire, only travelling
in different directions. But what a miserable contrast to such an ideal
the reality in so many of our churches is! A fiery furnace with its
doors hung with icicles is no greater a contradiction and anomaly than a
Christian Church or a single soul, which professes to have been touched
by the infinite loving kindness of God, and yet lives as cold and
unmoved as we do. The 'Lord's fire is in Zion.' Are there any tokens of