questions are capable of raising in many of us, good-bye to all
chance of being 'great in the sight of the Lord.' We hear a great
deal about the 'blessings of moderation,' the 'dangers of
fanaticism,' and the like. I venture to think that the last thing
which the moral consciousness of England wants today is a
refrigerator, and that what it needs a great deal more than that is,
that all Christian people should be brought face to face with this
plain truth--that their religion has, as an indispensable part of
it, 'a Spirit of burning,' and that if they have not been baptized
in fire, there is little reason to believe that they have been
baptized with the Holy Ghost.

I long that you and myself may be aflame for goodness, may be
enthusiastic over plain morality, and may show that we are so by our
daily life, by our rebuking the opposite, if need be, even if it
take us into Herod's chamber, and make Herodias our enemy for life.

IV. Lastly, observe the final element of greatness in this man-absolute
humility of self-abnegation before Jesus Christ.

There is nothing that I know in biography anywhere more beautiful,
more striking, than the contrast between the two halves of the
character and demeanour of the Baptist; how, on the one side, he
fronts all men undaunted and recognises no superior, and how neither
threats nor flatteries nor anything else will tempt him to step one
inch beyond the limitations of which he is aware, nor to abate one
inch of the claims which he urges; and on the other hand how, like
some tall cedar touched by the lightning's hand, he falls prone
before Jesus Christ and says, 'He must increase, and I must
decrease': 'A man can receive nothing except it be given him of