best, was but a baptism of repentance, with the quickening power of
the baptism of Him who was to follow him; when he said, 'I indeed
baptise you with water, but He that cometh after me is mightier than
I. He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.' The two
words mean but one thing, the fire being the emblem of the Spirit.

You will remember, too, how our Lord Himself employs the same
metaphor when He speaks about His coming to bring fire on the earth,
and His longing to see it kindled into a beneficent blaze. In this
connection the fire is a symbol of a quick, triumphant energy, which
will transform us into its own likeness. There are two sides to that
emblem: one destructive, one creative; one wrathful, one loving.
There are the fire of love, and the fire of anger. There is the fire
of the sunshine which is the condition of life, as well as the fire
of the lightning which burns and consumes. The emblem of fire is
selected to express the work of the Spirit of God, by reason of its
leaping, triumphant, transforming energy. See, for instance, how,
when you kindle a pile of dead green-wood, the tongues of fire spring
from point to point until they have conquered the whole mass, and
turned it all into a ruddy likeness of the parent flame. And so here,
this fire of God, if it fall upon you, will burn up all your
coldness, and will make you glow with enthusiasm, working your
intellectual convictions in fire not in frost, making your creed a
living power in your lives, and kindling you into a flame of earnest
consecration.

The same idea is expressed by the common phrases of every language.
We speak of the fervour of love, the warmth of affection, the blaze
of enthusiasm, the fire of emotion, the coldness of indifference.
Christians are to be set on fire of God. If the Spirit dwell in us,