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Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts by Alexander Maclaren
page 61 of 810 (07%)
spirits to melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross
will come to the top, and you can skim them off. Two powers conquer
my sin: the one is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from
all the guilt of the past; the other is the fiery influence of that
Divine Spirit which makes me pure and clean for all the time to come.
Pray to be kindled with the fire of God.

III. Then once more, take that other metaphor, 'I will pour out of My
Spirit.'

That implies an emblem which is very frequently used, both in the Old
and in the New Testament, viz., the Spirit as water. As our Lord said
to Nicodemus: 'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' The 'water' stands in the same
relation to the 'Spirit' as the 'fire' does in the saying of John the
Baptist already referred to--that is to say, it is simply a symbol or
material emblem of the Spirit. I suppose nobody would say that there
were two baptisms spoken of by John, one of the Holy Ghost and one of
fire,--and I suppose that just in the same way, there are not two
agents of regeneration pointed at in our Lord's words, nor even two
conditions, but that the Spirit is the sole agent, and 'water' is but
a figure to express some aspect of His operations. So that there is
no reference to the water of baptism in the words, and to see such a
reference is to be led astray by sound, and out of a metaphor to
manufacture a miracle.

There are other passages where, in like manner, the Spirit is
compared to a flowing stream, such as, for instance, when our Lord
said, 'He that believeth on Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of
living water,' and when John saw a 'river of water of life proceeding
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