_REJECTED LOVE_
ISAIAH lxiii. 7-14.
If I refuse the friendship of the Holy One I inevitably invite His
hostility. "_But they rebelled, and vexed His holy Spirit: therefore He
was turned to be their enemy, and He fought against them._"
And so, if I reject the forces of grace I do not turn them from my gate, I
convert them into foes. Malachi teaches me that rejected sunshine becomes
like a burning oven. The Epistle to the Hebrews teaches me that rejected
love becomes "a consuming fire." Holiness nourishes virtue, it withers
vice. If I offer my Lord a tender aspiration, His breath wooes it like the
balmy air of the spring; if I come before Him with the weeds of ignoble
dispositions, He blights them as with the nipping of the frost.
And is it not well, for thee and me, that our Lord is thus fiercely
hostile to our sins? Is not this "consuming fire" the friend of my soul?
May I not pray: Burn on, burn on, pure flame, until all the refuse and
rubbish of my life are utterly consumed; burn on, burn on, until fierce
flame becomes mild light, flinging its genial radiance over a transfigured
desert?