'He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.'--MATT.
iii. 11
There is no more pathetic figure in Scripture than that of the
forerunner of our Lord. Lonely and ascetic, charged to light against all
the social order of which he was a part, seeing many of his disciples
leave him for another master; then changing the free wilderness for a
prison cell, and tortured by morbid doubts; finally murdered as the
victim of a profligate woman's hate and a profligate man's perverse
sense of honour: he had indeed to bear 'the burden of the Lord.' But
perhaps most pathetic of all is the combination in his character of
gaunt strength and absolute humility. How he confronts these people whom
he had to rebuke, and yet how, in a moment, the flashing eye sinks in
lowest self-abasement before 'Him that cometh after me'! How true,
amidst many temptations, he was to his own description of himself: 'I am
a voice'--nothing more. His sinewy arm was ever pointed to the 'Lamb of
God.' It is given to very few to know so clearly their limits, and to
still fewer--and these, men who keep very near God--to abide so
contentedly within them, and to acquiesce so thankfully in the
brightening glories of One whom self-importance and ambition would
prompt to take for a rival and an enemy.
The words before us signalise at once John's lofty conception of the
worth of his work, and his humble consciousness of its worthlessness as
compared with Christ's. 'I indeed baptize you with water, but He with
fire.' As is the difference between the two elements, so is the
difference between His ministry and mine--the one effecting an outward
cleansing, the other being an inward penetrating power, which shall
search men through and through, and, burning, shall purge away dross and
filth. The text comes in the midst of a triple representation of our
Lord's work in its relation to his, each portion of which ends with the
refrain, 'the fire.' But these three fires have not the same effects.
The first and last destroy, the second cleanses. These are threatenings,
but this is altogether a promise. There is a fire that consumes the
barren tree and the light chaff that is whirled from the threshing-floor
by the wind of His fan; but there is also a fire that, like the genial
heat in some greenhouse, makes even the barren tree glow with blossom
and loads its branches with precious fruit. His coming may kindle fire
that will destroy, but its merciful purpose is to plunge us into that
fiery baptism of the Holy Ghost, whereof the result is cleansing and
life. Looking at the words before us, then, they lead us to think of
that emblem of the Spirit of God, of Christ as bestowing it, and of its
effects on us. I venture to offer a few considerations now on each of
these points.