"The blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

God requires, shall ever require, the past, but to him who puts his trust in the atoning sacrifice of Calvary, he requires only to forgive.

VI

THE CONSUMING FIRE

"Our God is a consuming fire."

Heb. 12:29

This is given as the reason that we should seek for grace to serve God with reverence and awe. The verse is sometimes amended to read, "God out of Christ is a consuming fire." But amendments to the Word of God are not in order. It is our God, the God of the New Testament, who is a consuming fire. What God was, he is forever. The difference between the God of the old covenant and the new is not in character but in revelation. He is the same God, but we know him better. God out of Christ, God in Christ, is a consuming fire.

There were heretics in the early church who distinguished sharply between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. One is a cruel and malign despot, the other is a kind and merciful Father. A similar distinction, though it does not run to the same extreme, is often drawn to-day. We fancy that some change was wrought in the nature, the disposition of God by the life and death of Christ. God learned to love on Calvary. The sternness and hardness of his heart have been softened by the suffering and mediation of his Son. But no change has taken place in him. He has simply revealed himself more clearly, has made known to us more fully the grace which has always dwelt within his heart.

Broadly speaking the Old Testament portrays God's hatred of sin, the New Testament portrays God's love of the sinner. Yet both his love and his hate appear alike in the old covenant and the new. The Old Testament magnifies the law, displays the justice of God; yet the promise of a Saviour was given in the very hour of man's first sin. And the earlier Scripture abounds in gracious invitations and promises that anticipate the most tender and loving words of the Son of Man. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so Jehovah pitieth them that fear him." "Jehovah is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness." "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto Jehovah, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." It is the God of the Old Testament who speaks, the God of Sinai. Then too his nature and his name was love. God does not love men because Jesus died for them; Jesus died for men because God loved them. Because he loved the world, he gave his Son.

The New Testament magnifies the love, displays the grace of God; yet the God of the New Testament too is a consuming fire. The roll of Sinai's thunder is the deep undertone of the gospel. If there were no Sinai with its broken law there would be no need of Calvary with its atoning blood. Love and hate are twin passions in the breast of God. God is re

vealed in Christ, and Christ is always walking the earth in mercy and in judgment. Because of the double nature of his mission he speaks in paradoxes, seems to contradict himself. He said, "I came not to judge the world"; and again, "For judgment came I into this world." The name he bears is Prince of peace, yet he warned his disciples, "Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." What an incongruous figure is this, the Prince of peace coming into the world with sword in hand! We must distinguish between the ultimate purpose and the immediate effect of his coming; the ultimate purpose is peace, the immediate effect is division, strife. He came to turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers; but the immediate effect of his coming was "to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law: and a man's foes shall be they of his own household," a prophecy which is fulfilled in every heathen land to-day. He came to bring Jew and Gentile together, breaking down the wall of partition between them, so making peace. But the immediate effect of his coming was to exasperate the Jew, to kindle afresh the fires of hatred in his breast, so that the Church must leave the fold of Judaism before it could bid welcome to the Gentiles. He came to make peace between man and God; but the immediate effect of his coming was to drive men to that extremity of sin which nailed the Son of God to

the cross. When he spoke to his disciples of the sword, he announced a principle of universal application. Peace is won only through conflict. It is the reward of victory. "He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." The crown is gained by the cross. There is no other way.

Fire plays a large part in the ministry of Jesus. So Malachi foretold. "But who can abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire." So John the Baptist declared, "I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing-floor; and he will gather his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire." And Jesus himself said to his disciples, "I came to cast fire upon the earth," and declared that everyone shall be "salted with fire." Every man shall be put to the test of fire, which shall either purify or destroy. When John saw the risen and exalted Christ in the vision on Patmos, his eyes were as a flame of fire. And when he comes again in the glory of his Father with the holy angels, he shall be revealed "in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God." II Thess. 1:7.

The most terrible pictures of judgment are not painted by the lawgiver or the prophets of the Old Testament, by Moses or David or Isaiah; but by