How then can we become excellent men, like St. Peter? By being baptised, as St. Peter was, with the Holy Ghost and with fire.
Baptized with the Holy Ghost, to put into our hearts good desires; to make us see what is good, and love what is good, long to do good: but baptized with fire also. ‘He shall baptize you,’ John the Baptist said, ‘with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’
Does that seem a hard saying? Do not some at least of you know what that means? Some know, I believe. All will know one day; for it is true for all. To all, sooner or later, Christ comes to baptise them with fire; with the bitter searching affliction which opens the very secrets of their hearts, and shows them what their souls are really like, and parts the good from the evil in them, the gold from the rubbish, the wheat from the chaff. ‘And he shall gather the wheat into his garner, but the chaff he shall burn up with unquenchable fire.’ God grant to each of you, that when that day comes to you, there may be something in you which will stand the fire; something worthy to be treasured up in God’s garner, unto everlasting life.
But do not think that the baptism of fire comes only once for all to a man, in some terrible affliction, some one awful conviction of his own sinfulness and nothingness. No; with many—and those, perhaps, the best people—it goes on month after month, year after year: by secret trials, chastenings which none but they and God can understand, the Lord is cleansing them from their secret faults, and making them to understand wisdom secretly; burning out of them the chaff of self-will and self-conceit and vanity, and leaving only the pure gold of his righteousness. How many sweet and holy souls look cheerful enough before the eyes of man, because they are too humble and too considerate to intrude their secret sorrows upon the world. And yet they have their secret sorrows. They carry their cross unseen all day long, and lie down to sleep on it at night: and they will carry it for years and years, and to their graves, and to the Throne of Christ, before they lay it down: and none but they and Christ will ever know what it was; what was the secret chastisement which he sent to make that soul better, which seemed to us to be already too good for earth. So does the Lord watch his people, and tries them with fire, as the refiner of silver sits by his furnace, watching the melted metal, till he knows that it is purged from all its dross, by seeing the image of his own face reflected in it. God grant that our afflictions may so cleanse our hearts, that at the last Christ may behold himself in us, and us in himself; that so we may be fit to be with him where he is, and behold the glory which his Father gave him before the foundation of the world.
SERMON XIX. ELIJAH
(Tenth Sunday after Trinity.)
1 Kings xxi. 19, 20. And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? and thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine. And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.
Of all the grand personages in the Old Testament, there are few or none, I think, grander than the prophet Elijah. Consider his strange and wild life, wandering about in forests and mountains, suddenly appearing, and suddenly disappearing again, so that no man knew where to find him; and, as Obadiah said when he met him, ‘If I tell my Lord, Behold, Elijah is here; then, as soon as I am gone from thee, the Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee whither I know not.’ Consider, again, his strange activity and strength, as when he goes, forty days and forty nights, far away out of Judea, over the waste wilderness, to Horeb the mount of God; or, as again, when he girds up his loins, and runs before Ahab’s chariot for many miles to the entrance of Jezreel. One can fancy him from what the Bible tells us of him, clearly enough; as a man mysterious and terrible, not merely in the eyes of women and children, but of soldiers and of kings.
He seems to have been especially a countryman; a mountaineer; born and bred in Gilead, among the lofty mountains and vast forests, full of wild beasts, lions and bears, wild bulls and deer, which stretch for many miles along the further side of the river Jordan, with the waste desert of rocks and sand beyond them. A wild man, bred up in a wild country, he had learnt to fear no man, and no thing, but God alone. We do not know what his youth was like; we do not know whether he had wife, or children, or any human being who loved him. Most likely not. He seems to have lived a lonely life, in sad and bad times. He seems to have had but one thought, that his country was going to ruin, from idolatry, tyranny, false and covetous ways; and one determination; to say so; to speak the truth, whatever it cost him. He had found out that the Lord was God, and not Baal, or any of the idols; and he would follow the Lord; and tell all Israel what his own heart had told him, ‘The Lord, he is God,’ was the one thing which he had to say; and he said it, till it became his name; whether given him by his parents, or by the people, his name was Elijah, ‘The Lord is God.’ ‘How long halt ye between two opinions?’ he cries, upon the greatest day of his life. ‘If the Lord be God, then follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.’ How grand he is, on Carmel, throughout that noble chapter which we read last Sunday. There is no fear in him, no doubt in him. The poor wild peasant out of the savage mountains stands up before all Israel, before king, priests, nobles, and people, and speaks and acts as if he, too, were a king; because the Spirit of God is in him: and he is right, and he knows that he is right. And they obey him as if he were a king. Even before the fire comes down from heaven, and shows that God is on his side, from the first they obey him. King Ahab himself obeys him, trembles before him—‘And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim. Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel’s table. So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel.’ The tyrant’s guilty conscience makes a coward of him: and he quails before the wild man out of the mountains, who has not where to lay his head, who stands alone against all the people, though Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, and they eat at the queen’s table; and he only is left and they seek his life:—yet no man dare touch him, not even the king himself. Such power is there, such strength is there, in being an honest and a God-fearing man.
Yes, my friends, this was the secret of Elijah’s power. This is the lesson which Elijah has to teach us. Not to halt between two opinions. If a thing be true, to stand up for it; if a thing be right, to do it, whatsoever it may cost us. Make up your minds then, my friends, to be honest men like Elijah the prophet of old.