from its face--was evolving truth upon truth in lovely vision, in
torturing law, never lying, never repenting; and for this will the
patience of God labour while there is yet a human soul whose eyes have
not been opened, whose child-heart has not yet been born in him. For
this one condition of humanity, this simple beholding, has all the
outthinking of God flowed in forms innumerable and changeful from the
foundation of the world; and for this, too, has the divine destruction
been going forth; that his life might be our life, that in us, too,
might dwell that same consuming fire which is essential love.

Let us look at the utterance of the apostle which is crowned with this
lovely terror: "Our God is a consuming fire."

"Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have
grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly
fear, for our God is a consuming fire."--We have received a kingdom
that cannot be moved--whose nature is immovable: let us have grace to
serve the Consuming Fire, our God, with divine fear; not with the fear
that cringes and craves, but with the bowing down of all thoughts, all
delights, all loves before him who is the life of them all, and will
have them all pure. The kingdom he has given us cannot be moved,
because it has nothing weak in it: it is of the eternal world, the
world of being, of truth. We, therefore, must worship him with a fear
pure as the kingdom is unshakeable. He will shake heaven and earth,
that only the unshakeable may remain, (_verse_ 27): he is a consuming
fire, that only that which cannot be consumed may stand forth eternal.
It is the nature of God, so terribly pure that it destroys all that is
not pure as fire, which demands like purity in our worship. He will
have purity. It is not that the fire will burn us if we do not worship
thus; but that the fire will burn us until we worship thus; yea, will