THE CONSUMING FIRE
_Our God is a consuming fire_.–HEBREWS xii. 29
Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is
imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy.
For if at the voice of entreaty love conquers displeasure, it is love
asserting itself, not love yielding its claims. It is not love that
grants a boon unwillingly; still less is it love that answers a prayer
to the wrong and hurt of him who prays. Love is one, and love is
changeless.
For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute
loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete,
and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more
lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that
itself may be perfected–not in itself, but in the object. As it was
love that first created humanity, so even human love, in proportion to
its divinity, will go on creating the beautiful for its own outpouring.
There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and
love is ever climbing towards the consummation when such shall be the
universe, imperishable, divine.
Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes
between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed.
And our God is a consuming fire.
By George MacDonald
