every form of energy can be transmuted into fire, and that given fire you can generate any
I. THE BAPTISM WITH FIRE
congregation. We sang a hymn just now, praying that the fire of God might fall in Mildmay Conference Hall to-night. If it does, men and women, if it does, London will be shaken.
6. The next thing that fire does is, fire imparts energy. The men of science tell us that every form of energy can be transmuted into fire, and that given fire you can generate any form of force or energy. When a baptism with fire comes then comes power. That was the principal manifestation at Pentecost. The fire of God fell, and with the energy of that fire men went out from that upper room, and 3,000 people were converted. A man takes me to his factory. He says, "This machinery is the best in the world." He takes me down into the engine-room, and says, "Look at that great engine, it is so many horse-power, and there is power in that engine to move every wheel in this great factory." Then I go back to the factory and I look around. There is nothing doing at all. "It is very strange," I say; "did you not tell me that this was the best machinery in the world for this purpose, and that that engine downstairs could move every wheel in the factory? Well, I notice the connections are all made, and everything is in gear, and the lever is carried the right way, but there is not a wheel moving in all the factory. What is the matter?" "Don't you know?" he says. "Come downstairs, and I will show you," and he takes me down again to the engine-room to the engine, and he throws open the door and says, "Look in there." And lo! there is no fire in the fire-box. I go off to the railway. There is a great engine standing on the rails, and I am told it is the finest engine that was ever turned out from the locomotive works. It can drag a heavily freighted train up a hundred-foot grade. The engine has been coupled on to about half-a-dozen unloaded cars. I look at the engine and say, "What, did you tell me? Can it draw a heavily loaded train up a hundred-foot grade? Then will you please explain something to me? That engine has only six empty cars behind it, the coupling is made, the throttle is open, and yet it is not moving, and cannot pull a car, and yet you say it can pull a hundred. What is the matter?" I am taken on to the engine, and the door of the furnace is thrown open, and when I look in I see there is no fire in the fire-box. That is what is the matter.
Friends, I go into churches to-day, and oh, what beautiful organization I see, what magnificent architecture, what eloquent preaching I hear, what marvelous singing! And yet not a wheel in the whole institution moving for God. What is the matter? There is no fire in the fire-box. What we need today is the fire of God in the fire-box, and thank God the promise is "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire."
7. One thing more about this fire—fire spreads; nothing spreads like fire. I remember hearing some years ago, before I went to live in Chicago, about an old Irish woman, who had a little shanty in the city, with a little shed back of it, in which she kept a cow. And one night she was milking her cow, and the cow suddenly kicked and knocked over her lantern. The lantern fell on a wisp of straw, which caught fire, and set the shed afire. The shed set the shanty afire, and the shanty next to it caught fire, and the shanty next to that, and the one next to that, and soon the fire leaped over the south branch of the Chicago river to the