“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.
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“The man who loves God and is not yet pure, courts the burning of God. Nor is it always torture. The fire shows itself sometimes only as light—still it will be fire of purifying. The consuming fire is just the original, the active form of Purity, that which makes pure, that which is indeed Love, the creative energy of God.
The man whose deeds are evil, fears the burning. But the burning will not come the less that he fears it or denies it. Escape is hopeless, for Love is inexorable. Our God is a consuming fire. The man shall not come out till he has paid the uttermost farthing. If the man resists the burning of God, the consuming fire of Love, a terrible doom awaits him, and its day will come. He who hates the fire of God shall be cast into the outer darkness. What sick dismay shall then seize upon him! For let a man think and care ever so little about God, he does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him; making life a good thing to him. God gives him himself, though the man knows it not. But when God withdraws, when the man feels himself abandoned, then will he listen in agony for the faintest sound of life from the closed door; and if the moan of suffering humanity ever reaches the ear of the outcast of darkness, he will be ready to rush into the very heart of the Consuming Fire to know life once more.”