Thus thoroughly are the thought and language of John imbued with the conceptions and imagery of the prophet, concerning “that great and dreadful day of the Lord,” the description of which derives all its vividness and terror from the manifest and accepted meaning of fire, as an intense figure of God’s consuming wrath. In the presence of these facts, the supposition is at once incredible and revolting that, into the very midst of the prophet’s tremendous portraiture of that fiery day, with the awe and dread of which he had so successfully striven to fill the imaginations and the hearts of his hearers,—John should have injected, abruptly, and without the shadow of explanation or reason, a phrase, in which the same figure is employed in a sense wholly foreign to that in which it is used by Malachi,—foreign to its ordinary meaning in the Scriptures, and to the whole spirit and tenor of the connection alike of the prophet, and of the baptist. The words of John are, in themselves incapable of being forced into coincidence of meaning. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Here are two distinct affirmations connected by the copulative, “and.” The latter, uttered through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, purports, upon the face of it, to be additional to the former. And the more critically it is examined, the more thoroughly it will be found to vindicate that character. It can not be a mere repetition. It can not be explained as interpreting the first clause. What then does it mean, but to announce a baptism of fire, in addition to the baptism of the Holy Ghost?—a baptism of justice and wrath, as well as one of renewing and grace?