In the Messianic forecast found in the third chapter of Malachi, we read, "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple . . . But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness." One of the most interesting features of this remarkable statement is its disclosure of the nature of the redemptive work of divine Truth.
The refining process is always one of separation. It means the wresting of worth from worthlessness, the removal of that which hides and hampers something of value. In human experience it is the end of a seeming but wholly illegitimate, unactual, and impossible association of good and evil. It is Truth's declaration to error, "I never knew you," made effective within the domain of personal consciousness. This Old Testament figure thus immediately coordinates itself with the teaching of the Master when he said, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee . . . and if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee." Elements of present sense or belief which are a hindrance to the spiritual life are to be promptly and unhesitatingly condemned and discarded at whatever cost.
The recognition of all this adds immeasurably to the force and fitness of St. Paul's discussion of the metaphysical aspect of his own personal struggle, as we find it recorded in the seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans. Human sense is here represented not as a passive object of the purifying power of Truth's flame, but as an intelligent participant, at its best, in the corrective process, and the inherent antagonism of truth and error, of good and evil, of the real and the unreal, is strikingly set forth. He says, "That which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. . . . Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me."
