"My heart an altar and Thy Love the flame"

[parthens]

1 Kings 18:38 – “Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed . . . the stones, and the dust . . .”
In the days of Elijah, animal magnetism had gripped Israel in the form of institutionalized Ba’al worship. During the reign of King Ahab, it seemed that error had succeeded in completely reversing Israel’s original purpose — first to overcome the false gods of Egypt, then the false gods of the promised land. This reversal process had begun during Solomon’s reign: his taking strange wives, at first tolerating, then eventually worshiping their gods alongside the God of his father, King David. So King Ahab’s fateful marriage to Phoenician princess Jezebel was only following Solomon’s disastrous example.

“Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God.” (SH 243:27.)

The altar that Elijah built and baptized in water was completely consumed by the fire of God, the heat of which can only be can be compared to that of a nuclear blast in that it de-materialized even its twelve stones and the dust surrounding it. The appearance of the fire of God, the presence that annihilates everything unlike itself, meant also the disappearance of Elijah’s material altar, and this prefigured what Jesus said to the woman at the well, “They that worship God must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.” (John 4:24.)

Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move . . .
The kindling of the heaven-descended Dove,
My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.
— George Croly

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