* W. H. Fitchett Weslev and Ms Century 281.
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them a right spirit, they bear testimony to it as the most indubitable and blessed fact of their life. Let there be no mistake about it ; that penitent men are turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, is one of the best authenticated facts in the history of the race.
^ There are a great many things that I cannot explain and cannot reason out, and yet that I believe. I heard a commercial traveller say that he had heard that the ministry and religion of Jesus Christ were matters of revelation and not of investigation. " When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me," says St. Paul (Gal. i. 15, 16). There was a party of young men together, going up the country ; and on their journey they made up their minds not to believe anything they could not reason out. An old man heard them, and presently he said, " I heard you say you would not believe anything you could not reason out." *' Yes," they said, " that is so." " Well," he said, " coming down on the train to-day, I noticed some geese, some sheep, some swine, and some cattle, all eating grass. Can you tell me by what process that same grass was turned into hair, feathers, bristles, and wool ? Do you believe it is a fact ? " " Oh yes," they said, " we cannot help believing that, though we fail to understand it." "Well," said the old man, " I cannot help believing in Jesus Christ. And I cannot help believing in the regeneration of man, when I see men who have been reclaimed, when I see men who have been reformed." ^
4. Let us remember the occasion upon which the words were spoken. Our Lord at the very beginning of His ministry exercised His vital powers to heal those who were sick with all manner of diseases ; and this He did in order to manifest His sympathy with human suffering, to win confidence for Himself and His message, to illustrate the operations of grace in renewing the life and vigour of the soul, and to reveal in liviug form, by prophecy, the coming time when the former things shall have passed away, and no one shall ever again know pain, and cry out, " I am sick ! "
His works of healing not only touched the people but moved thoughtful men very deeply. One of them, a member of the Great Council, came to Him for more light. He came alone, secretly, in the night. He was no coward. He was not yet convinced, not yet ready to commit himself. He had much to
1 D. L. Moody, The Way to God, 45.
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A NEW BEGINNING
sacrifice should he become a disciple of this young Rabbi. Not until he could be sure that he had more to gain than to lose would he be able to decide. At last, when all had forsaken Him and fled, it was this unknown follower of Jesus who was ready to perform the sacred rites of burial.
His words, as he first spoke, were these: "Eabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God ; for no man can do these signs which thou doest, except God be with him." Jesus immediately replied, not to these words, but to the inmost thought of the man, which had moved him to seek His presence and turn a listening ear to His teachings : " Except a man be born anew, he cannot so much as perceive the kingdom of God." Nicodemus confessed that he could not understand, and then strove to draw the Master out : " Surely one cannot return to the single, throbbing cell of life, and grow, and be born anew ? Thou dost not speak words that have their ordinary meanings; what, then, dost Thou mean by the use of them ? " Then Jesus explained : " That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." By the word " flesh " Jesus evidently meant our nature as it comes into the world by the first birth, therefore what the Apostle calls the "natural"; for He sets the flesh over against the spirit as the Apostle sets the natural over against the spiritual. A man, therefore, who comes / into the world in the fulness of human nature, made in the image of God, and after His likeness, must pass through a change which is really a birth anew. And this is but the quickening life, the inspiring breath of the Divine Spirit, which, confluent with his own spirit, gives him life abundantly. The growth and progress of man, then, made in God's image and after His likeness, into His full, complete, glorious, blessed likeness, involves a transition which may be called a birth anew.
Now one thing that strikes us about Christ's conversation with Nicodemus is its representative character. The situation •i is always recurring wherever the call to higher truth comes face ' to face with mere traditional teaching or hereditary precept. Nicodemus is always with us in one shape or another. He is the embodiment of religious conventionalism and social respecta- bility. He is always ready with his rationalistic efforts at solving spiritual mysteries ; he is always trying to reduce the mysterious