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to the common-place. He has his dwelling among current traditions and rules and interpretations, and he will not look beyond them. How can a man be born again except by recur- rence to some improbable natural method ? And Christ's answer is always the same: You must be born again — not in the lower world, but into a higher world ; you must be born again, the Spirit must touch your spirit, and you must leave rule and tradition and interpretations behind you. Morally you must be born again into the Kingdom of the Father, where God is loved and trusted and dealt with at first hand and communed with.
^ Speaking of the writer of the " Eikon Basilike," Carlyle said that he was the most portentously self-righteous mortal ever extant in this planet ; that seemed to say to the Almighty, in place of asking for His grace and mercy, " Oh, Lord, I have attained to such a pitch of heavenly perfection that I fear it is not even in Thy power to make me any better than I am ; but if at the time Thou shouldst find an opportunity for adding a little finish and perfectness to my many excellences I should feel obliged to Thee." ^
5. In religious circles in Jerusalem there was nothing being talked of but the Kingdom of God which John the Baptist had declared to be at hand. And when Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to enter this Kingdom he must be born again, He told him just what John had been telling the whole people. John had assured them that, though the King was in their midst, they must not suppose they were already within His Kingdom by being the children of Abraham. He excommunicated the whole nation, and taught them that it was something different from natural birth that gave admission to God's Kingdom. And just as they had compelled Gentiles to be baptized, and to submit to other, arrangements when they wished to partake of Jewish privileges, so John compelled them to be baptized. The Gentile who wished to become a Jew had to be symbolically born again. He had to be baptized, going down under the cleansing waters, wasliing away his old and defiled life, being buried by baptism, disappear- ing from men's sight as a Gentile, and rising from the water as a new man. He was thus born of water, and this time born, not a Gentile, but a Jew. As the Gentile had to be naturalized and ^ Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle^ ii. 436.
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born again that he might rank as a child of Abraham, and enjoy the external privileges of the Jew, so must the Jew himself be born again if he is to rank as a child of God and to belong to the Kingdom of God. He must submit to the double baptism of water and of the Spirit — of water for the pardon and cleansing of past sin and defilement, of the Spirit for the inspiration of a new and holy life.
TJ The Jewish doctors, it is said, not uncommonly described the Gentile as one who became a little child, who began his life anew, when he was received by baptism into the privileges of their outer court. If so, Nicodemus must have been familiar with the expression ; but it must have been to him, and to most who availed themselves of it, a mere figure of rhetoric — one of tliose counters which pass among religious people, which have a certain value at first, but which become at length so depreciated that they serve no purpose but to impose on those who take and those who give them. However little Mcodemus might know of Jesus, he did know that He was not resorting to figures of rhetoric — that if He spoke of a birth, He meant a birth ; and he must have perceived that what He said did not apply to sinners of the Gentiles, but to him, the religious ruler of the Jews. It was, therefore, a good and healthy sign, a proof of the power of the new Teacher, that he forgot the conventionalisms of the Sanhedrim, and spoke out coarsely and naturally, as a peasant might have done. Our Lord, surely, passed this judgment upon him ; for, instead of rebuking him for his question, He meets it in the most direct manner possible: "Jesus answered. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." The object of Nicodemus in coming to ask Him about His kingdom is still kept prominently forward; but there is a noticeable change in our Lord's words. He had spoken of seeing the Kingdom of God ; He now speaks of entering into it. Each expression may, unquestionably does, involve the other; still they are distinct. To see a kingdom is to have an apprehension of its reality and of its nature ; to enter into a kingdom is to become a subject of it.^
6. Our Lord speaks of the second birth as completed by two agencies, water and the Spirit. To make the one of these merely the symbol of the other is to miss His meaning. The Baptist baptized with water for the remission of sins, but he was always careful to disclaim power to baptize with the Holy Ghost. His 1 IS. D. Maurice. The Gospel of John, 90.