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at eJohanna on board the Lynx, he was sent along with a party to assist the Enchantress, which had got ashore. In the subsequent destruction of the vessel there was much confusion. Kicking about the deck, he found some of Spurgeon's sermons. In reading a few sentences casually where the book opened, he met the expression: 'You need not carry your coals to Newcastle/ i.e. you need not bring your righteousness to the righteousness of Christ. He saw his mistake, an3 shortly afterwards found peace and rest on the true foundation." This blacksmith had made the very discovery that was made by Saul of Tarsus, Luther, Wesley, and Dr. Chalmers.^
(1) This new attitude is not required, of course, of such as are already subjects of the change ; and many are so even from their earliest years, having grown up into Christ by the preventing or anticipating grace of their nurture in the Lord, so that they can recollect no time when Christ was not their love, and the currents of their inclination did not run toward His word and His cause. The case, however, of such is no real exception ; and, besides this, there is even no semblance of exception. Intelligence, in fact, is not more necessary to our proper humanity than the second birth of this humanity to its salvation.
The first years of our existence are simply animal ; then the life of a young man is not that of mere instinct, it is a life of passion, with mighty indignations, strong aversions. And then passing on through life we sometimes see a person in whom these things are merged ; the instincts are there only for the support of existence; the passions are so ruled that they have become gentleness, and meekness, and love. Between these two extremes there must have been a middle point, when the life of sense, appetite, and passion, which had ruled, ceased to rule, and was ruled over by the life of the spirit ; that moment, whether it be long or short, whether it come like the rushing mighty wind, or as the slow, gentle zephyr of the spring — whenever that moment was, then was the moment of spiritual regeneration.
•J My conversion to the Lord Jesus might, with propriety, be compared to a mother rousing an infant with a kiss — a simile answering exactly to my experience in recalling it. Nor can I look back to that blessed epoch in my life without magnifying His tender loving-kindness who spared me the doubts, terrors,
* Stewart of Lovedale^ 67.
i6o A NEW BEGINNING
and perplexities through which so many souls have passed ere they tasted " joy and peace in believing." ^
^ There is no outwardly marked act of religious decision in Rainy's youth, except that he was admitted as a communicant in the year 1842 in connection with St. John's congregation, the minister of which at the time was the Rev. Dr. Thomas Brown. He was a notably regular attendant at public worship. But we have merely these outward facts. 'No one now survives who could give any report of his religious impressions at this period and he has himself left no indication of fchem. I venture, however, to recall in this connection a remark he once made to me to the effect that Tolstoi's way of stating the Christian life lacked something of saneness and even his way of exposing sinful life something of wholesomeness, probably because his conversion unfortunately had had to be so violent a reaction. Robert Rainy's decisive religious experience, it may be safely said (if one may so far presume as to characterize it), was not so much a reaction as a realization — that equally genuine and equally evangelical type of conversion (though the word conversion seems inappropriate to describe it) which consists in the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ becoming, and that perhaps not at any special time but with the natural development of mind and heart and will, some- thing personal and something vital. A Christian life thus originated is at once supernatural and normal. It is the Christian life of one who not only has been converted but has been con- verted and become as a little child, with a child's natural trust in its father, a child's sheer happiness in goodness, a child's instinct of recoil from the impure. This was the note of Principal Rainy's religion to the end, and it seems to have been so from the beginning.^
(2) One reason why the new attitude must be entered on by everybody is that it is the entrance into a new order of being. It is the passage from the natural to the spiritual. That fact gives the figure of the "new birth" peculiar appropriateness, though the figure must not be urged too far, or treated literally. The passage from the natural to the spiritual is beyond a man's own effort ; it is accomplished by co-operation with the Spirit of God.
In this world we find a number of creatures which have what is known as animal life. They can work, and feel, and, in a
1 The Life, Labours, and Writings of Caesar Malan, 37. ^ P. 0. Simpson, The Life of Principal Eainy, i. 25.
ST. JOHN III. 5 i6i
fashion, think. They have wills, and certain dispositions, and distinctive characteristics. Every creature that has animal life has a certain nature according to its kind, and determined by its parentage; and this nature which the animal receives from its parents determines from the first the capabilities and sphere of the animal's life. The mole cannot soar in the face of the sun like the eagle ; neither can the bird that comes out of the eagle's egg burrow like the mole. No training can possibly make the tortoise as swift as the antelope, or the antelope as strong as the lion. If a mole began to fly and enjoy the sunlight it must be counted a new kind of creature, and no longer a mole. The very fact of its passing certain limitations shows that another nature has somehow been infused into it. Beyond its own nature no animal can act. You might as well attempt to give the eagle the appearance of the serpent as try to teach it to crawl. Each kind of animal is by its birth endowed with its own nature, fitting it to do certain things, and making other things impossible. So is it with us: we are born with certain faculties and endowments, with a certain nature ; and just as all animals, without receiving any new, individual, supernatural help from God, can act accord- ing to their nature, so can we. We, being human, have a high and richly-endowed animal nature, a nature that leads us not only to eat, drink, sleep, and fight like the lower animals, but also to think and to love, and which, by culture and education, can enjoy a much richer and wider life than the lower creatures. Men need not be in the Kingdom of God in order to do much that is admirable, noble, lovely, because their nature as animals fits them for that. If we were to exist at all as a race of animals superior to all others, then all this is just what must be found in us. Irrespective of any kingdom of God at all, irrespective of any knowledge of God or reference to Him, we have a life in this world, and a nature fitting us for it. And it is this we have by our natural birth, a place among our kind, an animal life. The first man, from whom we all descend, was, as St. Paul profoundly says, " a living soul," that is to say, an animal, a living human being ; but he had not " a quickening spirit," could not give to his children spiritual life and make them children of God.