If our Lord had meant by the new birth sincere repentance, or the change of heart that a worldly man undergoes when he becomes a true Christian, He could, I think, at once have made this plain to a sincere inquirer like Nicodemus.

Certain Psalms, such as the twenty-fifth, the fiftyfirst, the eighty-sixth, abound with expressions of sorrow, and aspirations after God and pardon and holiness, which would have indicated to Nicodemus something of the nature of regeneration, if it be the same as conversion, or realizing our sinfulness and God's free grace and mercy.

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Conversion is simply turning,-turning from sin, and turning to God. The Hebrew word answering to it is one of the most common in the Old Testament. It occurs in the fifty-first Psalm, "Sinners shall be converted unto Thee;" and in the short compass of this Psalm, (as well as in many others,) we have all the characteristics of conversion. Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned;" here we have the confession of sin as being an offence against God: "Hide Thy face from my sins;" here is shame and sorrow on account of it: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me;" here is the soul's desire for cleansing and deliverance. Conversion is also a turning to God; and one half of the Psalms abound with expressions indicating such a state of soul; the sixty-third, for instance. "O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee. My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh also longeth after Thee, in a dry and barren land, where no water is."

Here, then, is the doctrine of conversion pervading the whole of a most important book of the Old Testament. Not one Psalm can be realized or understood without it. All more or less imply that the man who lifts up his soul to God in the words they furnish, is turned to God. If, then, our Lord meant simply to direct Nicodemus to seek a new heart, is it likely that He would have expressed so old a truth in such new terms? and when Nicodemus (to

all appearance a sincere inquirer) asks for an explanation, still more strange does it seem that our Lord should have increased the difficulty a thousandfold, by connecting water with the Spirit as a needful element in bringing about such a change.

Take, again, the definition of modern popular divines; Witherspoon's, for example. This writer, who, I think, may very fairly be taken as representing the opinions and expressions of those who symbolize with him, in his work. on Regeneration, evidently considers it to be identical with conversion; for he says (Works, vol. ii. p. 119), “It appears that regeneration, repentance, conversion, call it what you will," &c.

He proceeds shortly after to describe it thus: "The change in regeneration doth properly consist in a strong inward conviction of the vanity of worldly enjoyments of every kind, and a persuasion that the favour and enjoyment of God is infinitely superior to them all."

Can any one doubt but that our Lord, when He said, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," must have meant something over and above this?

The necessity of a thorough change of heart before a sinful or worldly man could abide God's presence, is no mystery. It is a most unpalatable truth to the worldling, not a difficult or a mysterious one. The worldly man does not say with Nicodemus, "How can these things be?" he rather says, "Depart from me, for I desire not the knowledge of Thy ways." It is, in fact, because he understands something of the nature of conversion, that it will separate between him and what he now sets his heart upon, that he forcibly excludes all thoughts of it from his mind.

The writings of at least one great and useful Christian (Chalmers), describe so lucidly the implantation of a new affection; its expulsive power; its persuasive, controlling, transforming efficacy; its giving a new bent to the

whole inner man, that an unconverted man, by reading the sermons of that divine, must understand the nature of conversion.

There is no mystery in conversion, further than the mystery that attaches to the acting of one spirit on another, the Spirit of God on the human heart.

But, in regeneration, if it be the conveyance of Christ's new nature, for the purpose of counteracting and renewing the old nature, there is an inconceivable mystery; for it is the miraculous implanting of that new and holy nature, which is, both in soul and body, the seed of life.

But some persons have interpreted this passage so as to exclude Baptism by water.

They have ventured to say, that when our Lord used the word water; he did not really mean water, but that when He said "Spirit," He meant "Spirit."

They affirm, that when our Lord said, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit," He meant, "Except a man be born of the cleansing Spirit," "the Spirit acting like water." Now, of course, on such a mode of interpretation, the words of the Incarnate Wisdom may be made to mean anything. No Socinian gloss ever more effectually perverted the words of Scripture than this.

And such an interpretation is the more daring, when we consider that in the immediate context of this discourse we have continual reference made to water as the element of Baptism. The two next verses that follow the conclusion of this discourse with Nicodemus are: "After these things came Jesus and His disciples into the land of Judæa; and there He tarried with them, and baptized. And John also was baptizing in Ænon, near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized." Does it not strike you, reader, that the Holy Spirit guided the Apostle to insert these words, in which there is such an unmistakeable allusion to material water, immediately after the discourse with Nicodemus,

for the purpose of guarding Christ's little ones against this falsely spiritual interpretation?

Still it may be asked, "If regeneration were a new thing, the conveyance of a new nature, the peculiar blessing of a new kingdom, why should our Lord have evidently expected some knowledge of it in Nicodemus, as it is clear that He did from His exclamation, Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these things?""

To which we answer, As a master in Israel, (that is, one supposed to be well acquainted both with the Scriptures and the Jewish traditions respecting the Messiah,) Nicodemus had much to prepare him for the doctrine of the new birth.

From what he knew from the Hebrew Scriptures of the first Adam, and the entrance of sin through him into the human family, and its hold upon man's old nature, he should have been ready to welcome, rather than stumble at, the mystery of a new stock from God into which human nature was to be grafted, and by which it was to be renewed.

That the ancient Jews understood their need of this, and that the Messiah should supply this need, is evident from the old Rabbinical proverb, "The mystery of Adam is the mystery of the Messiah."*

And another consideration, to which I think its due weight has never been attached, is decisive.

Our Lord here evidently lays down what is to be the gate, the entrance into His kingdom; a thing that a man has to undergo at the outset; that, just as circumcision was the initiation into Jewish, so this birth of water and

* Our Lord may also have had in view the types of Baptism in the Old Testament and the Baptism of proselytes, which among the Jews was so accounted their new birth, that the very relationships they had had as heathens were supposed to be annulled. According to Chrysostom's exposition, our Lord seems also to reprove a want of faith in God's power to produce it. "What, one may say, has this birth in common with Jewish matters? Tell me, rather, what has it that is not in common with them? For the first created man, and the woman formed from his side, and the barren woman, and the things accomplished by water.... all these proclaimed beforehand, as by a figure, the birth and the purification which were to be."

of the Spirit was to be the initiation into Christian blessings.

This kingdom was formally set up on the day of Pentecost. During the great forty days that our Lord sojourned on earth, we are told that He was speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God; at least, then He gave them the leading outlines of His kingdom. Now He had spoken to Nicodemus some time previously of something which He called "a new birth,-a birth of water and of the Spirit;" being the entrance into His kingdom; but, in the sayings of Christ between His resurrection and ascension, though these were all respecting the kingdom of God, nothing is said, in so many words, of the new birth of water and the Spirit. But, though we do not find any direct mention of it, we do find our Lord ordaining Baptism as the rite of initiation into His kingdom: "Go ye and disciple all nations, baptizing them" (and this is, in the original, equivalent to "Go ye and disciple all nations BY baptizing them") "into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." *

Again, the terms of entrance into the kingdom of God were proclaimed by St. Peter on the day of Pentecost, in these words," Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins." Thus it is all through the record of the Acts of the Apostles, whenever the kingdom of God is extended, mention is expressly made of Baptism as the entrance into it. Nowhere, through the Acts, is the birth of

βαπτίζοντες.] The μαθητευεῖν consists of two parts, - the initiatory, admissory rite, and the subsequent teaching. It is much to be regretted that the rendering of anтevσaтe 'teach' has, in our Bibles, clouded the meaning of these important words. It will be observed, that in our Lord's words, as in the Church, the process of ordinary discipleship is from Baptism to instruction, i.e., admission in infancy to the covenant, and growing up into Tnpeiv závтa, K.T.A.-the exception being, what circumstances rendered so frequent in the early Church, instruction before Baptism, in the case of adults. On this we may also remark, that Baptism, as known to the Jews, included, just as it does in the Acts, (ch. xvi. 15-33,) whole households-wives and children."-Alford on St. Matt. xxviii. 19.