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phrase as Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit" is no help to us in realising such things. If by "Except a man be born again

our Lord had meant " Except a man believe in Me and rely on My righteousness," He never would have explained so plain a truth by so comparatively obscure a circumlocution as Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit."

If being "born again" be synonymous with any such change as "conversion," or "repentance," or "a new heart," then our Lord's second answer, i.e., His explanation, is more difficult than the matter of which it is the explanation; and the difficulty of course arises from the fact of His having associated in His second answer "water" with the "Holy Spirit" as concurring to produce in a man such a change as Regeneration-if, that is, Regeneration be what it is popularly but wrongly supposed to be.

The more carefully and reverently we consider these words of Christ, the more impossible will it be found to escape the conclusion that our Lord here alludes to some deep mystery-far deeper than any which attaches to the ordinary working of the Holy Spirit on the heart in convincing it of sin or of the need of Christ's righteousness.

This mystery, too, must be connected with the application of the element of water. The "water" here must be literal water, for no reason can be assigned why our Lord should double the difficulty to a sincere inquirer by explaining the single metaphor, being "born again,” by a double metaphor, being "born of water and of the Spirit."

The "water" here alluded to can be no other than that used in the administration of the Sacrament of Baptism If this place contained the only allusion throughout the New Testament to an evangelical work wrought by God

in that Sacrament, then we might have hesitated about the reference to Baptism here: but when we find that in almost every other place where Baptism is mentioned, it is connected with some grace pertaining to salvation, then it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the "water here is that which God has sanctified to the "mystical washing away of sin."

This place is only one out of twelve or more in which things pertaining to salvation are connected with the initiatory Sacrament. In three places, for instance, Baptism is connected with remission of sins (Acts ii. 38, xxii. 16; Eph. v. 26); in three others with Salvation (Mark xvi. 16; Titus iii. 5; 1 Peter iii. 21); in two with a mystical burial with Christ (Rom. vi. 1—4; Col. ii. 12).

Taking these facts into consideration, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that our Lord in these words alludes to some grace or blessing associated with, or to be expected in, Holy Baptism.

Another point beyond dispute is that the water, being a senseless material thing, cannot of itself contribute anything to the New Birth. It can only be regarded as the instrument by which the Holy Spirit works a specific work, or as indicating (by its ritual use) the particular time at which He is pleased to bring about a certain evangelical result.

Our Lord's intention, then, in associating such a thing as "water" as a joint agent with the Holy Spirit in bringing about the New Birth, cannot be mistaken. It behoves us to remember that God must have some wise design in thus connecting inward grace with an outward visible sign, and that we must fall in with His design, and humble ourselves to receive mysteries, and not, out of a false and spurious spirituality, determine to give some

explanation of the New Birth which will, as a rulo, dissever it from Baptism.

The very contrast which we cannot but draw between the worthlessness of the vile element, the water, and the unspeakable greatness of the Other Agent, the Holy Spirit, should make us fear exceedingly lest we proudly set ourselves above Christ, by putting asunder, on rationalistic grounds, things which He has joined together.

It is clear, also, that this birth of "water and of the Spirit" was a mystery unknown to the Fathers of the Old Covenant, as we find no allusion to it in the books of the Old Testament. It must be a New Testament mystery; which it could not be if it were the same as repentance or conversion, both of which terms we find used abundantly in the book of the Old Covenant.

It must be also an entrance into a state, and that state the Kingdom of God, or present Church of God. Now, the things said of the Church, as the mystical body of Christ, are so great and mysterious, that a supernatural birth, as an entrance into it, seems required by the nature of things.

The next place which demands our attention is Mark xvi. 16: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved but he that believeth not shall be damned."

On this place I would only remark, in passing, that, in a system so spiritual as the Christian Religion, in which so very high a position is ascribed to faith, and which stands in such strong contrast with the Jewish system which it superseded in the very matter of ceremonial and typical observance-in such a system this juxtaposition of two such things as "faith" and "baptism" in our Lord's last commission is exceedingly noteworthy. How are we to regard the fact that our blessed Lord Himself Associates the deepest principle of our spiritual nature

with a mere outward rite? We may treat this matter in one of two ways. We may angrily or contemptuously push it aside, as is usually done, and persist in saying that there is no meaning in it, and that those who strive to give some adequate reason for this connexion are selfdeceived formalists; or we may reverently acknowledge the mystery in that God has caused two such different agents to concur, as it were, in bringing about our New Birth, and confess that His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts.

(3.) Acts ii. 38: "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" (to be saved). "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."

So that, in the first Christian sermon ever preached, Remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, are made to depend upon repentance joined with baptism.

So also in Acts xxii. 16 ("Arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins,") the washing away of sin is made to depend upon Baptism as the means in the use of which God first formally imparts it. Ananias, who was sent to St. Paul by the Saviour Himself, does not say, "Believe, and thy sins are forgiven," but he says, "Be baptized, and wash away thy sins." We can scarcely believe that a man who had dim or incorrect views on such a matter as the forgiveness of sin would have been sent to such an one as St. Paul.

(5.) In Romans vi. 1-4, all baptized Christians are said to have died to sin, because Baptism is a co-burial with Christ in His grave, and a resurrection with Him out of His grave.

In no mere figure, but in some mysterious reality,-the tomb of the Saviour is, by means of this holy rite, always open in His Church; so that at the very outset

of our Christian career we are accounted to descend into it in, and with, Him, and to rise again out of it in, and with, Him, and so are accounted to have sacramentally suffered death, the penalty of sin, in Him, and to have been made partakers of the very life by which He lives for ever.

In this sense Baptism is a "death to sin," because it unites the baptized with Christ in His "death to sin," ("He died unto sin once,") and makes him partaker of Christ's risen life; but whether sin be actually mortified in the baptized man, so that he loathes it, and is delivered altogether from its power, is another matter." 1 He is made a partaker of Christ's death and resurrection, in order that he may walk in newness of life.

We have the same teaching respecting Baptism ex

The reader will find a fuller discussion of the meaning and practical application of this passage in my "Second Adam and New Birth," fourth edition, page 93-98.

2 The death to sin here cannot mean a death to sin in the sense of sin being annihilated, or rendered powerless in the person so dead, and for this reason, that a few verses further on St. Paul writes to these very persons who were thus asserted to be "dead to sin" in Baptism, to exhort them not to let sin "reign in their mortal bodies, that they should obey it in the lusts thereof." If sin were dead in them, or if they had died to sin in the sense of being altogether delivered from its presence and power, there would be no sense in writing to them to bid them not to allow sin to reign in them, for in such a case sin, so far from reigning, would scarcely be felt in them. The whole context of the passage shows that the persons thus addressed as dead," were dead sacramentally only [in baptism], and not dead to sin in heart and affection, or they would have needed no exhortations of the sort contained in this chapter. Their sacramental death was a step to the mortification of sin, and a reason why they should mortify sin, not the complete mortification of sin. They were to reckon themselves dead to sin (verse 11) in order that sin might not reign in them 'verse 12).