with provision for its enmity against God. Eve saw that the forbidden fruit was pleasant to the eye; and this promoted in her heart an inclination to act in independence of God. It is wonderful how the verdict of the eye affects us about everything, and how much that judgment is the fruit of our own state of soul.

Two persons may see the same thing with totally different impressions, but the impression imparted to each is in relation to his own peculiar state and condition before his eye thus acted. One admires, while another turns away pained from beholding the very same scene. The body is the Lord's, and the eye is the Lord's. Either the Spirit of God is using my eye to embrace and survey all that is important for me to see in my course, or the natural mind is using it to furnish materials for its own support; and therefore the “lust of the eye" is classed with the "lust of the flesh," though no man ever thinks that they could be placed together as morally equal. Both link us to the world which is not of the Father, and the "lust of the eye" is even the more dangerous of the two, because least feared or discountenanced, although Scripture abounds with warnings touching the dangers for the eye. Remember the eye sends back a message to the soul corresponding to the power which used it. If the Lord. uses it, then an impression furnishing materials for His will is conveyed to the soul; if my own mind has used it, the impression will, on the contrary, furnish materials for its own promotion, which, to a Christian, is a double loss; for not only does it deprive him of what he might have gained for the Lord, but it acquires for him that which hinders and shuts out his sense of the Father's love. How little do our souls ponder these things and take them to heart!

111

THE NEW BIRTH.*

I DESIRE to meditate a little on the third chapter of the Gospel of John and its connection with some other parts of Scripture, more particularly in reference to the new birth. I desire to do so for the profitable understanding of what the new man is, and the place in which we are set as made partakers of it, as we now are, in Christ. I shall necessarily go over some ground with which Christians are familiar in speaking of such a subject; but this is necessary, in order to connect with it the further developments and distinctions which lead me to treat of the subject.

Many believed in Christ when they saw the miracles which He did; but Jesus did not commit Himself to them. He knew what was in man. (Chap. ii. 23-25.) Their conclusion about Him was a just one; but it was a conclusion drawn by what was in man. It was perfectly worthless; left man in his own nature, and under the motives, influences, and passions to which he was subject before; nor did it take him out of the domain of Satan, who had power over the flesh and the world. The conclusion was right; but it was only a conclusion: the man remained what he was-unchanged. Jesus, who knew what flesh was, had-could have -no confidence in it.

But Nicodemus (chap. iii.), under God's leading, for our instruction goes a step further. The others believed it, and left it there. But where the Spirit of God is at work, it always produces wants in the soul, craving and desire after that which is of God and godly; and so the sense of defect in ourselves. There is at once, instinctively too, the consciousness that the world will be against us; consciousness too of its opposition and scorn. Nicodemus comes by night.

* Published during the absence in Canada of the writer. The responsibility of correcting the proofs rests with the Editor.

There was a want of something better in his soul; but his being a ruler, and especially an ecclesiastical ruler, made it more difficult for him to go to Christ. The dignity of one set to teach is not a facility for going to learn. However, conscience urges him to go, and he goes; the fear of man makes him afraid, and he goes by night. How poor is that dignity which tends to hinder one learning of Christ. Nicodemus, though spiritual craving had led him to Christ, goes on the same ground in his inquiry as those who had no such want at all. Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him." (v. 2.) It was a conclusion drawn from proofs, perfectly just; but that was all. Still he wanted something from Him who showed them; but he took for granted that he was, as a Jew, the child of the kingdom, and would have teaching. The Lord meets him (for he was sincere and known of Him) at once by declaring that the whole ground he was on was wrong. He did not teach flesh, nor had He come to do so. God was setting up a kingdom of His own. To see that, a man must be born again, completely anew. The kingdom was not yet come visibly, not with observation. It was there among them, but to see it a man must have a wholly new nature. Nicodemus, arrested by the language, does not understand how this could be; stops as a human reasoner, though sincere, at the present difficulty; and in truth does not see the kingdom.

But two great truths have been brought out here already. First, God is not teaching and improving man as he is. He sets up a kingdom, a sphere of power and blessing of His own; there He acts. And, secondly, man must have a new nature or life. He must be born again, in order to have to say to God who so works. Flesh cannot even perceive the kingdom. Both facts are of supreme importance. A new divine system is set up where the blessing is—a new nature is needed, in order to have to say to it.

But the Lord does not leave the inquiring Nicodemus here. He shows definitively the way of entering into the kingdom : “A man must be born of water and of the Spirit." (v. 5.) Of the Word and Spirit of God. The word of God-the revelation of God's thoughts-must operate in the power of the Spirit, judging all in man, bringing in God's mind instead of his own, supplanting it by God's, and an absolute new life from God, in which these thoughts have their seat and living reality-a new nature and life. It is not that two births are here,* but two important aspects and realities in being born again. "Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth" (James i. 18); "That He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word" (Eph. v. 26); "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." (John xv. 3.) It is not teaching flesh, which has its own thoughts, but supplanting all its thoughts by God's. We are born of water. Next, it is a nature coming from the Spirit-"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." (John iii. 6.) Everything born follows—is of—the nature of that which begat it. So here. The water acts on man as man; his person is not changed; but the Spirit communicates a new life, which is of itself [the Spirit]-just as flesh's nature is flesh-in that which is born of it. We have now, not flesh taught, but the thoughts of God, operative in power, and the partaking of the divine nature which is imparted by the Spirit. The mind and nature of God vitally communicated to us. This is my life, as mere flesh was before. This clearly opens out the blessing to Gentiles. "Marvel not," said the Lord to Nicodemus, "that I said unto thee, Ye [Jews] must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit." (iii. 7, 8.) The sovereign communication of a new nature (needed by the Jew as much as by the Gentile, when we come to his *"Born of water and of the Spirit." (v. 5.)

nature) as an entirely new thing, a new nature given in which the man thenceforth lives with God, is as applicable to a Gentile as to a Jew. For thus a man, as to his life, is neither [Jew nor Gentile]. "He is born of God." This truth is here not unfolded; only the groundwork is laid down for it. The far deeper truth of the fact of the divine life, and that sovereignly imparted, is what is taught, only the other is directly implied.

This again stops Nicodemus. He does not come forward with, "We know ;" he must be silent, to learn. And now some other truths come out, which associate us with heaven. But first the Lord shows what Nicodemus ought to have known-that as to even earthly promises the testimony of God was clear, that Israel had to be born again-born of water, and of the Spirit. The thirty-sixth chapter of the prophet Ezekiel is clear as to this:

"But I had pity for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the heathen, whither they went. Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall

be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall