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are not in place in these meditations. Only it is right that I should say for my own part that not one word above written has been written in forgetfulness of my obligations as a presbyter of the English Church, or with faltering convictions as to the rightness of the language of its sacramental ritual. All the more earnestly would I say, and not least to my brethren in the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, Let nothing, absolutely nothing, be allowed to obscure our sense of the unutterable moral weight of our Redeemer's words in this great passage of St John: "Ye must be born again. So is every one that is born of the Spirit."

William Beveridge, Bishop of St Asaph (1704-1708), was no half-hearted Churchman. Among our elder divines few use language about the holy Sacraments more reverent, I might say more rapturous, than his. Let me close then with a brief extract from his seventythird printed sermon 2: "Christ's Resurrection the Cause of our Regeneration:"

1 I venture to refer to my Outlines of Christian Doctrine, p. 249, etc.

2 Works, ed. 1824, vol. iv., p. 240.

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BEVERIDGE ON REGENERATION.

81

By your care and pains about the things of this world you may perhaps get something in it, and perhaps not, and how much so ever it be, it is nothing at all in comparison of what the children of God all have; 'all things are theirs,' all things that God hath made, and He Himself too that made them. And what can they desire more? There is nothing more for them to desire; and therefore their minds must needs be at rest, and their souls as full as they can hold of all true joy and comfort.

"Who then would not be in the number of these blessed souls? Who would not be regenerate, and made a child of God, if he might? And who may not, if he will? Blessed be God, we are all as yet capable of it, for now that Christ is risen from the dead and exalted at the right hand of God, to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and forgiveness of sins, if we do but apply ourselves to Him and believe and trust on Him for it, His Father will be ours too; He will beget us again in His own likeness, and admit us into the glorious liberty of His own children."

CHAPTER V.

UR last thoughts were given to the work of the Holy Spirit as He effects the New Birth. We considered Him as He deals with Eph. ii. 1. man "dead in trespasses and sins," and brings him into that wonderful "newness of life" in which "henceforth" he Rom. viii. 15. is to "walk by the Spirit," possessing "the Spirit of adoption, in whom we cry, Abba, Father."

Rom. vi. 4.
Gal. v. 25.

"Our quicken'd souls awake and rise
From the long sleep of death;
On heavenly things we fix our eyes,
And praise employs our breath."

In the present chapter I ask my reader to take a step in some sense backward. In studying the work of Regeneration we also studied, by reason of the spiritual connexion of the two things, some of the phenomena of

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Conversion; that wonderful turning about of the inward man which corresponds as nearly as possible in its idea to the great Scripture word Repentance.1 For let it never be forgotten that Repentance means more, very much more, than regret, or even remorse, or even "godly sorrow.' It is a deep, decisive alteration in the attitude of the soul towards God, and His glory, and His claim, and His salvation. "The sinner that repenteth" is the sinner Luke xv. 7-10. that is converted, turned back, brought back from loss to salvation, from the wilderness to the fold, from the far-off land to the Father's home.

This however is by the way.. I was recalling the fact that we have already considered some of the main phenomena of that blessed change which is as to its divine secret and agency New Birth, and as to its human experience Conversion. And thus we take in some sort a step backward to consider now the great initial step of that work as wrought by the

1 Μετάνοια.

? See 2 Cor. vii. 10 for clear proof of this, in a passage full of instruction on the matter.

way.

Spirit, whether for the world or the soul, that step which is called Conviction of Sin. This line of inquiry, however, will not be retrograde in any unreasonable Not seldom a great subject is best studied first by a brief view of its whole, and then by closer attention to its parts. In this chapter and in some subsequent pages we will deal thus with the decisive work of our blessed Life-Giver, looking for His merciful light.

The Scripture which puts prominently forward the convincing work of the Holy Spirit is, I hardly need say, John xvi. 8-11; part of that divine Discourse to which we owe, as we have remembered already, our central revelations about the blessed Spirit's Personality, and about very much of His work. The wording of this particular passage calls of course for most careful study. And so I would not fail to notice two leading features of it; first, that it speaks of the Spirit's convincing work as done in and on "the world," distinguished from the disciples of Jesus; secondly, that it connects that work in the closest way with the Lord

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