we really are helpless. It will on the other hand only quicken us in the diligent and patient work of attention, and research, and comparison, as we use that precious mental faculty which the Lord who made us, and remade us, has given us to be used as in His presence and for Him. And the result will be no mere prolonged uncertainty, as if we were perpetually in fear lest new Scriptural evidence should upset our deepest spiritual certainties. By the grace of God it will be a calm and settled certainty, solid yet developing, the resultant of spiritual simplicity and of the genuine mental discovery and acquisition which such simplicity powerfully assists. It will be a certainty, as to all things of salvation, practically absolute to ourselves. But it will be kept clear of all untenable claims to have prophetic authority over others.1

THE SPIRIT IN SS. JOHN AND PAUL. 69

I have digressed at some length. And I would close my digression with an appeal, all the more earnest after the cautions on which I have ventured, to make the closing verses of 1 Cor. ii., after all, one of our ruling mottoes for all study of the Word of God.

Approaching now some of the great Scriptural passages which discourse of the Holy Spirit and His work, I observe that these are to be found, in the main, in the writings of St John and of St Paul. I propose then to take some such passages from each of these Apostles in turn, and to examine their witness, with a special view always to the spiritual life of myself and of my reader. St Paul's writings will afford us several such passages, mainly from the Roman, Corinthian, Galatian, and Ephesian Epistles. In St John's Gospel we have, above all things, the precious Discourse of the Upper Chamber, but also John xiv.-xvi. passages in the third, seventh, and twentieth chapters. In the First Epistle we have much incidental material. In the Revelation the blessed Spirit appears again and again, and in connexions full of doctrinal and spiritual teaching.

Let us take St John's Gospel first, both because it comes first in the Canon, and because in it, with scarcely any exception, the teaching about the Spirit comes from the very lips of the Son. The passage of passages here is the Paschal Discourse. But some shorter while allimportant, passages precede it, which we now take up, for brief but most reverent meditation on their divine instruction.

The first passage, the only one I can touch John iii. 1-8. at present, is the first part of the conversation with Nicodemus.

"1

How shall I deal with it? First, necessarily, by excluding from the inquiry many extremely interesting subsidiary points. I do not forget, but I must not now consider, the connecting "but," or "now (unaccountably omitted by the Authorized Version), which links the passage to the statements just before. I do not forget, but I must now pass by, the question what precise motive brought Nicodemus to the

THE SPIRIT AND THE NEW BIRTH. 71

Lord, and what led the Lord to speak instantly to him about the kingdom and entrance into it. And indeed I do not forget the weighty importance of the passage in the study of the doctrine of Christian Baptism, to which I cannot doubt reference is made in the word John iii. 5. "water," though I know that much has been thoughtfully said on the other side. But I do not dwell upon this now. Not that I undervalue the momentousness of the question raised; not that I regard the divine Sacrament with feelings other than humble reverence and thankfulness. But I believe that the passage contains elements of truth which have usually received far less attention, certainly in current thought in the Church at large, than the baptismal reference has received, and which yet have the most important bearing on that reference, such that they should help to interpret it rather than it claim to explain them. And these elements I find above all in ver. 8: "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit." "Ye must be born again." Take this sacred utterance up in detail. I. "BORN of the Spirit." Read the phrase as if new, as if in a recently discovered document of the first century. How powerful the term is, how profound! The word is not merely altered, influenced, reformed, reinvigorated. It is born, born again, born from above, touched with a biogenesis which is indeed the impartation of a higher order of life,1 for it is Life Eternal. The man is taken back to a new beginning, set going again under new provisions and conditions of life, stamped with a new spiritual impression, the living family likeness of the sons of God. Would we estimate the weight and fulness of what is meant by this wonderful phrase? Then let us take the New Testament, and examine E.g. Rom. viii., again, under the Spirit's illumination on our spirits, all the many passages where "childhood" and "sonship" of the