into his mother's womb, and be born?" There seems to me to be something like scorn, something that sounds as if the "ruler in Israel" was somewhat offended at the strange words which he had heard. But the Lord did not withdraw a syllable, or soften what He had said. On the contrary, with those solemn words which always betoken something extremely weighty and important, He repeated, with a remarkable variation of the expression, what he had said before, "Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." We are not told how Nicodemus received these further startling words. No further answer of his is recorded by St. John, except that he said again, with extreme surprise, "How can these things be?" But we know that he who first came secretly and by night to be taught by our Lord, and whose first lesson in the school of Christ was this startling lesson of Christian baptism, ere long was earnest enough to come forward in the Jewish Council as a defender of Christ from the unjust attacks of the other rulers, and when the Lord was dead

upon the cross, came among the foremost of the mourners, no longer secretly, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight, to embalm His body. The discourse on Christian baptism, spoken to him that night, laid the foundation in him of a brave,

unshrinking faith, which, we may well believe, carried him through the rest of his earthly life, and beyond his earthly life to paradise.

But we must return to our Lord's words, which were spoken as much to us as to Nicodemus, and may by His grace become as blessed to us as they were to him: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."

Now, in the first place, I wish to assure you that our Lord is here speaking of Christian baptism, and of nothing but Christian baptism; and I also wish to assure you, that for a great many hundreds of years after He spoke these words, no Christian ever doubted that He spoke them of Christian baptism. It is, as you know, more than eighteen hundred years since that time, and for fifteen hundred of these years no Christians ever entertained the least doubt that the Lord spoke of Christian baptism, and that the new birth which alone could give any person entrance into the kingdom of heaven was given by water and the Spirit; not without the water, which He ordained that men should use for this sacred purpose; and not without the Spirit, which He would give whensoever that water was duly used for that sacred purpose by men. It was Christ who bound the water and the Spirit together to work this

great work of regenerating souls. If He had given it only by the Spirit without the water, we should never have known for certain who had the gift and who had not. We should be liable to make all sorts of very fatal mistakes about it. Often good and modest and timid people would be thrown into sad trouble and misery because they could not feel sure that they had got it. Still more often, bold people, and self-confident people, and people of hot, enthusiastic minds, would deceive themselves so far as to think that their own fancy, or the heat of their own feelings, was really the working of the Holy Spirit within them. Often people who at one time had felt sure and happy and certain of their new birth of the Holy Spirit, would be thrown back into uneasiness and despair because they found their feelings less easy and their hearts feeling harder, and would vex themselves in the saddest and most melancholy way, thinking that they had either been deceiving themselves before, or, still worse, that the Holy Spirit had been taken away from them again, and so that they were worse, and their case still more hopeless than ever. O brethren, thanks be to God that He has not left us thus to the dominion of mere inward feelings and fancies on such a very important matter as this; but while He alone gives the Holy Spirit of the new birth, and none but He can give it, He yet promises

that His gift of the Holy Spirit shall not fail to go along with the due administration of the water in the sacrament of baptism.

Will any one tell me that he cannot believe that the sprinkling of a little water on the forehead of a child or of a grown person can produce such wonderful effect as to regenerate his soul? No, surely, of itself it cannot. When John the Baptist poured water on the heads of the people who flocked to him in Jordan, that water did not regenerate their souls. But he himself pointed out the difference. I indeed, he said, baptize you with water-nothing but water-but He that cometh after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose, He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.

Will any one still say that he cannot believe that the sprinkling of a little water on the forehead of a child or grown person can have so wonderful effect as to regenerate the soul? What! not if Christ has ordered it, and if God has promised to bind His invisible gift with the visible ordinance? Do you not remember the story of Naaman the Syrian, who came to the prophet Elisha to be cured of his leprosy? Do you not remember how foolish and angry he was when the prophet told him to go and wash in Jordan seven times, and his flesh should come again to him and he should be clean ?-how he

quarrelled, and dissented, and argued, "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean?" And how he turned and went away in a rage? Can you not imagine how he would have disputed and said, "How can water cleanse my leprosy? Have I not washed in water a thousand times? And why should I wash in Jordan, rather than in my own beautiful rivers at Damascus? And why seven times? Why not once? Why not twenty times ?"

But Naaman was wise enough to listen to his servants, when they urged him and said, "My father, if the Prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith unto thee, Wash, and be clean." So he went down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean."

Happy Naaman, who gave up his arguments and his conceit, and his own independent notions, and went and did simply what the Prophet bade him. And happy Nicodemus, who yielded up all his difficulties and objections, and humbly accepted what One greater than Elisha taught him of the new birth of water and the Spirit! And happy we, if we receive the Lord's own