for a time, after the reality is past. But God will bring them out in His own good time, perhaps gradually, certainly in the way that is best for you. Let Him do His own work, and be it yours to look after nothing but the new love. This brings me to speak, as I shall do in the briefest manner possible,—

III. Of the manner in which the change, already described, is to be effected.

To maintain that such a change can be manipulated, or officially passed by a priest, in the rite of baptism, is no better than a solemn trifling with the subject. Indeed, so plain is this, that a sober argument, instituted to prove the contrary, is itself a half surrender of the truth. "Born of water and of the Spirit," says our Lord, and the language is a Hebraism, which presents the water as the symbol and the Spirit as the power of the change.

Equally plain is it that the change is not to be effected by waiting for some new creating act of God to be literally passed on the soul. Whoever thinks to compliment the sovereignty of God in that manner, mocks both himself and God. The change, as we have seen, passes only by consent and a free concurrenco with God. God will never demolish a sinner's personality.

As little is it to be accomplished by any mere willing, or change of purpose, apart from God. There must be a change of purpose, a final, total, sweeping change of all purpose, but that of itself will not change the soul's love, least of all will it be a birth of God into the soul. A man can as little drag himself up into a new reigning love, as he can drag a Judas into paradise. Or, if we say nothing of this, how can he execute a change, that consists in the revelation of God, by acting on himself? "Born of God," remember, is the Christian idea, not born of self-exercise; "created anew in Christ Jesus," not selfcreated. You must get beyond your own mere will, else you will find, even though you strain your will to the utmost for a hundred years, that, while to will is present, you perform not. You cannot lift this bondage, or break this chain, or burst open a way into freedom through this barrier, till you can say, "I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord. For the law of the spirit of life hath made me free from the law of sin and death."

The question then recurs, how shall this change be effected? The whole endeavour, I answer, on your part must be Godward. In the first place, you must give up every purpose, end, employment, hope, that conflicts with God and takes you away from Him. Hence what is said in so many forms of self-renunciation. Hence the requirement to forsake all. It is on the ground that, in your life of sin, you are altogether in self-lovecentred in yourself, living for yourself, making a god of your own objects and works. These occupy the soul, fill it, bear rule in it, and God cannot enter. You must make room for God, create a void for Him to fill-die to yourself that Christ may live within.

But this negative work of self-clearing is not enough. There must be a positive reaching after God, an offering up of the soul to Him, that He may come and dwell in it and consecrate it as His temple. For, as certainly as the light will pour into an open window, just so certainly will God reveal Himself in a mind that is opened to His approach. Now, this opening of the mind, this reaching after God, is faith; and hence it is that so much is made of faith. For God is revealed outwardly, in the incarnate life and death of Jesus, in order that He may present Himself in a manner level to our feeling, and quickening to our love, and so encourage that faith by which He may come in to re-establish His presence in us. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Oh, it is there that the true God shines-let Him shine into our hearts! Jesus, if we understand Him, is the true manifestation of God, and He is manifested to be the regenerating power of a new divine life. By His beautiful childhood, by His loving acts and words, by His sorrowful death, God undertakes to impregnate our dead hearts with His love, and so to establish Himself eternally in us. What is said of the Spirit is said of Him, as being also the Spirit of Jesus. For, in highest virtuality, they are one, even as Christ himself declares, when discoursing of the promised Spirit,-"I will come to you.... but ye see me." Receive Him, therefore, as receiving Christ, and Him as the accepted image of God, and this will be your faith, this the regeneration of your love, and this the token of your new connexion with God.

Allow no artificial questions of before and after to detain you here, as debating whether Christ, or the Spirit, or the faith, or the new-born love, must be first. Enough to know that, if youí faith is conditioned by the Spirit, so is the victory of the Spirit conditioned by your faith; that here you have all these mercies streaming upon you, and that nothing effectual can be done till your faith meets them and they are revealed in your faith. Enough to know that, if the faith is to be God's work, it is also to be your act, and it cannot be worked before it is acted. Let Christ also be your help in this acting of faith and this receiving of God, even as He set Himself to give it in His conversation with Nicodemus; going directly on to speak of Himself and the grace brought down to sinners in His person, declaring that, "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." He brings the Divine love down to this most wondrous attitude, the cross, that we may there drop out our sin, and receive into our faith the love the God of love expressed. And therefore it is represented that Christ ever stands before the door and knocks for admission, with a promise that, "if any man open the door (which is faith), He will come in and sup with him." Christianity is God descending to the door to get admission; this is the grand philosophy of the incarnation. God is just what you see Him here; and He comes to be revealed in you as He is presented before you. Thus received, you are born again, born of God. A new love enters-God enters, and eternal life begins.

Shall He enter thus with you? How many of you are there that ought to hear this call? And no one of you is excluded. You may have come hither to-day with no such high intention. Still the call is to you. If you ask who? how many? when? All, I answer, all, and that to-day. Do you not see a glorious simplicity in this truth of regeneration? How beautiful is God in the light of it, how deep in love Christ Jesus and His cross, how close, in all this, come the tenderness and winning grace of your God! No matter if you did not think of receiving Him, are you going to reject Him? Is it nothing to be so exalted, so divinely ennobled? Have you fallen so low that no such greatness can attract you?

Then be it so. Have it as confessed that, when you saw the

true gate open, you would not enter. Go back to your sins. Plunge into your little cares, fall down to your base idols, creep along through the low affinities of your sin, make a covenant with hunger and thirst, and hide it from you, if you can, that you were made for God, made to live in the consciousness of Him, as a mind irradiated by His Spirit, quickened by His life, cleared by His purity. But if you cannot be attracted by this, let it be no wonder, call it no severity, that Christ has not opened heaven to you. No wonder is it to Him, even if it be to you, and therefore He says, whispers it to you kindly, but faithfully, as you turn yourself away, "Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again."

VL

THE PERSONAL LOVE AND LEAD OF CHRIST.

JOHN X. 3-" And He calleth His own sheep by name, and

leadeth them out."

In this parable, Christ is a shepherd, and His people are His flock. And two points, on which the beauty and significance of the parable principally turn, are referred to in the text, which might not be distinctly observed by one who is not acquainted with the peculiar manner of the eastern shepherds. They have, in the first place, a name for every sheep, and every sheep knows its name when it is called. And then the shepherd does not drive the flock, as we commonly speak, but he leads them, going before. To these two points, or to the instruction contained under these two analogies, I now propose to call your attention.

I. "He calleth His own sheep by name." As we have names for dogs and other animals, which they themselves know, so it was with the eastern shepherds and their flocks. This fact is shewn, historically, by many references. It is to this, for example, that Isaiah refers when he represents the Almighty Creator as leading out the starry heavens, like a shepherd leading his flock,-" Lift up your eyes, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: He calleth them all by names.' The shepherd, in this view, is not as one who keeps a hive of bees, knowing well the hive, but never any particular bee in it, but he has a particular recognition of every sheep, has a name for every one, teaches every one to know that name and follow at the call. This also is signified in the words that immediately follow-"The sheep follow Him, for they know His voice,"-words that refer, not so much to the mere tones of His voice, as to the fact that He is able, as a stranger is not, to call the names they are wont to answer as their own.