your faith, is the true principle, and by that the whole lifestate of the church on earth always has been, always will be graduated. Increase our faith, then, Lord! be this our prayer.

That prayer, I believe, is yet to be heard. After we have gone through all the rounds of science, speculation, dialectic cavil, and wise unbelief, we shall do what they did not even in the apostolic times, we shall begin to settle conceptions of faith that will allow us, and all the ages to come, to stand fast in it and do it honor. And then God will pour himself into the church again, I know not in what gifts. Faith will then be no horseman out upon the plain, but will have a citadel manned and defended, whence no power of man can ever dislodge it again. Faith will be as much stronger now than science, as it is higher and more diffusive. And now the reign of God is established. Christ is now the creed, and the whole church of God is in it, fulfilling the work of faith with power.

VI.

REGENERATION.

JOHN iii. 3.—"Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God."

THIS very peculiar expression, born again, is a phrase that was generated historically in the political state, then taken up by Christ, and appropriated figuratively to the spiritual use in which we find it. Thus foreigners, or Gentiles, were regarded by the Jewish people as unclean. Therefore, if any Gentile man wanted to become a Jewish citizen, he was baptized with water, in connection with other appropriate ceremonies, and so, being cleansed, was admitted to be a true son of Abraham. It was as if he had been born, a second time, of the stock of Abraham; and becoming, in this manner, a native Jew, as related to the Jewish state, he was said, in form of law, to be born again. Our term naturalization signifies essentially the same thing; viz., that the subject is made to be a natural born American, or, in the eye of the law, a native citizen. Finding this Jewish ceremony on foot, and familiarly known, Christ takes advantage of it, (and the more naturally that a person so regenerated was, by the supposition, entered, religiously, into the covenant of Abraham,) as affording a good analogy, and a good form of expression, to represent the naturalization of a soul in the kingdom of heaven. Regarding us, in our common state under sin,

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as aliens, or foreigners, and not citizens in the kingdom: unclean in a deeper than ceremonial and political sense; he says, in a manner most emphatic,-Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God. And again,-Marvel not that I said unto you, ye must be born again. In this language, so employed, he gives us to understand that no man can ever be accepted before God, or entered into the kingdom of the glorified, who is not cleansed by a spiritual transformation, in that manner born of God, and so made native in the kingdom. He does not leave us to suppose that he is speaking merely of a ceremonial cleansing. He only takes the water by the way, as a symbol, and adds the Spirit as the real cleansing power;-Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

I propose, now, a deliberate examination of this great subject, hoping to present such a view of it as will command the respect of any thoughtful person, whatever may have been his previous difficulties and objections. My object will be to unfold the scripture doctrine, in a way to make it clear, not doubting that, when it is intelligibly shown, it will also prove itself to be soundly intelligent, and will so command our assent, as a proper truth of sal vation. I believe, also, that many minds are confused, to such a degree, in their notions of this subject, as must fatally hinder them, in their efforts to enter the gate which it opens.

I call your attention specially to three points:

I. That Christ requires of all mankind, without distinction

some great and important change, as the necessary con dition of their salvation.

II. The nature and definition of this change.

III. The manner in which it is, and is to be, effected.

I. That Christ requires of all some great and important change.

He does not, of course, require it of such as are already subjects of the change, and many are so even from their earliest years; having grown up into Christ by the preventing or anticipating grace of their nurture in the Lord; so that they can recollect no time, when Christ was not their love, and the currents of their inclination did not run toward his word and his cause. The case, however, of such is no real exception; and, besides this, there is even no semblance of exception. Intelligence, in fact, is not more necessary to our proper humanity, than the second birth of this humanity, as Christ speaks, to its salvation. Many can not believe, or admit any such doctrine. It savors of hardness, they imagine, or undue severity, and does not correspond with what they think they see, in the examples of natural character among men. There is too much amiability and integrity, too much of exactness and even of scrupulousness in duty, to allow any such sweeping requirement, or the supposition of any such universal necessity. How can it be said or imagined that so many moral, honorable, lovely, beneficent and habitually reverent persons need to be radically and fundamentally changed in character, before they can be saved?

That, according to Christ, depends on the question whether "the one thing" is really lacking in them or not. If it be, not even the fact that he can look upon them

with love will, at all, modify his requirement. This is the word of Christ, this his new testament still,-regeneration universal regeneration, thus salvation.

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We can see too, for ourselves, that Christianity is based on the fact of this necessity. It is not any doctrine of development, or self-culture; no scheme of ethical practice, or social re-organization; but it is a salvation; a power moving on fallen humanity from above its level, to regenerate and so to save. The whole fabric is absurd therefore, unless there was something to be done in man and for him that required a supernatural intervention. can see too, at a glance, that the style of the transaction is supernatural, from the incarnate appearing onward. Were it otherwise, were Christianity a merely natural and earthly product, then it were only a fungus growing out of the world, and, with all its high pretensions, could have nothing more to do for the world, than any other fungus for the heap on which it grows. The very name, Jesus, is a false pretense, unless he has something to do for the race, which the race can not do for itself; something regenerative and new-creative; something fitly called a salvation.

But how can we imagine, some of you will ask, that God is going to stand upon any such definite and rigid terms with us? Is he not a more liberal being and capable of doing better things? Since he is very good and very great, and we are very weak and very much under the law of circumstances, is it not more rational to suppose that he will find some way to save us, and that, if we do not come into any such particular terms of life, it will be about as well? May we not safely risk the consequences? It ought to be a sufficient answer to all such suggestions,