youth who knew little or nothing of such deep expressions; he must be moved from the side of his property. The master in Israel must be met in his own sphere, and talked to in his own language; the worldling must be met in the midst of his estates, and talked to in the language of the market-place. The conclusion will be the same in both cases. Nicodemus, when born again, will be willing to sell all that he has, and the young man, when he has sold all his property, will be born again. This circumstance shows the necessity of discrimination in preaching the Gospel. Christ addressed men in different ways; the Church has a few stereotyped directions for all. How many of the Evangelical preachers in England dare tell a rich young man that he must sell and distribute all his property as the condition of his entrance into eternal life? The man who did so would be marked as a legalist, though he would be a most Christ-like preacher. There are some who aspire to be more orthodox than Christ himself; who, by insisting upon one set of technicalities, throw many inquirers into despair, and clothe many a plain truth with mystery.

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Take the matter of being "born again :" Christ did not use such words to the common multitude, but specially to a master in Israel." He never used them again, so far as we can learn from the narrative; yet, because he used them in such an exceptional case, thousands of preachers perplex promiscuous congregations with them every Sunday. To a master in Israel they were precisely adapted, yet it does not follow that a direction given to a learned man in a private interview is to be proclaimed to the common

multitude. Nicodemus was accustomed to metaphysical inquiry; his faculties were trained to analysis; and though he might start at this profoundly spiritual answer, given by a man whom he had distinctively known as a mighty worker, yet he could meditate upon it as in harmony with the genius and bent of his whole intellectual life. That life it immediately assailed not the man's character, but the man's mental habitudes and moral purposes. His inner life must start from a new point; so radical a change must he undergo, that no figure can so expressively denote it as a new birth.

This reference to regeneration opens the question of original sin. Many inquirers find it difficult to believe themselves innately bad, simply because they have been told that such a belief is required of them. No man taught the doctrine of original sin, commonly so called, so impressively as Jesus Christ, and yet he never mentioned it! His whole scheme was founded upon the assumption that men were wrong. Every call to a new point, every frown upon sin, every encouragement of well-doing, meant that society needed regeneration. Men may come upon the doctrine of original depravity in one of two different ways; for example, they may come upon it as a dogma in theology. The first thing that some theologians do is to abuse human nature, to describe it as being covered with wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, and as deserving nothing but eternal burning. Human nature resists this as a slander: it says, "No; I have good impulses, upward desires, generous emotions towards my fellowcreatures; I resent your theological calumnies." So

much for the first method of approaching the doctrine. The second is totally unlike it. A man, for example, heartily accepts Jesus Christ, studies him with most passionate devotion, and grows daily more like him in all purity, gentleness, and self-oblivion. From this altitude he looks back upon his former self; he compares the human nature with which he started, with the human nature he has attained, and involuntarily, by the sheer necessity of the contrast, he says, "I was born in sin and shapen in iniquity." This conclusion he comes to, not by dogmatic teaching, but by dogmatic experience; what he never could have understood as an opinion he realizes as a fact.

Suppose a tree to be conscious, and let it illustrate what is meant by growing into a right understanding of this hard doctrine. Tell the tree in April that it is bare and ungainly in appearance; very barren and naked altogether. The tree says, "Nay: I am rooted in the earth; my branches are strong; I live in the light; I drink the dew; and I am beautiful; the winds rock me, and many a bird twitters on my boughs." This is its April creed. Go to the same tree after it has had a summer's experience; it has felt the quickening penetration of the solar fire, quenched its thirst in summer showers, felt the sap circulating through its veins; the leaves have come out on branch and twig, the blossoms have blushed and bloomed through long days of light; fruit has been formed, and mellowed into maturity. Now hear the tree! "I am not what I was in April; my very identity seems to be changed; when men called me bare and rugged I did not believe them a few months ago; now I see what

they meant their verdict was sound: I thought the April light very beautiful, but it is nothing to the blazing splendor of the later months; I liked the twitter of the spring birds, but it is poor compared with the song of those that came in June: I feel as if I had been born again." The parable is broad enough to cover this bewildering, and at times horrifying, doctrine of hereditary depravity. Men cannot be in April what they will be in September. Each year says to growing hearts, "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." In old age men may accept the rejected doctrines of their youth. Experience brings us round many a rugged hill, and gives us better views of condemned, because misunderstood, opinions. The point to be observed by all teachers of Jesus Christ's doctrine is, that it is unnecessary to force recondite theological dogmas upon those who approach the kingdom of heaven. Let them enter the kingdom on the sole ground of their love to the King, and their subsequent life may be devoted to doctrinal study. Jesus Christ was constantly correcting the errors of his immediate followers, yet they were his followers, notwithstanding their errors. Where love is ardent, knowledge will be attained by experience.

We have thus seen Christ calling men and Christ rejecting men. This discrimination gives a hint of the quality of the society which he aims to establish. Can he keep those whom he has called?

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CHAPTER IX.

THE CHURCH.

FOR what purpose did Christ call men? Were

they to be his body-guard during his presence upon earth, and to be disbanded after his ascension? or were they to be confederated into a perpetual memorial of his earthly mission? This brings us to an analysis of the ecclesiastical idea.

The men who obeyed the call were classified under a special and most sacred designation. They were first known as "My disciples;" long afterwards "believers," "saints," "Christians" became synonymous and interchangeable terms, the whole of them being frequently expressed by one word, church. This was a confederation of hearts, founded on a purely moral basis, subsisting continually upon a deep love for the Christ who had called them to his fellowship. The root idea of the church is that of a particular relation of man to man, originated by a common relation to Jesus Christ. When men are ardently attached to their native country, they are related to one another as compatriots, though they may differ upon every question in political science. It is the same in the church; attachment to Jesus Christ is everything; the widest differences upon theology may exist, but no doctrinal heresy can break up the vital and eternal union of