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2 “Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again” (John 3:7), or, as the margin has it. doubtless more correctly, “born from above.’ ✓"V UT of this text and the context come JSjLi at least five great things: A great possi bility. A great mystery. A great phil osophy. A great necessity, and a great simplicity. A Great Possibility. The great possibility is that anyone may be born from above. Such a birth is not confined to the spiritual world. When the caterpillar turns into the butterfly there is a birth from above. It rises into a higher realm. When the seed drops into the earth and the vital force in it takes up the mineral, there is a birth from above. That mineral is lifted into the vegeta ble kingdom. When the ox eats the vegetable, there is another birth from above, for the vege table had been lifted into the animal kingdom, and when man eats the ox and it becomes part of his brain, fibre and nerve, there is another birth from above, from the lower into the high er animal kingdom, and when the Spirit of God touches the soul and causes repentance and faith with the upward look, there is a birth from above, a lifting into the higher spiritual realm one who has heretofore lived in the lower physical, mental and moral merely. There is such a thing, I am sorry to say, as a birth from beneath. There is a going down in the physi, cal, moral and spiritual scale. I saw a man, young, vigorous, strong, bright eye, clear brain, standing side by side with his bride as the pastor pronounced them husband and wife. Sober he was, industrious he was, intellectual he was, prosperous and happy he was. With in less than 15 years afterwards I saw that man standing on the porch of a dilapidated shanty of a building. Unkempt he was, eyes bleared they were, nervous, a-trembling, the wife with her father, the children with their friends, and he, a confirmed, disgraced and apparently hope less drunkard. There had been a birth from beneath, a force that dragged that man down into the lower realm. And we see that going on about us oh, so frequently. And sometimes there is a process like that in the intellectual as well as in the scientific world. There comes a wave of bad literature, the books are bad. The magazines are tinged with evil, the press catches the contagion, and we have a sort of epidemic of sin. I have been meditating lately as T have read one or two books along that line, of the birth from beneath that really came to the scientific world a generation ago. The indication is that there is now a re-action, a prospect of a birth from above. The great scientist, Charles Darwin began life as a Chris tian in faith, intellectually at least. He believ ed the Bible and quoted it with authority. He prayed. He did not hesitate to say that there was a God, and that God had manifested Him self in Jesus Christ. He even thought of the ministry. He gave himself to scientific study. Very carefully, very studiously. He made many very important discoveries, but he never drifted from the fact that there may be a God. But the scientific philosophers about him: Huxley, Spencer, Haeckel,, interpreted his THE GOLDEN AGE FOR WEEK OF OCT. 23 “YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN” A Sermon by Dr. A. C. DIXON, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London teaching without God, and there was born an Agnostic Movement that refused to acknowl edge God. The materialist movement has gone through our colleges and churches and even got into our Sunday schools. And it caught Mr. Darwin in its under-tow. For as he grew older he was frank enough to confess that he had lost all taste for painting, poetry, music and religion. And his son, in his biography, tells us that he had a taste for exciting novels. And the whole scientific world was more or less caught in this under-tow. I am thankful to say that there is a tendency upward now. I am thankful to God that the young men and women of our colleges and the great mass of people who think are looking upward, and be ginning to recognize that back of everything there is a God at work and the God of nature as well as the God of grace is Jesus Christ our Lord. Except a man be born from above he can not see the kingdom of God. lam quite sure that phrase is a Hebreism which means, “born of the cleansing power of the Spirit.” “Ex cept a man be born of the cleansing power of cannot have a vision of God as King at all. Ex cept a man be born of the clenasing power of the Spirit he cannot enter into that kingdom, become a subject of that kingdom, be ruled by that kingdom, advance the interest of that kingdom. There is first the vision of the king dom, and having an experience which makes you a very part of the kingdom. I say then that the great possibility is that any soul can get this vision and this experience. But a greater possibility is that a man like Nico demus can get it; that a religious man, brim ful of religious spirit, one of the officers in the synagogue, saying long prayers, doing relig ious things, every seventh day at least; a Phar isee, careful of the law; and not only a relig ious man, but a moral man, a decent sort of fellow; not only a religious and moral, but a cultured man; every indication that he was a man of the school, a man of education, a man of refinement; not only religious, moral, cul tured, but influential; a ruler of the Jews, a member of the Court; the highest in the land— I say that the wonderful possibility is that a man like that can be lifted to a higher realm still. The Great Mystery. “Born from above.” But how? That is what puzzled Nicodemus. How shall I begin life again? Shall I go back to my mother’s arms? Oh, some of us would like to do that. We would be so glad to wipe out the past and begin with the babyhood, the lullaby, and the prayer at mother’s knee. But that is not it. It is not being born again. It is being born from above. But how? The how of every birth is mysterious, the physical as well as the spiritual. The birth of the butterfly from the caterpillar is juslt as mysterious. The birth from the seed into the stalk and the ear and the full corn is just as mysterious. Life is invisible, we cannot trace it, but we are alive in the mystery. A Great Philosophy. How can we explain the great possibility and the great mystery of the new birth ? You have the philosophy of it in John 3:16. “For,” don’t leave that out. We drop it usually, but it gives us the philosophy of the new birth. “For God so loved.” That is the reason it is possible. That is the reason it is mysterious. God so loved us he does the work himself. There is no power that can help God in pro ducing the new birth. That is his work. The Great Necessity. “Marvel not that ye must be born again.” Marvel at the possibility. Marvel at the mys tery. Marvel even at the philosophy; at God’s love in sending Christ to die for us, and at Christ’s love in dying. It is so infinitely great that we cannot comprehend it. But do not marvel at the necessity. “Ye must be.” If you do not get that vision of God in his king dom you will never enter in as a subject. If you are not lifted from the lower to the higher you will not move along the higher plane through time and eternity. In that discussion of the question “What is Hell?” I noticed one of the writers told us he thinks perhaps hell and heaven may be the same place after all. The same place! He forgot just one scripture: “There is a gulf fixed.” “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.” He forgot that. But the principle he was thinking about is worth re membering, for he says, hell would be heaven to a man in the kingdom of God with Christ enthroned, and heaven itself would be hell to a man self-enthroned and sin-mastered and Jesus Christ reigning about him in all his glory. Marvel not that ye must be or you will not be prepared for heaven. “Ye must be born again, ’ ’ or you will have to live and die on the lower plane of the flesh and self and sin. Let there be no wonder at the necessity. It is just as plain as the sun at noonday. The Great Simplicity. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wil derness.” Notice how Jesus came to the level of Nicodemus. A Jewish Ruler, expert in Bib lical knowledge. He knows every incident in Israelitish history, if he doesn’t know every word of the Old Testament, and the pointings of the passages, and the middle word, the num ber of words, the number of letters and the number of sentences. There is no doubt about his knowledge. And he meets him on the plains of that knowledge that he may lift him up to the higher. You remember that scene in the wilderness when the Israelites were bitten by fiery serpents and were dying by thousands. God said to Moses. Make a piece of brass in the shape of a serpent, place it on a pole in the midst of the camp and whosoever looks at that shall be lifted into health, shall be born from above, shall be lifted out of the region of poison and taken into the region of health and joy. Your part is simple as looking. Your pait gets no credit to you. God does the work when you look. Oh friend cease to philoso phize. Cease to talk of the mystery, as you did when you ate breakfast or luncheon today. You were hungry and ate what you needed and all the philosophers on earth could not ex plain how the bread gave strength, how the (Continued on page 15.)