records either of heathen experience or of Christian Revelation, if we allow ourselves thus to judge. Is it nothing to be the subjects of an ordinance instituted by Christ Himself and preserved to us by a Providence eloquent of Divine love? that we have not been left even with a Bible only, to make out what we could of God's purposes towards us and dealings with us, to frame for ourselves our conceptions of Him and to settle for ourselves the relation in which we will place ourselves towards Him, but have been, as it were, prevented with the blessings of goodness'; brought, when we were yet unconscious, within the fold of Christ's Church; shielded and nurtured there during years of incapacity and inexperience; taught, as we were able to bear it, what it most concerned us to know; preoccupied in mind and heart for Christ; above all, so placed and so circumstanced that we might be told with truth and with confidence from the earliest dawn of reason, that we were already the children of God 1 Psalm xxi. 3. one made so by Him; already members of Christ-made so by Him; already inheritors, by right and title, of the very kingdom of Heaven? Place yourselves, but for moment, in imagination, out of the pale of these blessings; imagine yourselves destitute up to this time of the knowledge of God, of Christ, and of Heaven; left to grope your way amongst natural instincts, guesses, and sentiments; left to find out God by searching for Him, or rather to live utterly without Him in the world; and then surely, if you compare this condition with that which is yours, with what you are at the worst, you will see that indeed the figure is no exaggeration; that, in comparison with heathenism, it is no fiction to speak of Christianity itself as Regeneration; that, much as may yet have to be wrought in you before you can enter into the kingdom; great as may be your need of increased faith and hope and love; nay, if even you need that second Regeneration which is the conversion of the baptized sinner to his God; still it is something, something which prophets and righteous men of old would have sold all they had to purchase, to have been once brought within the pale of the covenant, when, in days of earliest childhood, Christ, as it is written, called you to Himself, took you up in His arms, put His hands upon you, and blessed you1. 1 Mark x. 16. |