ook up
to Him we shall rejoice, and in proportion as we rejoice in the Lord
will our religion have tone and power and attractiveness.

(2) St. Paul appeals to the Asiatic Christians not to become something
they are not, or to acquire some spiritual gift that they have not
received, but simply to realize what they already are, and to claim the
privileges of their baptized state. They are already 'adopted as
sons[6].' They have, like the Galatians, received 'the Spirit of
adoption.' The point now is that they should realize and put into
practice what already belongs to them. This mode of appeal is based on
the doctrine--in spite of its many perversions the most valuable
doctrine--of baptismal {85} regeneration. The false method of
appeal--as if careless Christians needed to _become_ sons of God--which
involves a false idea of 'regeneration,' has been so much identified
with popular Protestantism, that I cannot do better than quote some
very apposite remarks by the late Congregationalist teacher, Dr. Dale,
of blessed memory, from his noble commentary on this very epistle to
the Ephesians:--

'This adoption of which Paul speaks is something more than a mere legal
and formal act, conveying certain high prerogatives. We are "called
the sons of God" because we are really made His sons by a new and
supernatural birth. Regeneration is sometimes described as though it
were merely a change in a man's principles of conduct in his character,
his tastes, his habits. The description is theologically false, and
practically most pernicious and misleading. If regeneration were
nothing more than this, we should have to speak of a man as being more
or less regenerate, according to the extent of his moral reformation;
but this would be contrary to the idiom of New Testament thought. That
a great change in the moral region of a man's nature will certainly
follow regeneration is true; this change, however, is not regeneration
itself, but the effect of regeneration; and the moral change which
regeneration produces varies in many ways in different men. In some
the change is immediate, decisive, and apparently complete. In others
it is extremely gradual, and may be for a long time hardly discernible.
In some regenerate men grave sins remain for a time unforsaken, perhaps
unrecognized. Look at these Ephesian Christians. {86} The Apostle has
to tell them that they must put away falsehood and speak the truth;
that they must give u