You don't know! You have never been
_born again_!'

Such a rebuke smites a minister like the sudden coming of the Day of
Judgment. After his conversion John Wesley wrote a terrible letter to
his old counselor, William Law. 'How will you answer to our common
Lord,' he asks, 'that you, sir, never led me into light? Why did I
scarcely ever hear you name the _name of Christ_? Why did you never urge
me to _faith in His blood_? I beseech you, sir, to consider whether the
true reason of your never pressing this salvation upon me was not
this--_that you never had it yourself_!'

'It was a terrible discovery to make,' says Mr. Begbie. 'To think that
he--Richard Rodwell, Vicar of Bartown--knew so little of the nature of
God that he could say no single word that had significance for this
dying soul! He was dumb. The words on his lips were the words of the
Church. Out of his own heart, out of his own soul, out of his own
experience, he could say nothing.'

'Forgive me,' he said, as he bent over the form on the bed, 'forgive me
for failing you. It is not Christ who has failed; it is I.' He turned to
go. The dying man opened his eyes and looked at Rodwell sadly and
tragically.

'Try to learn what those words mean,' he muttered. '_Born again!_ It's
the bad man's only chance.'

They parted, never to meet again; and from another minister's lips the
doctor learned the secret for which he craved.

II

It is very difficult to excuse Mr. Rodwell, especially when we remember
that the words that the dying doctor found so captivating, and that he
himself found so perplexing, were originally intended to meet just such
cases as that of Dr. Blund.

'What is it to be _born again_? How can a man be _born again_?' asked
the voice from the bed.

'How can a man _be born_ when he is old?' asked Nicodemus, as he heard
the Saviour's words uttered for the first time.

'When he is old!' To Nicodemus, as to Dr. Blund, there was something
singularly attractive about the thought of babyhood, the thought of
pastlessness, the thought of beginning life all over again. But to the
aged ruler, as to the aged doctor, it was an insoluble enigma, an
inscrutable mystery.

'_How?_' asked Nicodemus of the Saviour. '_How_ can a man _be born_ when
he is old?'

'_How?_' asked Dr. Blund of Mr. Rodwell. '_How_ can a man be _born
again_?'

We all feel that, unless the gospel can meet just such cases as these,
we might almost as well have no gospel at all.