And yet we have also felt
the force of that persistent and penetrating _How?_

Dr. Blund is no frolic of Mr. Begbie's imagination. Dr. Blund is the
representative of all those--and their name is legion--who, in the
crisis of the soul's secret history, have turned towards the Saviour's
strange saying with the most intense wistfulness and yearning. Let me
cite three instances--each as unlike the others as it could possibly
be--in order to show that all sorts and conditions of men have at some
time felt as Dr. Blund felt in those last hours of his. John Bunyan, the
tinker of Bedford, was born in the _seventeenth_ century; the Duke of
Wellington, soldier and statesman, was born in the _eighteenth_ century;
Frederick Charrington, the London brewer, was born in the _nineteenth_
century. From a great cloud of available witnesses I select these three.

As to John Bunyan, the story of the beginnings of grace in the dreamer's
soul is familiar to us all, but it will do us no harm to hear it from
his own lips once again. 'Upon a day,' he says, 'the good providence of
God called me to Bedford, to work at my calling; and in one of the
streets of that town I came to where there were three or four poor women
sitting in the sun talking about the things of God; and being now
willing to hear them discourse, I drew near to hear what they said; but
I heard, yet understood not; they were far above, out of my reach; for
their talk was about _a new birth_!'

'_Their talk was about a new birth!_'

'_Ye must be born again!_'

'_I heard_,' says Bunyan, '_but I understood not!_'

'At this,' he goes on to say, 'at this I felt my heart begin to shake,
for I saw that in all my thoughts about salvation, _the new birth_ did
never enter into my mind!'

Thus the soul of the sleeper awoke. He walked the streets of Bedford
asking the old, old question, the question of Nicodemus, the question of
Dr. Blund, the question of us all. 'How can a man be _born again_? How
can a man be _born again_?'

From John Bunyan to the Duke of Wellington seems a far cry. But the
transition may not be as drastic as it appears. Dr. W. H. Fitchett, who
has made a special study of the character and achievements of the great
Duke, recently told the story of a remarkable and voluminous
correspondence that took place between Wellington and a young lady named
Miss Jenkins. To this earnest and devout girl, her faith was the biggest
thing in life. She had but one passionate a