er on, Charrington met William Rainsford,
and the acquaintance ripened into intimacy. 'Do you know what I wish you
would do, Fred?' Rainsford said to him one day. 'I wish, when you are by
yourself, that you would study the third chapter of the Gospel of John!'

'This is a very curious thing,' Charrington said to himself. 'My old
friend, Lord Garvagh, and my new friend, Rainsford, both say exactly the
same thing; and they both profess to be saved.'

Thus doubly challenged, he read the chapter with the closest attention,
and was arrested by the words: '_Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except
a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God!_' 'As I read,' he
says, 'light came into my soul,' and he ever afterwards regarded that
moment as the turning-point of his whole life.

III

Now, what did these men--these and a hundred thousand more--see in the
strange, mysterious words that Jesus spoke to the aged ruler twenty
centuries ago? That is the question, and the question is not a difficult
one to answer.

_A new birth!_ To be _born again_! What can it mean? It can only mean
one thing. 'I wish,' somebody has sung----

I wish that there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all of our poor, selfish grief
Could be dropped, like a shabby old coat, at the door,
And never put on any more.

The words, if they mean anything, mean that there _is_ such a place. A
man _may_ have a fresh start. In describing the greatest change that
took place in his life--the greatest change that can take place in any
man's life--Frank Bullen says: 'I love that description of conversion as
the "_new birth_." No other definition touches the truth of the process
at all. So helpless, so utterly knowledgeless, possessing nothing but
the vague consciousness of life just begun!' Dr. Blund was thinking of
the babes whose first breath he had seen drawn. So innocent; so
pastless! Oh, to begin where they were beginning! Oh, to be _born
again_!'

Dr. Blund cannot begin where they were beginning. He cannot enjoy
again--at any rate in this world--the opportunities of growth and
development that were theirs. But he can be _born again_! He can start
afresh! Dr. Blund made that discovery on his deathbed, and, in talking
of the dead doctor's experience, the young minister made the same
discovery a day or two later. He felt his need; he turned in an agony of