Indeed.") "We must be born again even to see the spiritual kingdom, must
be born of water and the spirit to enter its gates at all. So to his
little audience of disciples Our Lord says it is not an affair of
legislation, of discovery, of which men say, 'Lo here, lo there! but the
kingdom of heaven is _within you._ Why a second birth? This is a second
birth because it must needs supervene at a point where two elements can
work together, the element of an appealing, vitalizing spirit from the
unseen and the element of free human choice. Being of the spirit, it is
the birth into freedom: it is the soul emerging from its prison into the
open air of liberty and light and life." Note the element of free
choice. Our first birth is outside our choice and the gifts are
unconditioned; our second birth, when again we become as little
children, demands our response to the Holy Spirit and our persevering
cooperation with Him to make His influence effectual for ourselves and
for the "communion of saints" and the corporate religion into which the
Spirit also baptizes us. In a recent sermon a bishop of the Episcopal
Church says, "This is the creed of the Church--the Divine Father and
Forgiveness: the Divine Son and Redemption: the Divine Spirit and
Abundant Life. Therefore the Church still insists upon the creation of
moral rectitude and spiritual character as the end and purpose of
religion, aye, as the basic problem underlying all questions relating to
human life--social, industrial, civic, and political. The Church still
preaches the gospel of the Grace of God, the obligation and blessing of
worship, the meaning and virtue of the Christian Sacraments." Also "My
brethren, we shall not be content to criticize and find fault with our
own age and time, but rather we shall pray for the power to see within
its questionings, unrest and discontent--aye, its recklessness and
apparent failures--the strivings of the Spirit of God. But each man has
to voice for himself the conviction of the reality of the spiritual
order and the spiritual life. Therefore, let us believe in and practice
the worship of God, 'praying always' as St. Paul says, 'with all prayer
and supplication in the Spirit,' or as St. Jude says, 'building up
yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.'"

Let us accept this suggestion and try to find in the unrest of our own
time evidences of "the strivings of the Spirit of God," waiting our
perception and respon