and great
was the fall of it."

I do not think it is very hard for any one to tell the kind of birth
he is of. As an individual can tell by looking in a glass, if in no
other way, whether he is black or white, so the professor of religion,
by turning to the Gospel Mirror, can see what kind of a birth he is
of.

I sometimes feel sorry when I think that a child has no control over
its own natural birth. If it is born black and into slavery, poor
little thing, there it has to remain for life, and bear and suffer all
the evils incident to its color and condition. If one is born with
natural deformities which baffle all surgical skill; or with blindness
or deafness past all remedy; we can but pity and weep. True, our
sympathies are aroused, and but for such objects probably the very
purest and noblest springs in our nature would remain forever sealed
with ice.

But, thanks to our God, no such unalterable conditions ever attend
man's spiritual birth. He himself is a party to the covenant under
which every spiritual birth is effected from conception to
parturition. God is one party; and man, in whom the new spiritual
birth is to be effected, is the other party. This I speak in respect
to the divine, heavenly birth. Men are the parties on both sides in
all the other births spoken of in the text. God has nothing to do with
them.

The Jews were nearly all born after these ways. Most of them seem to
have been "born of blood." "We have Abraham to our father." Some were
born of the "will of the flesh," for when the Lord told them the truth
"they took up stones to stone him." These were included among those to
whom he said: "Ye are of your father the devil." The will of the flesh
and the will of the devil in spiritual things is one and the same.
Some among them seem to have been "born of the will of man." There may
have been a good many of this class. When the Lord was teaching in
Jerusalem many asked the question; "Have any of the rulers believed on
him?" Such were the children of the rulers, born of their will.

One fact is true of all these births; no matter how black, or
deformed, or blind, or deaf, all these were spiritually, they were all
born just as they wished to be; and all chose, with comparatively few
exceptions, to remain in the state in which they were born. On the day
of the crucifixion spirits from all classes of births culminated in
the cry: "His blood be on us and our children."

I hope what I have said ma