various
offices of communication.

1. _The Spirit of Life: Our Regeneration_. Not until our Lord took
his place at God's right hand did he assume his full prerogative as
life-giver to us. He was here in the flesh for our death; he took on
him our nature that he might in himself crucify our Adam-life and put
it away. But when he rose from the dead and sat down on his Father's
throne, he became the life-giver to all his mystical body, which is the
church. To talk of being saved by the earthly life of Jesus is to know
Christ only "after the flesh." True, the apostle says that "being
reconciled" by Christ's death, "much more being reconciled we shall be
saved by his life." But he here refers plainly to his glorified life.
And Jesus, looking forward to the time when he should have risen from
the dead, says: "Because I live, ye shall live also." Christ on the
throne is really the heart of the church, and every regeneration is a
pulse-beat of that heart in souls begotten from above {101} through the
Holy Spirit. The new birth therefore is not a change of nature as it
is sometimes defined; it is rather the communication of the Divine
nature, and the Holy Spirit is now the Mediator through whom this life
is transmitted. If we take our Lord's words to Nicodemus: "Except a
man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," and press the
"again" _anothen_ back to its deepest significance, it becomes very
instructive. "Born _from above_," say some. And very true to fact is
this saying. Regeneration is not our natural life carried up to its
highest point of attainment, but the Divine life brought down to its
lowest point of condescension, even to the heart of fallen man. John,
in speaking of Jesus as the life-giver, calls him "_he that cometh from
above_" (3: 31); and Jesus, in speaking to the degenerate sons of
Abraham, says: "Ye are _from beneath_, I am _from above_" (John 8: 23).
It has been the constant dream and delusion of men that they could rise
to heaven by the development and improvement of their natural life.
Jesus by one stroke of revelation destroys this hope, telling his
hearer that unless he has been begotten of God who is above as truly as
he has been begotten of his father on earth, he cannot see the kingdom
of God.

Others make these words of our Lord signify "born _from the
beginning_." There must be a resumption of life _de novo_, a return to
the original {102} source and fountain of being. To