have been if Jesus Christ had never been born. Then let us be all that the birth of our Lord signifies on our behalf. It is not enough now to be the offspring of God by just a natural creation; for here is the magnificent overture of new creation, spiritual fatherhood, and joint-heirship with Jesus Christ.

Therefore, whatever it means to be born of water and of the Spirit, that let us learn and have. Doubtless the meaning will prove to be something not less radical and glorious than if all natural impurity, inborn or inbred, were instantly washed away in our baptism of water, and the endless possession of divine truth and heavenly character instantly imparted through the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

II.

THE TWO LIVES.

HE THAT LOVETH HIS LIFE SHALL LOSE IT; AND HE THAT

HATETH HIS LIFE IN THIS WORLD, SHALL KEEP IT UNTO LIFE ETERNAL John xii. 25.

THE TWO LIVES.

THERE is life, which is by its nature temporary. There is the life eternal.

Life, whether animal or vegetable, comes forth in individuals, and disappears only to come forth again in the same way; and thus the species in every instance has a long existence, an age of ages, which is without assignable limits of duration, though the life of the individual may possibly be very short. This indefinite multiplication of limited periods may stand in the immature thought for endless existence; and if you take geologic or historic eras, each of which is distinctly a world by itself, and multiply them indefinitely, the impression of endlessness may be stronger, inasmuch as the elements with which you deal are vaster. But though we may go very far on this road, yet it does not conduct us to our ultimate conception of what is eternal. Time is not the beginning of eternity, nor is

eternity the continuation of time. Time always affirms limited periods, days, months, years, ages, no matter to what extent. Eternity is not made up of parts. It is the negation of all limits. It is absolute duration, and has as much to do with the instant as with the age.

Any life, therefore, which begins and ends, is not eternal, though it should be propagated through all ages. Such life belongs to the creation; and creation is the antithesis of self-existence, as time is the antithesis of eternity. The procession of worlds and ages responds to your inquiring gaze with the voice of the prophet of old: 'I AM hath sent me unto you.' This voice in your soul, and the thought that comes with it of the Being who is the source of all things, whom no exertion can change, whose resources no creation can add to, and no destruction diminish, whose character is the spiritual perfection that can know no development but in the children of his love-this is the testimony, and this the image, of God and of the life eternal. The eternal life, then, is not the creature-life. It is divine-the life of the eternal and ever blessed One.