meant, and of what Christ's Baptism was.

Accordingly, all this sounded quite strange and unintelligible to Nicodemus. He could

understand how a man might become other, and so ultimately be other; but how a man

could first be other in order to become other - more than that, needed to be 'born from

above,' in order to 'see the Kingdom of God' - passed alike his experience and his Jewish

learning. Only one possibility of being occurred to him: that given him in his natural

disposition, or as a Jew would have put it, in his original innocency when he first entered

the world. And this - so to express ourselves - he thought aloud.20 But there was another

world of being than that of which Nicodemus thought. That world was the 'Kingdom of

God' in its essential contrariety to the Kingdom of this world, whether in the general

sense of that expression, or even in the special Judaistic sense attaching to the 'Kingdom'

of the Messiah. There was only one gate by which a man could pass into that Kingdom of

God - for that which was of the flesh could ever be only fleshly. Here a man might strive,

as did the Jews, by outward conformity to become, but he would never attain to being.

But that 'Kingdom' was spiritual, and here a man must be in order to become. How was

he to attain that new being? The Baptist had pointed it out in its negative aspect of

repentance and putting away the old by his Baptism of water; and as regarded its positive

aspect he had pointed to Him Who was to baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire. This

was the gate of being through which a man must enter into the Kingdom, which was of

the Messiah, because it was of God and the Messiah was of God, and in that sense 'the

Teache r come from God' - that is, being sent of God, He taught of God by bringing to

God. This but a few who had gone to the Baptist had perceived, or indeed could perceive,

because the Baptist could in his Baptism only convey the negative, not the positive,

aspect of it. And it needed that positive aspect - the being born from above - in order to

see the Kingdom of God. But as to the mystery of this being in order to become - hark!

did he hear the sound of that wind as it swept past the Aliyah? He heard its voice; but he

neither knew whence it came, nor whither it went. So was every one that was born of the

Spirit. You heard the voice of the Spirit Who originated the new being, but the

origination of that new being, or its further development into all that it might and would

become, lay beyond man's observation.

Nicodemus now understood in some measure what entrance into the Kingdom meant; but

its how seemed only involved in greater mystery. That it was such a mystery, unthought

and unimagined in Jewish theology, was a terribly sad manifestation of what the teaching

in Israel was. Yet it had all been told them, as of personal knowledge, by the Baptist and

by Jesus; nay, if they could only have received it, by the whole Old Testament. He

wanted to know the how of these things before he believed them. He believed them not,

though they passed on earth, because he knew not their how. How then could he believe

that how, of which the agency was unseen and in heaven? To that spring of being no one

could ascend but He that had come down from heaven,  21 and Who, to bring to us that

spring of being, had appeared as 'the Son of Man,' the Ideal Man, the embodiment of the

Kingdom of Heaven, and thus the only true Teacher come from God. Or did Nicodemus

think of another Teacher - hitherto their only Teacher, Moses - whom Jewish tradition