human principles had been perverted, so that darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people.[1] And then it was that the Lord so pointedly said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."[2] To be born again is to have those human principles of which we have been treating, brought again into a state of living and orderly activity.
When the Lord came into the world, all the sentiments and affections of true religion had been abandoned, and their restoration was one of the objects for which that advent was undertaken. The civilization of the nations at that period was a gilded rottenness. They had a theology, but it was paganism; they had a religion, but it was selfishness; the one knew nothing of the true God; the other knew nothing of spiritual faith and virtue. The governments were debased by ambition, wantonness, and cruelty; the people were enslaved by pride, ignorance, and vice. Revelation, which is the magnet through which the influences of heaven are brought down to men, had no place among them. Sismondi, speaking of the Roman power at that period, says that "it exhibited all that was shameful and perfidious in man; everything that was atrocious in the abuse of absolute power. Never had the world been astounded with such a variety of enormity and crime; never had so fatal an attack been made upon every virtue which men had been accustomed to hold in reverence. Nature was outraged." This evil power received a check by the establishiment of Christianity, because thereby some of its spiritual sources were arrested.
But every one knows something of the fearful character which Jesus drew of the Jewish nation.[3] The scribes,
- ↑ Isa. lx. 2.
- ↑ John iii. 3.
- ↑ See Matt. xxiii, throughout, and in many other places.
