t they be
set up, not to help the soul, but as some one's endowment, and thus
serve as a fund from which they who need shall be helped.

Thus we all of us, as Christians, have attained a brotherhood in
baptism, whereof no saint possesses more than I or you. For just as
costly as that one was purchased, at the same price was I also
purchased. God has devoted as much toward me as to the greatest
saint, except that _he_ may have employed the treasure better, and
may have a stronger faith than I.

But love is greater than brotherhood, for it extends even to our
enemies, and especially to those who are not worthy of love. For as
faith performs its work where it sees nothing, so also should love
see nothing, and there especially exercise its office where there
appears nothing lovely, but only disaffection and hostility. Where
there is nothing that pleases me I should the more seek to be
pleased. And this spirit should go forth fervently, says St. Peter,
from the whole heart, just as God loved us when we were not worthy of
love.--Now follows further:

_As those who have been born again._ Again we should do this, because
we are not what we were before (he says), but have become new
creatures. This has not come to pass through works, but is a
consequence of the new birth. For thou canst not make the new man,
but he must grow, or be born; as a husbandman cannot make a tree, but
it must grow, itself, out of the earth, and as we certainly do not
become the children of Adam, except as we are born and derive sin
from our parents. So here it cannot come to pass through works that
we should become the children of God, but we must also experience the
new birth. This, therefore, is what the Apostle would say: since ye
then have become new creatures, ye should conduct yourselves
otherwise than ye did, and lead a new life. As ye before lived in
hate, ye are now to walk in love--in all respects the reverse. But
how has the new birth taken place? This, also, follows:

V. 23. _Not of corruptible, but of incorruptible seed, even of the
living word of God which endures for ever._ Through a seed are we
born again, for nothing grows as we see otherwise than through seed.
Did the old birth spring from a seed? then must the new birth also
spring from a seed. But what is this seed? Not flesh and blood! What
then? It is not corruptible, but an eternal word. It is, moreover,
that whereon we live,--food and nourishment. But especially is it th