by natural birth, that we _become_ sons after we
_are_ men, that those who become sons do not include all those
who are lighted by the Light, but consist of so many of that greater
number as receive Him, and that such become sons by a divine act, the
communication of a spiritual life, whereby they are born of God.

The same Apostle, in his Epistles, where the widest love is conjoined
with the most firmly drawn lines of moral demarcation between the
great opposites--life, light, love--death, darkness, hate--contrasts
in the most unmistakable antithesis the sons of God who are known for
such because they do righteousness, and the world which knew not
Christ, nor knows those who, dimly beholding, partially resemble Him.
Nay, he goes further, and says in strange contradiction to the
popular estimate of his character, but in true imitation of that
Incarnate love which hated iniquity, 'In this the children of God are
manifested and the children of the devil'--echoing thus the words of
Him whose pitying tenderness had sometimes to clothe itself in
sharpest words, even as His hand of powerful love had once to grasp
the scourge of small cords. 'If God were your Father, ye would love
Me: ye are of your father, the devil.'

These are but specimens of a whole cycle of Scripture statements
which in every form of necessary implication, and of direct
statement, set forth the principle that he who is born again of the
Spirit, and he only, is a son of God.

Nothing in all this contradicts the belief that all men are the
children of God, inasmuch as they are shaped by His divine hand and
He has breathed into their nostrils the breath of life. They who hold
that sonship is obtained on the condition which these passages seem
to assert, do also rejoice to believe and to preach that the Father's
love broods over every human heart as the dovelike Spirit over the
primeval chaos. They rejoice to proclaim that Christ has come that
all, that each, may receive the adoption of sons. They do not feel
that their message to, nor their hope for, the world is less blessed,
less wide, because while they call on all to come and take the things
that are freely given to them of God, they believe that those only
who do come and take possess the blessing. Every man may become a son
and heir of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

But notwithstanding all the mercies that belong to us all,
notwithstanding the divine beneficence, which, like the air and the
ligh