th
embrace me" (Song Sol. ii. 4, 6). Thank God we can come under the
banner to-day if we will. Any, poor sinner can come under that banner
to-day. His banner of love is over us. Blessed Gospel; blessed,
precious, news. Believe it to-day; receive it into your heart; and
enter into a new life. Let the love of God be shed abroad in your
heart by the Holy Ghost to-day: it will drive away darkness; it will
drive away gloom; it will drive away sin; and peace and joy shall be
yours.

CHAPTER II.

_THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM_.

"Except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God."

(John iii. 3.)

There is no portion of the Word of God, perhaps, with which we are
more familiar than this passage. I suppose if I were to ask those in
any audience if they believed that Jesus Christ taught the doctrine
of the New Birth, nine tenths of them would say: "Yes, I believe He
did."

Now if the words of this text are true they embody one of the most
solemn questions that can come before us. We can afford to be
deceived about many things rather than about this one thing. Christ
makes it very plain. He says, "Except a man be born again, he cannot
_see_ the Kingdom of God"--much less inherit it. This doctrine of the
New Birth is therefore the foundation of all our hopes for the world
to come. It is really the A B C of the Christian religion. My
experience has been this--that if a man is unsound on this doctrine
he will be unsound on almost every other fundamental doctrine in the
Bible. A true understanding of this subject will help a man to solve
a thousand difficulties that he may meet with in the Word of God.
Things that before seemed very dark and mysterious will become very
plain.

The doctrine of the New Birth upsets all false religion--all false
views about the Bible and about God. A friend of mine once told me
that in one of his after-meetings, a man came to him with a long list
of questions written out for him to answer. He said: "If you can
answer these questions satisfactorily, I have made up my mind to be a
Christian." "Do you not think," said my friend, "that you had better
come to Christ first? Then you can look into these questions." The
man thought that perhaps he had better do so. After he had received
Christ, he looked again at his list of questions; but then it seemed
to him as if they had all been answered. Nicodemus came with his
troubled mind, and Christ said to him, "Ye must be born again