him short by saying:
"The kingdom of God is quite another thing than you are thinking of; and
the way to establish it, to enlist citizens in it, is very different
from the way you have been meditating."

In fact, Jesus was becoming embarrassed by His own miracles. They were
attracting the wrong kind of people--the superficial worldly people; the
people who thought a daring and strong hand with a dash of magic would
serve all their turn. His mind was full of this, and as soon as He has
an opportunity of uttering Himself on this point He does so, and assures
Nicodemus, as a representative of a large number of Jews who needed this
teaching, that all their thoughts about the kingdom must be ruled by
this principle, and must start from this great truth, that it was a
kingdom into which the Spirit of God alone could give entrance, and
could give entrance only by making men spiritual. That is to say, that
it was a spiritual kingdom, an inward rule over the hearts of men, not
an outward empire--a kingdom to be established, not by political craft
and midnight meetings, but by internal change and submission in heart to
God--a kingdom, therefore, into which admission could be given only on
some more spiritual ground than the mere circumstance of a man's natural
birth as a Jew.

In our Lord's _language_ there was nothing that need have puzzled
Nicodemus. In religious circles in Jerusalem there was nothing being
talked of but the kingdom of God which John the Baptist had declared to
be at hand. And when Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to enter this
kingdom he must be born again, He told him just what John had been
telling the whole people. John had assured them that, though the King
was in their midst, they must not suppose they were already within His
kingdom by being the children of Abraham. He excommunicated the whole
nation, and taught them that it was something different from natural
birth that gave admission to God's kingdom. And just as they had
compelled Gentiles to be baptized, and to submit to other arrangements
when they wished to partake of Jewish privileges, so John compelled them
to be baptized. The Gentile who wished to become a Jew had to be
symbolically born again. He had to be baptized, going down under the
cleansing waters, washing away his old and defiled life, being buried by
baptism, disappearing, from men's sight as a Gentile, and rising from
the water as a new man. He was thus born of water, and this time