THE KING’S BUSINESS
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It is fettered by none of those conditions which confine the swiftest bodies that traverse the surface of the earth; it sweeps on as if independent of law, rushing hither and thither, as though obeying its own way ward and momentary impulse. Thus it is an apt figure of a self-determining invis ible force; and of a force which is at times of overmastering power. Sometimes, in deed, its breath is sq gentle, that only a single leaf or blade of grass will at distant intervals seem to give the faintest token of its action; yet, £ven thus, it “bloweth where it listeth.” Sometimes it bursts upon the earth with destructive violence; noth ing can resist its onslaught; the most solid buildings give way; the stoutest trees bend before it; whatever is frail and delicate can only escape by the completeness of its submission. Thus, too, it “bloweth where it listeth.” Beyond anything else that strikes upon the senses of man, it is sug gestive of free supersensuous power; it is an appropriate symbol of an irruption of the invisible into the world of sense, of the action, so tender or so imperious,, of the divine and eternal Spirit upon the human soul. THE WIND MYSTERY But the wind is also an agent about whose proceedings we really knqw almost nothing. “Thou hearest the sound there of;” such is our Lord’siconces^ion to man’s claim to knowledge. “Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth;” such is the reserve which He makes in respect of human ignorance. Certainly v^e do more than hear the sound of the wind; its presence is obvious to three of the senses. We feel the chill or the fury of the blast; and, as it sweeps across the ocean, or the forest, or the- field of corn, we see how the blades rise and fall in graceful curves, and the trees bend, and the waters sink and swell into waves which are the measure of its strength. But our Lord says, ,“Thou hearest the sound thereof.” He would haye Us test it by the most spiritual of the senses. It whis pers, or it moans, or it roars as it passes
is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” r Our Lord’s reference to water would not have been unintelligible to Nicodemus; every one in,Judea knew that the Baptist had insisted on immersion in water as a symbol of the purification of the soul of man. Certainly, in connecting “water” with the Spirit and the new birth, our Lord’s language, glancing at that of thé prophet* went very far beyond this. He could only bel fully understood at a later time, when the, sacrament of baptism had been instituted, just as, the true sense of His early allusions to His death could not have been apprehended until after the crucifixion. But Nicodemus, it- is plain, had not yet advanced beyond his original ■difficulty; he could not, conceive how any second birth was possible, - without alto gether violating the course of nature. And our Lord penetrates His thoughts and answers them. He answers them by point ing to that invisible agent who could achieve, in the sphere of spiritual and men tal life, what the Jewish doctor deemed so impossible a feat as a second birth. Nature, indeed, contained no force that could com pass such a result; but nature in this, as in other matters, was,a shadow-of some thing beyond itself. IN THE NIGHT It was late at night when our Lord had this interview with the Jewish teacher. At , the pauses in conversation, we may con jecture, they heard the wind without as it moaned âlohg the narrow streets of Jerusa lem; and our Lord, as was His wont, took His creature, into His service—the service of spiritual truth'. The wind was a figure of the Spirit; Our Lord would not have used the same word for both. The wind might teach Nicodemus something of the actiori of Him who is the real Author of the new birth of man. And it would do this in two Ways more especially. On a first survey of nature, the wind arrests man’s attention, as an unseen agent which seems to be moving with entire free dom. “The wind bloweth where it ljsteth.”
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