QUES. 2.-We all acknowledge that new birth is the very first beginning of spiritual life in any man. It is evident from John 3 that our Saviour makes the brazen serpent of Numbers 21 the figure of Himself on the cross, and looking on Him by faith the means of being born again. Why then does not the brazen serpent occur at the beginning of Israel's journey instead of at the end?

ANS.-Because it was only by their experience across the wilderness that the need of new birth could be manifested. There is nothing in all the word of God which declares the absolute depravity of man like the decree that he must be born again if he would enter the kingdom, and Israel's history from Egypt to Canaan is a painful proof of that depravity. Even in the New Testament, the statement as to new birth does not occur till after the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke have borne witness to the desperate evil of man, shown in the way he has treated the Son of God. John's Gospel, coming after this, pronounces therefore the real condition of man by saying he must be born anew. It is as if a physician said to his patient, I have used all my skill and all my remedies to cure you, and you are no better, but only worse. There is no hope for you. What you need is an entirely new constitution. The physician, it may be, knew from the start what the end would be, but his kind heart would defer saying it to his patient till its truth could be evident to that patient himself by the experience of the treatment. God certainly knew the end from the beginning, but His loving heart deals with man a long time before He tells him the hopelessness of his condition. He thus prepares him for the only remedy.

Well do I remember my own misery when John 3 took hold of me. If one must be born anew, was there a sure way of knowing it? Yes, there was. If John's Gospel stated the need and the means of new birth, John's first epistle, chap. 5 :1, stated the proof of its having taken place. It said, " Whomever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of Gad.'' Applying it to one's self, sincerely believing on Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, the passage gave as much assurance as to being born again, as Rom. 3 :21-28 concerning the clearance from the guilt of our sins. What a book is the word of God! It but needs to be read honestly to prove itself as from God ; it carries its own credentials.