He does not ask whether a man is an intellectual giant or a mental dwarf, but He does say, “Ye must be born again.” He does not inquire whether he is an American or a Canadian, whether he is a citizen or an alien, whether he is in the social register or on the police blotter, whether he is a Republican or a Democrat, whether he is white or black but there is one common condition which completely levels all humanity, this injunction, “Ye must be born again.”īut what is the real meaning and intent of these words? Nicodemus entirely misunderstood His divine Instructor, because he asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?” And the mistake of this master in Israel, this despiritualizing of religion, this dragging down the truths of the soul to the level of things touchable and tangible, is one of the saddest, yet one of the most constant and prevalent, of all delusions. The importance of this is often overlooked for it implies that in the temporal and perishable things of life Christ makes no conditions and does not concern Himself about the artificial distinctions which men are prone to prize so highly. Let us not pass lightly over this unescapable “must.” I find that throughout His entire ministry our Lord, as far as His utterances have been recorded in the four gospels, used this word “must,” when giving His instructions to men, in only one other place, in a passage which stresses the spiritual nature of true religion. But what Christ says to Nicodemus He repeats to every one of us, “Except a man” (that is, any man, every man) “be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” There is no exemption the universal, unavoidable decree of God is this: “Ye MUST be born again.” For he who on that memorable night was privileged to see His Savior face to face and to learn from His own divine lips this foundation truth of life and eternity was notably preeminent in the religious and political circles of the Jewish capital-Nicodemus, a master, a leader, a pillar in Israel. To whom were these words of our Lord spoken? If we have a mental picture of some reprobate or outcast whom Christ has lifted up out of the gutter, then let us immediately disabuse our minds of that error. And as Moses was commanded when God spoke to him, “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground,” so I ask you to listen with reverence and awe as the Majesty of Love tells us tonight, “Ye must be born again.” Now, who spoke these words, “Ye must be born again”? Remember that this is no personal or private opinion, no theory of mine, no hypothesis of the Church it is rather the everlasting Word of our Lord that will outlive heaven and earth-Christ preaching into our very hearts tonight. For this is the plain teaching of that word of Scripture which I present to you this evening, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” The change that shook Alexander Smith is the change that must revolutionize the heart and soul of every one who comes to Christ today.
But the Bible that can bring to you who do not yet know Christ the same change and the same happiness is the Bible that may repose unopened and unread in your home, the Bible that you may neglect and belittle and ignore, the Bible that down through the ages has made men Christians. Now that particular Bible which was responsible for this startling change is preserved in the New York City Library. And Pitcairn Island (for this is the name of that tiny, yet remarkable speck in the Southern Ocean), the island that had been a veritable hell on earth, by one of the most spectacular changes in history became a model community, which has attracted the attention and excited the admiration of all travelers who have visited it. When that lone survivor, cut off from the rest of the world and surrounded by native and half-breed women and children, read that revelation of God and all the damning savagery of his past life loomed up before him with its appalling consequences, he found the Christ of forgiveness and love he was converted to that Christ, and from that time on the reign of crime and lust was ended. Among the articles salvaged from the ship which they had stolen and then destroyed was a copy of the Bible.
For ten years drunkenness, debauchery, and murder reigned in this settlement of fugitives, until, after an orgy of bloody quarrels, disease, and native uprisings, one single white man, Alexander Smith, remained alive on the island. IN the year 1789 the crew of the English government ship The Bounty mutinied, and those of the mutineers who escaped capture sought to evade punishment by settling on a rocky island in the South Seas. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
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