Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

§ 11. Regeneration is God's Work in the Soul. Examination of the Classical Passage, or conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus.

In the third chapter of John we have the conversation which has been made the basis of the doctrine of the new birth.

In this conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus we have the old argument, which is always being renewed, between the letter and the spirit, between knowledge and insight, between routine and genius, ceremony and inspiration, the past and the future, the goodness of habit and the holiness born out of the living vision of good. In fact this little dialogue may be considered as a renewal, on a higher plane, of the picture given us by Luke of the boy Jesus in the temple talking with the doctors.

The common doctrine of the Orthodox churches about this chapter is, that Jesus teaches here that no man can be a Christian or a good man unless he passes through some mysterious experience, usually sudden, of which he must be conscious, which gives him a certain definite series of very deep feelings. First, he must feel very deeply that he is a sinner; then that he cannot by any effort of his own become different; thirdly, that, unless God makes him different, he never can be saved; and, lastly, he must feel that God will change his heart, and save him. Having passed through this kind of experience, it is assumed that he is “born again;” that he is a Christian; that he is a new creature; that he has a new heart; that if he dies now he will go to heaven; whereas, if he had died before, he would have gone to hell. It is also Orthodox to believe that a man can do nothing himself to produce this change of heart, or facilitate it.

A very interesting book was published not long ago, written by Miss Catherine Beecher, in which she describes the sufferings caused in her own experience by this theory of regeneration. Her father fully believed in it, and thought it necessary to carry all his children through it somehow or other. Their conversions, to be sure, were not all quite in [pg 188] rule; especially that of Henry seems to have been a little abnormal, if we may trust an account given by himself in an article on the dissolution of the Bowdoin Street Church and congregation, Boston, of which his father was the first minister. The description is so suggestive that we will quote the passage:—

“If somebody will look in the old records of Hanover Street Church about 1829, they will find a name there of a boy about fifteen years old, who was brought into the Church on a sympathetic wave, and who well remembers how cold and almost paralyzed he felt while the committee questioned him about his ‘hope’ and ‘evidences,’ which upon review amounted to this—that the son of such a father ought to be a good and pious boy. Being tender-hearted and quick to respond to moral sympathy, he had been caught and inflamed in a school excitement, but was just getting over it when summoned to Boston to join the church! On the morning of the day, he went to church without seeing anything he looked at. He heard his name called from the pulpit among many others, and trembled; rose up with every emotion petrified; counted the spots on the carpet; looked piteously up at the cornice; heard the fans creak in the pews near him; felt thankful to a fly that lit on his face, as if something familiar at last had come to break an awful trance; heard faintly a reading of the articles of faith; wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling more—whether he should go to hell for touching the bread and wine that he did not dare to take nor to refuse; spent the morning service uncertain whether dreaming, or out of the body, or in a trance; and at last walked home crying, and wishing he knew what, now that he was a Christian, he should do, and how he was to do it. Ah, well; there is a world of things in children's minds that grown-up people do not imagine, though they, too, once were young!”

Now, if his state of mind, thus described, had been at [pg 189] that time exposed and told, it would not have been thought a very sound Orthodox experience. But in reality the boy was at that very time as good a Christian for a boy as he is now for a man. But Miss Beecher, in the book referred to, tells us that when one of her other brothers was striving in prayer for this change of heart, with groans and struggles, the house was like a tomb. The poor young man was in his chamber alone, and his groans and cries were heard through the whole house. All the other members of the family staid in their own rooms in silence, until at last, by some natural reaction of feeling, there came a sense of rest and peace to his mind, which they believed to be the new birth. She also describes the way in which Dr. Payson, of Portland, tortured his little daughter, three years old, by a torture as well meant, as conscientious, and more terrible than that of the Holy Inquisition. He told his little daughter that she hated God; that she must have a change of heart, but that she could not get it for herself; and that even her prayers, until she was converted, were only making her worse. The poor little girl denied that she hated God; she said she was sure she loved him. Then the misguided father brought up all her little childish faults as a proof that she hated God; for if she loved him she would never do wrong. And so, from three years of age till she was thirteen, this poor, infatuated parent tormented this little child by keeping her on this spiritual rack—all because of a false view of the passages concerning regeneration in the Bible. And when we think of the twenty thousand pulpits which to-day are teaching in this country this same sort of belief, it is evident that it is our duty to see what the Master really meant to teach us by this passage.

Nicodemus is the type of a class of men common in all times. We have seen Nicodemus very often. He is a good man whose goodness has no life in it. His goodness is a sort of an automaton—all machinery and no soul. He is [pg 190] so thoroughly right in all he does; everything about him is so proper; he is so perfectly en règle in his own eyes,—that we sometimes wish that he might be betrayed into some impropriety, commit some not too great folly, have some escapade of rash enthusiasm. You respect him so much, you wonder why you do not love him more. It is because he is not open to influence. His goodness is so rigid, his opinions so declared, his character so pronounced, that there is no crack anywhere by which God or man can reach him. He has a whole armor of opinions all round him, and you cannot get through it. He has narrowed himself, and shut himself in, so that he feels no influence of sympathy coming from the wide ocean of humanity around, no influence of love from the deep heaven of God above. He is a sort of good rhinoceros, with a skin so thick that nothing can pierce it.

Nicodemus was such a man, and he came to Jesus with all his opinions cut and dried, ready for an argument. He begins in a very formal and precise way. “Rabbi, we know thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.” He observes all proprieties; he calls Jesus Doctor,—“Rabbi,”—but takes good care not to call him Christ. He gives his reason for thinking Jesus a teacher come from God, namely, his miracles. Not his holiness, not his inspiration, not his supreme sweetness, not that he is a channel through which God's tenderness runs down into our hearts. No; he sees no such spiritual proof as this, but a merely logical one, expressed almost in the form of a syllogism. Major proposition—“No man can work miracles without God's help.” Minor proposition—“Jesus works miracles.” Conclusion—“Therefore Jesus has God's help.”

Now, what does Jesus reply? Evidently much of the conversation has been omitted. We have only the substance of it here. “You believe in the kingdom of heaven, Nicodemus.” “Certainly.” “How do you expect to know it when you see [pg 191] it?” “By some great outward signs; something which shall shake heaven and earth; the Messiah coming in the sky, with angels.” “Nicodemus, you cannot even see the kingdom when it is here, if you look for it so; you must be born again yourself; you must be changed, and become as a little child, in order to enter the kingdom.” We remember that Peter, who was probably not half as good as Nicodemus, an impulsive soul, was nevertheless enough of a little child, in openness of heart, to see that this was the kingdom of heaven,—this teaching and life of Jesus,—and that Jesus was the Messiah.

But Nicodemus says, “No. A Gentile, a heathen, ought, no doubt, to begin at the beginning, give up all his old opinions, and be born of water by being baptized. He should begin by a recantation. I suppose that is what you mean by being born again. But I ought not, for I am a Jew, grown up in the true knowledge of God, learned from Moses and the prophets. So I need not begin my life again.”

Jesus then replies, “The form is nothing. You must be born not only of water, but of the Spirit, in order to enter the kingdom of God. You need not only to wash off all your old opinions and conduct, as the Gentiles must do; but also you must be made a little child by laying your heart open to God's Spirit, and letting it lead your thoughts into new ways, your heart into new love, and your life into new action. You must be willing to follow me, not by night only, but in the day. If they turn you out of the Sanhedrim, you must not mind that; you must find your happiness in getting good and doing good; receiving God's love into your soul, and letting it go out again. You must give yourself up to this divine influence.”

Then Nicodemus says, “How can these things be?” He wishes to see the way, to have it all marked out; to have a creed with all its articles of belief fixed; a programme of what he is to do arranged. The spirit he does not quite [pg 192] understand. Give it to him in the letter, and he can do it. He wants a map of the operations of the Holy Spirit.

“Are you a teacher of Israel, and do not know this?” replies Jesus. “The whole Old Testament is full of this inspiration; full of the Spirit of God coming and going, in a thousand ways, and not by any special rule or method; going as the wind comes and goes in the sky, we do not know whence or how.” It is well that some things cannot be arranged beforehand—well that no almanac can tell if the wind to-morrow is to be east or west, north or south.

I sit in the sweet autumn woods. I see the squirrel leap from branch to branch. I hear the woodpecker tapping the trunk with sagacious beak, watching when the sound shall indicate that a worm has hidden himself below the bark. All else is calm and still. I look up and see the white clouds drifting through the deep ocean of blue above. Then there comes a sudden shiver through the tree-tops, a sprinkling of dry leaves on the grass, a whisper, a rush of air; and now every tree is swinging its branches in the breeze.

So is every one that is born of the Spirit! God comes to us all in these uncalculated, incalculable ways. He moves our conscience by the light of loyalty and fidelity in another soul. There comes through all the land a fresh breeze of justice and right, and all at once we feel that we ought to lead better lives, more manly, more true. There comes a revival of honesty, as well as of piety. Yesterday you did not care for it; now you do. God's holy air of truth and right is sweeping through the land. We all arise and say, “No matter what our fathers consented to; no matter what we have consented to in past times; we will have no more compromises with evil and sin, no more concessions to tyranny and cruelty.” When this spirit comes to a nation, or to a community, it is as much a revival sent by God, as the reformation of Luther, or the reformation of Wesley.

Jesus means to teach us here that the Spirit of God comes [pg 193] in a great many different ways, comes unexpected and unforeseen, comes unapparent as the invisible air. So came the reformation of Luther. Luther did not mean to make a reformation, or to build a new Church.[17]

All recollect the story of the Quaker, George Fox, how he went from Church to Church, and got no good, and at last opened his soul to God, and was led by the Spirit into new and strange thoughts and purposes, and became a reformer, and founder of a denomination, unintentionally. And so the Quaker movement came—the most radical reform which ever sprang up in the Christian Church. It abolished the ministry and sacraments, baptism, and the Lord's supper. It reformed the theology of Christendom, putting the inner light above the written words. It reformed life, opposing war, oaths, slavery, and fashion. And as it came, so is it passing away, having done its work. As the breeze dies softly, and the leaves cease to glitter in the sunlight, and the red leaf on the top-most twig, far up in the sky, leaves off its airy dance, and at last hangs motionless, so the wild air which stirred in the depths of all hearts dies away in silence, and old opinions and old customs resume their places, yet all purified and changed. Only those which were so wholly dead that the wind blew them entirely away, are gone forever.

So are the changes which come in human hearts, we know not whence or how. It is a great mistake in the Church to have a stereotyped experience, to which all must conform. Procrustes only lopped the limbs to suit the measure of his bed; but these rules and moulds for the spiritual life, cut down the new man, who is made by God's Spirit, to the earthly standard of some narrow stunted experience of other times. This it is “to grieve the Spirit,” and to “quench the Spirit.” [pg 194] For God's Spirit goes everywhere, and where it goes it produces the best evidence of Christianity in sweet, holy, Christian lives. It is the wind which blows where it will, which does not run on a railroad through the sky, or stop at any particular stations in the clouds, or go by any time-table. God's Spirit comes and goes not according to any rules of ours. The publicans and sinners have it, and show it, sometimes, instead of the Scribes and Pharisees. For so the apostle declares that there are “differences of operation, but the same Spirit.”

Sometimes you see a hard man, a man of the world, who has been fighting his way through life, till he has come to rely wholly on himself, and feels like some of those rocky reefs which stand out in the sea on our New England coast, and have borne the onset of a thousand storms. Yet at last he is softened. We see it, we feel it. There is a strange softness in his tone, a gentleness in his manner, a suspicion of moisture in his eye. The good God has been moving in his heart; perhaps it was by some trial or disappointment, or the loss of some curly-headed darling, who went up to heaven, and left the doors open behind, so that the joyful music which welcomed her came down to his ears and touched his soul.

When men see that, they say, “Well, there is something in religion, after all, if it can touch such a heart as his.”

Sometimes we see a Christian who is at first all conscience, all work. Religion means to him, doing his duty. He intends to be a Christian, and wishes others to be so. But it is a piece of hard work. His Christianity reminds one of the poor woman who thought it “a chore to live.” But after a while, we see a change—very gradual, but still very certain. He is beginning to get acquainted with the gospel side of Christianity. He learns to forgive himself his own sins, and so he can forgive others. His face begins to reflect more and more of heaven. It is the change which comes to [pg 195] the grapes in October. Perhaps you have some Catawba grapes on the south side of your house, and they grow very nicely all through the summer. They are good, large grapes well formed, good clusters, but very sour. But by and by there comes the final change; the juice grows sweet within the berry. There is but a very little difference in its appearance, but a very great change within.

When we see this alteration in a man, we say, “There is surely something in Christianity to produce such a change. Why, what a very sweet Christian he has grown to be!” It took all the summer and part of the fall to do the work; but no matter. God is not in a hurry. Some fruit ripens sooner, and some later; that is all.

I looked up from my table as I wrote these words, and saw from my window a tulip tree and a maple, each dressed in its royal robes of beauty—the gift of the declining year; the green leaves of the one touched with gold, and the other with its crimson and scarlet glories. They were full of sunlight, and made the whole landscape glad and gay. No Tyrian loom could rival the purple splendors and deep crimson of these trees. Why does God give all this varied beauty to the October woods, so that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these oaks or maples? Is not this also to touch our hearts with a sense of his love? An autumn ride is also a means of grace; quite as much so, perhaps, as a tract or sermon. If we see God in nature, then nature may also be the source of a new birth to us.

“One impulse from the autumn wood

May teach us more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.”

What I understand Jesus, then, to teach in this passage, is, that we must become as little children, in order to see heavenly things; that, like new-born babes, we must receive meekly the milk of the word of God; that spiritual influences [pg 196] are all around us, invisible—incalculable: that not by the regular outward means of religion alone, but by a thousand other ways, God comes to us. He means that we should believe in the presence and nearness of God's Spirit always; that we should open our hearts and minds to be led by it into truth and love. He meant the very opposite of what he has been made to mean. He did not mean that all souls must pass through one and the same religions experience, but that, as the wind blows a thousand ways, so God's Spirit comes to the heart by a thousand ways. So coming, it makes the hard heart tender, the rude will gentle, the selfish soul generous, gives the reckless a new sense of responsibility. Jesus means that we should not be discouraged because we find it hard to correct our faults, or to enter into God's love. God's Spirit comes to us when we cannot go to find it. God's love comes into our hearts when we long for it, look for it, wait for it.

Look up, then, poor trembling heart; look up, and see God near. Look up, hard heart, and feel the soft showers of divine grace coming down to make everything tender. Look up, and be made new creatures, become as little children, be born anew, every day, into a fresh inspiration, faith, and hope; and so enter every day the kingdom of heaven!