They parted, never to meet again; and from another minister's lips the doctor learned the secret for which he craved.
II
It is very difficult to excuse Mr. Rodwell, especially when we remember that the words that the dying doctor found so captivating, and that he himself found so perplexing, were originally intended to meet just such cases as that of Dr. Blund.
'What is it to be born again? How can a man be born again?' asked the voice from the bed.
'How can a man be born when he is old?' asked Nicodemus, as he heard the Saviour's words uttered for the first time.
'When he is old!' To Nicodemus, as to Dr. Blund, there was something singularly attractive about the thought of babyhood, the thought of pastlessness, the thought of beginning life all over again. But to the aged ruler, as to the aged doctor, it was an insoluble enigma, an inscrutable mystery.
'How?' asked Nicodemus of the Saviour. 'How can a man be born when he is old?'
'How?' asked Dr. Blund of Mr. Rodwell. 'How can a man be born again?'
We all feel that, unless the gospel can meet just such cases as these, we might almost as well have no gospel at all. And yet we have also felt the force of that persistent and penetrating How?