'He made the great discovery,' Harold Begbie says. 'It had happened; the longed-for event had come; he stood by himself, all by himself, conscious now of the heart; no longer satisfied either with his own intellect or the traditions of a church. The miracle had happened. He had discovered the helplessness of humanity. He had discovered the need of the soul. He had begun at last to see into the heart of things.' He had been born again!
There are two kinds of progress. There is the progress that moves away from infancy towards youth, towards maturity, towards age and decrepitude. And there is a higher progress, a progress that moves towards infancy. 'Except ye be converted and become as little children,' Jesus said, 'ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God.' And the only way of becoming a little child once more is by being born again. It is the glory of the gospel that it offers a man that chance.
[XIV]
HEDLEY VICARS' TEXT
I
'Those words are the sheet-anchor of my soul!' said Hedley Vicars, a gallant young Army officer, as he sat talking to his sweetheart in the handsome drawing-room at Terling Place.
'Those words are more golden than gold!' exclaimed Miss Frances Ridley Havergal, and she ordered that they should be inscribed upon her tomb.
'Those words did give a great ease to my spirit!' John Bunyan tells us.
'Those words,' said old Donald Menzies, the mystic of Drumtochty, 'those words fell upon me like a gleam from the Mercy-seat!'