lives after the flesh and that of the man who lives after the spirit
is very sharply marked in many places in Paul's writings, in words
that cannot be easily misunderstood. He uses such language as this:
"For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the
Spirit do mortify the deeds [lusts] of the body, ye shall live." "To
be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and
peace." "He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap
corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap
life everlasting." "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of
God,"--which is the new birth,--"is eternal life, through Jesus Christ
our Lord."

All these quotations are in perfect accord with our Lord's closing
words to the Sermon on the Mount: "Every one that heareth these
sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish
man, which built his house upon the sand: ... and it fell: and great
was the fall of it."

I do not think it is very hard for any one to tell the kind of birth
he is of. As an individual can tell by looking in a glass, if in no
other way, whether he is black or white, so the professor of religion,
by turning to the Gospel Mirror, can see what kind of a birth he is
of.

I sometimes feel sorry when I think that a child has no control over
its own natural birth. If it is born black and into slavery, poor
little thing, there it has to remain for life, and bear and suffer all
the evils incident to its color and condition. If one is born with
natural deformities which baffle all surgical skill; or with blindness
or deafness past all remedy; we can but pity and weep. True, our