among the 'brethren' at Puteoli and Rome? Were not these, in point of fact, either actual born Jews, as Aquila, or Jewish proselytes from among the Romans, who had received in some way some knowledge of the Gospel, and had gone so far as to recognise in the crucified Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one of God, who had been so long promised to the Jewish people? Were not these 'brethren' men, who were sincere of heart, and pious and devout in life, whether Jews or Roman proselytes, believing in the true living God, and believing also that He had now visited them according to His promise, and revealed to them their King, but who had not yet abandoned by any means the hope of the Jewish nation, which every Jew inherited as his birthright, and into which every proselyte was baptized,-that infatuated notion of their own importance, merely as children of Abraham and circumcised, which possessed them to the last, and made them think, that, amongst all their iniquities, they were the favourites of God, and sure of entering into His Kingdom? Hence we have John the Baptist's warning, 'Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father.'-To them 'circumcision was the seal of the covenant, the charm which protected them from God's wrath:' Jowett, who also quotes from Schottgen's Hor. Hebr., Vol. 1. p. 499, a remarkable passage, where a Jewish Rabbi, being pressed with the question, 'How could Israelitish heretics, apostates, and otherwise impious persons, after being circumcised, be sent to perdition ? -answers, 'God will first uncircumcise them, and so they will go down to hell.'

If such a feeling possessed the hearts of the worst men of the nation, who reckoned that, though their places might be low in the 'kingdom,' yet their claim to it was certain, for the word of God was pledged to their great forefather,— and that word no wickedness of theirs could make void, for, whatever they might do, God would be faithful who had promised-how much stronger must it have been in the mind of the pious Jew. About this 'Kingdom,' doubtless, Nico

demus came to inquire, though the report of the conversation begins so abruptly in St John's narrative, that we scarcely see at first the reason for the form, which our Lord's first words assume in it. Nicodemus, however, as a devout Jew, had no doubt about the 'coming of the kingdom,' in God's due time, not that Kingdom of 'righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,' which we, as Christians, know to be the Kingdom of God,—but a Kingdom of some kind, of some unknown, unimaginable glory, over all other nations upon earth, which should one day be restored to Israel.' Nicodemus also had no doubt as to his own right, not merely as a true believer in God, but as a true born Jew, a child of Abraham, to have a share in it. What he wanted to know was, how he might best prepare himself for it, how he might best attain a worthy place in that kingdom. And he probably asked a question to that effect. Our Lord throws him back at once in His reply to the only true ground of hope. It is as if He had said, (to paraphrase with reverence the sacred words,) You are come to me very confident of your concern in this Kingdom. You are sure, you think, of a place in it. But why are you sure? What ground have you for thinking that you have any place at all in it? Do you imagine that, because you are born of Abraham, your claim will be allowed? But I tell you this will avail you for nothing. Your mere natural descent is no ground at all for any such expectation. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born again-be born a second time, or be born from above, by a supernatural, spiritual birth,—he cannot so much as see the Kingdom of God.' Nicodemus, in point of fact, was already thus born again, thus born from above; he had already received that second spiritual birth, though he did not know it. It was the working of God's good Spirit upon his heart, that had all along been leading him in the way of Truth and Righteousness, and was now leading him to Christ. But he had never been accustomed to think of this. It was a new thing to him, though a Master

of Israel, to be told that such work of grace as this was needed for him, as it was needed for all men, if they were to see the Kingdom of God. Though an earthly thing,' a thing common to men,-which we, Christians, now are more or less plainly taught to recognise from the very first, as the free gift of God, which alone can make us fit for His service here and His glory hereafter, yet to Nicodemus it was strange and new. He could not, at first, believe, or understand, what the Master was telling him. This, then, was an instance of a devout Jew, fully prepossessed with the infatuation of his people, and requiring to have this false ground of hope struck away from under his feet at the very outset, if he would heartily embrace the faith of Jesus.

So too the Apostles were asking, even after the Resurrection, 'Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel?' And the whole tone of the Magnificat, Benedictus, and Nunc Dimittis, evidences the same rooted feeling in the minds of pious Jews, who yet were believers in Christ, that His Coming was to be attended with special benefits to their nation at large, as 'God had promised to their forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever;' it was to bring 'a light,' indeed, to lighten the Gentiles,' but so as to be the glory of God's people, Israel.' We have now learned to give to all such passages a spiritual meaning, to understand by 'Abraham's seed,' the children of the faith of Abraham, and by God's people, Israel,' the body of true believers. But, certainly, this is not the way in which the first Jewish believers would have interpreted such words. And we have abundant proof,—in the hesitation of St Peter to baptize the first Gentile convert,—in the contention which arose in consequence of his so doing, in the Church at Jerusalem (Acts xi. 2),-in his subsequent vacillation of conduct, for which St Paul so severely reproved him (Gal. ii. 14, &c.), when 'the other Jews dissembled with him, insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away by their dissimulation,'—in the constant endeavours which were made by certain parties, who came

down from Jerusalem, (and who must, of course, have been professed believers themselves, or they could have had no influence upon the disciples to whom they came,) to turn away the Gentile converts from the pure Gospel, as preached by St Paul, back to the servile practices of Judaism,-above all, in the vigorous, determined battle, which St Paul himself was constantly waging with such teachers, as one impelled to this conflict, from a deep sense of the urgent necessity of the case,— in all this we have abundant proof that, for many years, during the first age of Christianity, there existed in the minds of many, who professed to believe in Jesus, a very strong Jewish feeling -a notion that the Jew had in some way a superior claim upon the gifts of God's favour; and that, if the Gentiles were to be permitted to share them, it could only be, as it were, by taking hold of a man that is a Jew, and 'clinging to his skirts'—by observing the Jewish Law, as the ground of their acceptance with God, only adding to this the recognition of Jesus Christ, as the 'Great Prophet, whom God had raised up to them,' to be the channel, through whom the blessing, which the Jews had a right to claim, as children of Abraham, would be bestowed upon them first, and, through them, upon those of the heathen world, who would first do honour to their law, and adopt their religion.

And, what the Jews themselves held in this respect, they taught, of course, to their proselytes, 'making them tenfold more the children of error than themselves.' If one of these had incurred the contempt or illwill of his own countrymen, by adopting the religion of the Jew, (and many of them had undergone the rite of circumcision itself,) of course, he would be eager to claim his share also in the honours of the Kingdom,' of which he was now made free. Like the Jew, his teacher, he, too, would be 'resting in the Law, and making his boast of God,' in his own measure; trusting, indeed, that Christ would profit him in some way, but only as being already a Jew, or a quasi-Jew, and not, simply, as being

a man.

This was, in all probability, the state of mind of those at Rome, who professed to believe in Christ at the time when St Paul wrote this Epistle. The Gospel, we may believe, was first carried to Rome by some of that great number, who were baptized by St Peter at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. We read of there being present on that occasion, 'strangers from Rome, Jews and proselytes'-travellers, who had come to Jerusalem to keep the Festival, and perhaps, for other purposes of business or pleasure, and meant to sojourn there for a short time only, and who consisted not only of true-born 'Jews,' but of 'proselytes' also, who, though of Roman birth, had embraced to some extent the Jewish religion, because of the pure theism which it contained, and had connected themselves intimately with the true-born Israelites. We have abundant evidence from profane writers that such Jews abounded at this time at Rome, and that they had made many proselytes. Surely, among the three thousand souls, who were added to the Church on the day of Pentecost, it is reasonable to believe that some were 'strangers from Rome.' They were baptized on that day, impressed by the facts which they had witnessed, and pricked to the heart' by St Peter's words. These men had, doubtless, heard at Jerusalem the story of Jesus of Nazareth, how He had gone about doing good, and working mighty wonders of healing mercy among the people, and speaking mighty words of truth and love in their hearing. They had heard the story of His Death, His Resurrection and Ascension, from the lips of those, who had only just before been actual witnesses of those events, but who had not even themselves realised the full meaning of them. They had been present when the Spirit came with power on the day of Pentecost, and had heard the Apostles, Galileans as they were, men despised and unlearned, 'speaking with other tongues the wonderful works of God.' They had listened to St Peter's address, and been convinced by it, that He, who had been rejected of men, was yet the chosen One of God,—that He, who had been cast out as an unclean thing by the chief priests