perform miracles which are not recorded, and to teach as was His

custom.

These matters must have been stupendous when they moved a people so proud and alien to His ways to believe in Him as a prophet. We know from the next chapter and the one following, that several of the most respectable people believed and also that He went about Judea on a missionary tour, as He did afterwards in Galilee and its borders.

S. John gives us some information which he must have had from Our Lord Himself. Our Lord knew everyone's interior. He knew the three kinds of Jews He had to deal with. Some believed in Him, but their faith was easily shaken-some pretended to believe, but did not. Some were hostile to him and plotting his destruction. The Galileans were too simple for these wiles and too steadfast and courageous in their enterprises.

All these three classes showed themselves at His Passion. His hour was not yet come, and therefore He left them.

At the Pasch.-This is the first in His public life. There were four Paschs from the time He performed His first miracle till his death.

2Festival day. This meant the whole eight days. In our liturgy we still say hodie during an octave.

3His miracles.-These are some of the things which S. John did not feel called upon to record.

*Trust himself.-There is a play upon the word believe, here. To have faith and to trust TiσTéve are the same.

Knew all men.-S. John brings before us the practical knowledge of the Son of God. We gather as much from the others, when He answers people's thoughts and so forth; but it is not stated categorically as it is here.

He needed not.-What amounts to tautology is one of the peculiarities of S. John's style. As remarked before, Our Lord repeated lessons often and often. It was quite necessary to do so for an illiterate people. S. John had taught that way, all his life; and, now when he writes, he cannot, or does not wish to get rid of his usual manner.

CHAPTER III.

Christ's discourse with Nicodemus. John's testimony.

8. "Spiritus ubi vult spirat, et vocem ejus audis, sed nescis undè veniat aut quò vadat: sic est omnis qui natus est ex Spiritu."

8. The Spirit breatheth where he will; and thou 10hearest his voice; but thou knowest not whence he cometh, nor whither he goeth: so is every one that is born, of the Spirit.

Our Lord's teaching on the doctrine of Regeneration is the foundation of His Kingdom. There is a gradation in the mode of instruction here adopted; far more subtle than the style of parable and miracle which was employed for the multitude. A doctor in Israel, who had listened to Hillel and sat at the council with Gamaliel required a different order of teaching.

Putting together the various interpretations and blending them, we make this order in the instruction. All admit that the entire discourse of Our Lord is not given-only portions of it,

The populations of the kingdoms of the earth come by natural generation, and the members of My Kingdom have to be born children in another sense. When you admit a proselyte you circumcise him and call him regenerate, this is a material thing; but I have another ceremony whereby even your proselyte has to be renewed. He must be born again.

Nicodemus does not take this (many say) in the coarse way the words of the Gospel would make us infer, but he looks upon it as a portent, and wants an explanation.

Children born into this world are known from their parents, and marriage is ordained for peopling the earth. No such definite manner can be pointed out for the peopling of My Kingdom.

You cannot account for why the wind blows this way or that, why it is stormy or quiet; but you hear it and feel it.

You cannot (Maldonatus), tell where the soul comes from or where it goes; but you see its presence in a living, speaking person.

Just so is the coming of the Holy Spirit by baptism. Not the people you think best, but, perhaps the worst; not the civilized, but the barbarian. The Governor of Judea is left to die in his sins and the Ethiopian eunuch is baptised by Philip.

My Kingdom, however, full of baptised people will be always

seen and recognised, although no one can account for its increase or decrease, its growth, or its decay, in one place more than another. The one necessary condition of citizenship is baptism, and it (in some way or other) is indispensable.

There are not wanting theologians who say that Our Lord instituted the Sacrament of Baptism at this time. It is not likely He would establish a public rite in a private manner and before one man. Some say the Jordan was the native place of this Sacrament. Whensoever or wheresoever Christian baptism was instituted by Our Lord, it did not become obligatory until after Pentecost. Our Lord gives the doctrine of it here, and the baptism given by His disciples was something like S. John's.

Baptism then makes us be born anew. We are spiritually dead by original and actual Sin. Baptism takes both these away, makes us innocent and like little children in sanctifying grace, members of Christ's Church here and heirs to His Kingdom in heaven.

Those who deny baptism are sorely tried in endeavouring to explain away this teaching. They think water figurative. Then, are the Holy Ghost and the subject and the minister figures also ?

The Council of Trent defines that "true and natural water is the necessary matter of the Sacrament. The Baptism by wish and Baptism by martyrdom belong to treatises on Theology.

1Nicodemus.-This man was a senator, a very important personage and a Pharisee. All the Pharisees were not bad. He was afraid to be seen as a public adherent of Our Lord, and this human respect made him come at night. This wore away, and he was not ashamed to assist publicly at Our Lord's burial. His name is in the Roman martyrology.

A ruler. This had many meanings in the time of Nicodemus; but, it had no meaning, except a man of some importance, when S. John

wrote.

Rabbi.-Our Lord got this title at once, although others were a long time in training before it was given them.

Teacher from God.—It is not clear that Nicodemus yet believed fully. Amen.-The reduplication of this word signifies a solemn and important pronouncement.

See. The future kingdom in heaven is understood here.

"Can he enter ?—This is said as per impossibile.

D