The common doctrine of the Orthodox churches about this chapter is, that Jesus teaches here that no man can be a Christian or a good man unless he passes through some mysterious experience, usually sudden, of which he must be conscious, which gives him a certain definite series of very deep feelings. First, he must feel very deeply that he is a sinner; then that he cannot by any effort of his own become different; thirdly, that, unless God makes him different, he never can be saved; and, lastly, he must feel that God will change his heart, and save him. Having passed through this kind of experience, it is assumed that he is “born again;” that he is a Christian; that he is a new creature; that he has a new heart; that if he dies now he will go to heaven; whereas, if he had died before, he would have gone to hell. It is also Orthodox to believe that a man can do nothing himself to produce this change of heart, or facilitate it. A very interesting book was published not long ago, written by Miss Catherine Beecher, in which she describes the sufferings caused in her own experience by this theory of regeneration. Her father fully believed in it, and thought it necessary to carry all his children through it somehow or other. Their conversions, to be sure, were not all quite in rule; especially that of Henry seems to have been a little abnormal, if we may trust an account given by himself in an article on the dissolution of the Bowdoin Street Church and congregation, Boston, of which his father was the first minister. The description is so suggestive that we will quote the passage:—