which it is quite arbitrary and against all probability to contend that "the bath of regeneration" is a mere metaphor for regeneration without any bath, or for the Holy Spirit, or for the unmeasured bounty with which the Holy Spirit is poured upon the believer. This might be tenable, if there had been no such rite as baptism by water enjoined by Christ and practised by the Apostles as the necessary and universal method of admission to the Christian Church. In Eph. v. 26 (the only other passage in the New Testament in which the word for "laver" or "bath" or "washing" occurs) the reference to baptism by water is indisputable, for the water is expressly mentioned. "Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself up for it; that He might sanctify it, having _cleansed it by the washing of water_ with the word." And in the passage in the First Epistle to the Corinthians which, like the one before us, contrasts the appalling wickedness of unbelievers with the spiritual condition of Christians, the reference to baptism is scarcely less clear. "And such were some of you: but _ye were washed_ (lit. 'ye washed away'[82] your sins), but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. vi. 11). In which passage, as here, the three Persons of the Trinity are named in connexion with the baptismal act. And in speaking to the Jews at Jerusalem of his own admission to the Church, St. Paul uses the same forms of the same word as he uses to the Corinthians of their admission. The exhortation of Ananias to him, as he lay at Damascus, was "And now why tarriest thou? Arise, and _be baptized_, and _wash away thy sins_" (ἀπόλουσαι τὰς ἁμαρτίας σου), "calling on His Name" (Acts xxii. 16): words which are very parallel to the exhortation of St. Peter on the day of Pentecost: "Repent ye, and _be baptized, every one of you_ in the Name of Jesus Christ _unto the remission of your sins_; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts ii. 38; comp. Heb. x. 23). In these passages we have a sacred rite described in which the human and the Divine elements are clearly marked. On man's side there is the washing with water; and on God's side there is the washing away of sin and pouring out of the Spirit. The body is purified, the soul is purified, and the soul is hallowed. The man is washed, is justified, is sanctified. He is regenerated: he is "a new creature." "The old things," his old principles, motives, and aims, then and there "passed away" (aorist tense, παρῆλθεν): "behold, they are become new" (2 Cor. v. 17). Can any one, with these passages before him, reasonably doubt, that, when the Apostle speaks of "the washing of regeneration" he means the Christian rite of baptism, in which, and by means of which, the regeneration takes place?