And the entering into the kingdom of God must import the return of the spirit of man to its allegiance,--the claim of a voluntary spiritual being to be under the will with which it is its misery to be at strife. John had come preaching, '_the kingdom of God is at hand_,' calling men to repentance, baptizing with water, proclaiming One who would baptize with the Holy Ghost. When Jesus says to Nicodemus, '_Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God_,' He takes up the teaching of his forerunner, He expounds his act, He announces the fulfilment of his promise. The being baptized with water, He declares to be the act of submission to the Father of spirits,--the sign which a man gives that he accepts His government, that he surrenders himself to it. It is a surrender,--that is the only word we can find,--a confession by the human will of its impotency. It must be guided, governed, inspired, or it can do nothing, it can only struggle against its blessedness. The acceptance, therefore, of this water-sign, by a creature conscious of his own irregular strivings, of his separation from God, is the expression of a desire that God would act upon his will, would raise it to its proper condition, would quicken it to the acts and impulses which belong to it,--in other words, would baptize it with the Spirit. We see, then, how water and the Spirit are connected with the entrance into the kingdom of God,--the kingdom over the spirit of man. Our Lord goes on to explain that He had used the word _birth_ in its relation to both, not carelessly, but strictly. '_That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit._' One is as true and actual a birth as the other. The coming forth of the fleshly creature into light, its beginning to breathe, the voice which accompanies that breathing, are not more undoubted facts--very mysterious facts _they_ must appear to all who reflect upon them--than the coming forth of a spirit out of its darkness, than the sense of light which startles it, than its breathings, than its cry.