I have introduced this thought concerning breath and the voice of the new-born child, because it seems to me to connect itself with the words which follow, and to remove a confusion which our translation of them has introduced into our minds: '_Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit._' The philological objections to this rendering of the words are very numerous. In the first place, ἄνεμος, not πνεῦμα, is the proper word for _wind_. But suppose, by reducing the wind to a faint low breathing, we escape from that objection, there is the second, that πνεῦμα is used twice in the same sentence in different senses. Yet this is a slight fault compared with the next. We actually attribute _will_ to the wind; it blows where it listeth, ὅπου θέλει. After this flagrant departure from all scriptural and spiritual analogy, it is scarcely necessary to mention another, which is, nevertheless, not unimportant, and is of the same kind. Φωνὴ is the articulate voice of a living being; it is here changed into a natural sound. Now, wherever violence is done to the truth of language, I believe more or less of violence is done to some higher truth. What need have we to introduce the sighing and soughing of the wind, in order to make our Lord's explanation more clear and forcible, if we understand Him to say,--'All the breathings of God's Spirit are free, not fixed and fettered by material or mechanical conditions. You hear His voice continually; but whence the Spirit comes, whither it is going, you know not. And so it is with him that is born of the Spirit. The process of birth cannot be perceived by you; you hear the voice which indicates birth, you see the signs and tokens of life; but how the spiritual being came to be what he is, you know not.' If we take this to be what our Lord told Nicodemus, and what He is telling us, are we not to learn that, at every moment of the day, the Spirit of the eternal God is moving around us, speaking to us, acting upon us; but that His mightiest operation, that which alone fulfils His purpose towards us, is when He enables us to become the willing servants and children of our Father in heaven?