"My Juliet says, 'To you then I look up to teach me.' Let me then bring you to the great Teacher and Prophet of the church, without whose teaching all human instruction will be ineffectual. We read of two amiable characters coming to Christ professedly for instruction. The first you will find in Matthew 19:16. The young man asks him, 'What good thing shall I do, that I may inherit eternal life?' Jesus answers him by referring him to the moral law: the young man, not made acquainted by the Spirit of God, either with the extent or spirituality of that law, or of the depravity of his own nature, answers, as many in like circumstances still do,' All these things have I kept from my youth up.' I do not suppose any one could contradict him. It is added that Jesus loved him, and he was a person of attractive character; but Jesus knew that the true principle was not there--supreme love to God, 'with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the strength, and with all the mind:' therefore he gave him a test which proved that the world was uppermost in his heart. He went away sorrowful, and we hear no more of him. "Of the other person we read in that remarkable chapter, the third of John's gospel--Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, and also a teacher. Well knew he the law, as to the letter of it, both moral and ceremonial; he must also have been acquainted with all the Old Testament scripture types and prophecies, it being his office to expound; and no doubt, among others, was looking for the promised Messiah. Jesus does not send him to either the law or the prophets. This ruler comes with a conviction and an acknowledgment that Jesus himself was a teacher immediately from God; and Jesus immediately takes upon himself his great office, and begins with urging that which is a sinner's first business--'to know himself,' what he is by nature, and the necessity of the new birth. Nicodemus, with all his learning, was a stranger to this doctrine: 'How can a man be born when he is old?' Jesus repeats his doctrine, 'He must be born of water and the Spirit;' baptized with water and the Holy Ghost. 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again.' Humble that proud reason that will believe nothing but what it can understand. '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.' A mystery it is; nevertheless it is true.