Viewed from the popular interpretation, there is nothing more miraculous in "regeneration" or in being "born again," than there is in a change from the beliefs of material sense to true or spiritual consciousness.
Such declarations as the following,—"Ye are the offspring of God," "Whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not, because his seed abideth in him and he cannot sin;" "Because as He is, even so are ye in this world;" "Be ye imitators of God;" plainly point to the hidden man of the Spirit, whose individuality is not limited to a material body, or to finite conditions. It indicates, too, that all who are his disciples may be conscious of this individuality; for otherwise he would not speak to us concerning it. God recognizes man, and is recognized, in and through a divine consciousness of manhood that is as independent of Matter (the belief calling itself mortal consciousness,) as light is of darkness; to confound them together is as great an error as to include both in the term, day. To think that the sensual is, or can become the medium of the spiritual, or the finite the medium of the Infinite, is like expecting darkness to reveal the beauty and glory of light.
Jesus told the disciple who believed death of the body to be a law he must pass under, that if he believed in the truthfulness of his words, he "should live yet, though he die": but he also told him, that unless he met and overcame his adversary (finite illusion,) he should not come out from that prison (belief of death) till he should have paid the uttermost farthing. He said also of him who should understand that man's life is not in a finite material form, that "whosoever liveth (in this quickened sense of Life) and believeth in me shall not see death."
