From J. C. Philpot's Daily Portions
November 11 "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God." John 3:3 True religion begins with an entrance into the soul of
supernatural light and supernatural life. How or why it comes, the soul
knows not; for "the wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound
thereof, but can not tell whence it comes or where it goes, so is every one
that is born of the Spirit." The wind itself is not seen, but its effects
are felt. The sound of the wind is heard in the tops of the mulberry trees,
where God himself is not seen. "The voice of the Lord, powerful and full of
majesty. You heard his words but didn't see his form; there was only a
voice," (Deut. 4:12). Thus effects are felt, though causes are unknown. Streams flow into the heart from a hidden source; rays of
light beam into the soul from an unrisen sun; and kindlings of life awaken
in us a new existence out of an unseen fountain. The new-born babe feels
life in all its limbs, though it knows not yet the earthly father whence
that natural life sprang. And thus new-born souls are conscious of feelings
hitherto unpossessed, and are sensible of a tide of life, mysterious and
incomprehensible, ebbing and flowing in their heart, though "Abba, Father,"
has not yet burst from their lips. A man's body is alive to every feeling, from a pin's
scratch to a mortal wound, from a passing ache to an incurable disease. The
heart cannot flutter or intermit for a single second its customary beat,
without a peculiar sensation that accompanies it, notices it, and registers
it. Shall feelings, then, be the mark and evidence of natural life, and not
of spiritual? Shall our ignoble part, the creature of a day, our perishing
body, our dust of dust, have sensations to register every pain and every
pleasure, and be tremblingly alive to every change without and every change
within; and shall not our immortal souls be equally endowed with a similar
barometer to fluctuate up and down the scale of spiritual life? We must lay
it down, then, at the very threshold of vital godliness, that if a man has
not been conscious of new feelings, and cannot point out, with more or less
precision, some particular period, some never-to-be-forgotten season, when
these feelings came unbidden into his heart, he has not yet passed from
death unto life. He is not in Christ, if he is not a new creature (2
Cor.5:17).