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THE NEW BIRTH
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tifies himself with it, fancies he finds pleasure in it, and will reap what he sows; hence the sinner must endure the effects of his delusion until he awakes from it.

The New Birth

St. Paul speaks of the new birth as “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” The great Nazarene Prophet said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” Nothing aside from the spiritualization — yea, the highest Christianization — of thought and desire, can give the true perception of God and divine Science, that results in health, happiness, and holiness.

The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins with moments, and goes on with years; moments of surrender to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration, heaven-born hope, and spiritual love.

Time may commence, but it cannot complete, the new birth: eternity does this; for progress is the law of infinity. Only through the sore travail of mortal mind shall soul as sense be satisfied, and man awake in His likeness. What a faith-lighted thought is this! that mortals can lay off the “old man,” until man is found to be the image of the infinite good that we name God, and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears.

In mortal and material man, goodness seems in embryo. By suffering for sin, and the gradual fading out of the mortal and material sense of man, thought is developed into an infant Christianity; and, feeding at first on the milk of the Word, it drinks in the sweet revealings