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How can a man be born again? asked the voice from the bed. 'How can a man be born when he is old? asked Nicodemus, as he heard the Saviour's words uttered for the first time. 'When he is old! To Nicodemus, as to Dr. Blund, there was something singularly attractive about the thought of babyhood, the thought of pastlessness, the thought of beginning life all over again.
Let me cite three instances each as unlike the others as it could possibly be in order to show that all sorts and conditions of men have at some time felt as Dr. Blund felt in those last hours of his.
Blund, he assures us, spent most of his time drinking gin and playing billiards at 'The Angel. In a professional point of view, only one person in the little seaside town believed in him, and that was the broken and bedraggled little woman whose whole life had been darkened by his debauchery. Mrs. Blund was never tired of singing the doctor's praises.
When she introduced him to a newcomer, and told of his wondrous cures and amazing skill, he listened like a man in a dream. 'Dr. Blund, so runs the story 'Dr. Blund was twitching with excess of alcohol, and only muttered and frowned as his wife talked of his powers.
They parted, never to meet again; and from another minister's lips the doctor learned the secret for which he craved. It is very difficult to excuse Mr. Rodwell, especially when we remember that the words that the dying doctor found so captivating, and that he himself found so perplexing, were originally intended to meet just such cases as that of Dr. Blund. 'What is it to be born again?
Thus the story opens. It could scarcely be expected that such a wreck could hold together for long. Exactly half-way through the book I find Mr. Rodwell, the young rector, standing at the street-corner talking to Mr. Shorder, the wealthy manufacturer. They are interrupted. Mrs. Blund comes hurrying breathlessly round the corner. 'Mr. Rodwell, she pants, 'please come at once! Dr. Blund!
And yet we have also felt the force of that persistent and penetrating How? Dr. Blund is no frolic of Mr. Begbie's imagination. Dr. Blund is the representative of all those and their name is legion who, in the crisis of the soul's secret history, have turned towards the Saviour's strange saying with the most intense wistfulness and yearning.
But to the aged ruler, as to the aged doctor, it was an insoluble enigma, an inscrutable mystery. 'How? asked Nicodemus of the Saviour. 'How can a man be born when he is old? 'How? asked Dr. Blund of Mr. Rodwell. 'How can a man be born again? We all feel that, unless the gospel can meet just such cases as these, we might almost as well have no gospel at all.
He's asking for you! I've been to the vicarage, I've been everywhere, hunting for you. Don't delay a moment, please! Richard Rodwell was an earnest young clergyman, who had ideas of his own about things; and the task to which he was now summoned was very little to his taste. He saw in Blund a man who had lived hideously and was now concerned to avert his just punishment.
He walked the streets of Bedford asking the old, old question, the question of Nicodemus, the question of Dr. Blund, the question of us all. 'How can a man be born again? How can a man be born again? From John Bunyan to the Duke of Wellington seems a far cry. But the transition may not be as drastic as it appears. Dr.
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