REGENERATION is a theological expression denoting the spiritual change which passes on all men in becoming Christians. There are various interpretations of the mode and meaning of this change, bu t its necessity in some shape or another may be said to be admitted by all branches of the Christian church. By all, man is supposed, as time condition of his becoming truly Christian, to pass from a state of nature to a state of regeneration, from a state in which he obeys the mere impulses of the natural life to a state in which a new and higher—a divine—life has been awakened in him. The words of our Lord to Nicodenms: " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born aigain, he cannot see the kingdom of God," are accepted as the expression of this universal 'necessity by the Christian church. It may be further stated every branch of the Catholic church recognizes, although under very different conditions, the Holy Spirit as the author of this change. The change, in its real character, is spiritual, and spiritually induced. According to certain sections of the Christian church, however, the change is inseparably involved with Christian baptism, in all cases; while other sections do not acknowledge any essential connection between baptism and regeneration. In the view of the former, baptism constitutes always a real point of transition from the natural to the spiritual life. The grace of baptism is the grace of regeneration; the laver of bap tism is the laver of regeneration, not merely in any formal sense, but in a real and living sense, so that every baptized person—or at least every rightly baptized person—has alreatly become a Christian truly, although he may fall away from the grace that he has received.
This is what is commonly called the high church doctrine of regeneration. In the view of others, regeneration is a special, conscious process, which takes place of baptism, or of any other outward fact or ceremony. It implies a sensible experience —an awakening whereby men come to see the evil of sin, and the divine displeasure against sin, and, through the Holy Spirit, are born again, put away their former evil life, and begin to live a new divine life; and many Christians have spoken with rapture of this experience, of its thoroughness, its suddenness, its immediateness. There are dif ferent shades of opinion on the subject, some holding it as a condition of regeneration, that the regenerate should be able to recount, or at least give some precise idea of the time and manner of the change through which they have passed; others repudiating such views as savoring of fanaticism, yet holding no less to the spiritual definiteness of the change, independently of church forms of any kind; and such views, in contradis tinction to the high. church doctrine, have received the name of evangelical. The idea that regeneration is essentially involved in baptism, or identical with baptism, is sup posed by many Christians to be a peculiarly unevangelical idea, opposed to the spiritual ity and freedom of divine grace.