the most striking illustration of the manner in which the law regarded relationship by adoption is to be seen in the fact that it constituted as complete a bar to intermarriage as relationship by blood. St. Paul is the only one of the sacred writers who makes use of the metaphor of adoption. Nor is it the word only which is peculiar to him, but also the idea. This metaphor was his translation into the language of Gentile thought of Christ’s great doctrine of the New Birth. “Except a man be born again
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