LECTURE XXII.

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CHRISTMAS DAY.

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JOHN i. 10.

He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.

When we use ourselves, or hear others use, the term “mystery,” as applied to things belonging to the gospel, we should do well to consider what is meant by it.  For our common notion of the word mystery is of something dark; whereas Christ and his gospel are continually spoken of as being, above all other things, light.  Then come others, and say, “Light and darkness cannot go together:  what you call the mysteries of Christianity are no part of it, but the fond inventions of man:  Christianity is all simple and clear:”  and thus they strike away some of the very greatest truths which God has revealed to us.  Thus they deal in particular with the great truth declared in the text, that He who made the world visited it in the likeness of man.  Now, if this truth were a mystery, in the common notion of that term; if it were a thing full of darkness, defying our minds to understand it, or to draw any good from it; then, indeed, it would be of little consequence whether we received it or no.  It is because it is a mystery in a very different sense, in the sense in which the word is used commonly in the Scriptures; that is, a thing which was a secret, but which God has been pleased to reveal, and to reveal for our benefit, that therefore the loss of it would be the loss of a real blessing, a loss at once of light and comfort.

But we must go a little further, and explain from what this sad confusion in the use of the term “mystery” has arisen.  There are many things relating to ourselves and to things around us, which by nature we cannot understand; and of God we can scarcely understand anything.  Now, while the gospel has revealed much that we did not know before, it yet has not revealed everything:  of God, in particular, it has given us much most precious knowledge, yet it has not removed all the veil.  It has furnished us with a glass, indeed, to use the apostle’s comparison; but the glass, although, a great help, although reflecting a likeness of what, without it, we could not see at all, is yet a dark and imperfect manner of seeing, compared with, the seeing face to face.  So, when the gospel tells us that He who made the world visited it in our nature, it does not indeed enable us yet fully to conceive what He is who made us, and then became as one of us; there is still left around the name of God that light inaccessible which is to our imperfections darkness; and so far as we cannot understand or conceive rightly of God, so far it is true that we cannot understand all that is conveyed in the expression that God was in the world dwelling among us.  Yet it is still most true that by the revelation thus made to us we have gained immensely.  God, as