Or again, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”  Here are words in themselves, as abstract truths, perfectly overwhelming; “God,” “God’s only-begotten Son,” “Eternity.”  Who shall understand these things, when it is said, that “none knoweth the Son, save the Father; that none knoweth the Father, save the Son?” But did God tell us the words for nothing? can we understand nothing from them? believe nothing? feel nothing?  Nay, they were spoken that we might both understand, and believe, and feel.  How must He love us, who gives for us his only-begotten Son! how surely may we believe in Him who is an only-begotten Son to his Father,—­so equal in nature, so entire in union!—­What must that happiness be, which reaches beyond our powers of counting!  Would we go further?—­then the veil is drawn before us; other truths there are, no doubt, contained in the words; truths which the angels might desire to look into; truths which even they may be unable to understand.  But these are the secret things which belong unto our God; the things which are revealed they are what belong to us and to our children, that we may understand, and believe, and do them.

Again, “the Comforter, whom Christ will send unto us from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of Christ.”  What words are here!  “The Spirit of Truth,” “the Spirit proceeding from the Father;” the Spirit “whom Christ will send,” and “send from the Father.”  Can any created being understand, to the full, such “heavenly things” as these?  But would Christ have uttered to his disciples mere unintelligible words, which could tell them nothing, and excite in them no feeling but mere wonder?  Not so; but the words told them that Christ was not to be lost to them after he had left them on earth; that every gift of God was his:  that even that Spirit of God, in which is contained all the fulness of the Godhead, is the Spirit of Christ also; that that mighty power which should work in them so abundantly, was of no other or lower origin than God himself; as entirely God, as the spirit of man is man.  But can we therefore understand the Spirit of God, or conceive of him?  How should we, when we cannot understand our own?  This, and this only, we understand and believe, that without him our spirits cannot be quickened; that unless we pray daily for his aid, and listen to his calls within us, our spirit will never be created after his image, and we cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

It is thus, and thus only, that the revelations of God’s word are beyond our understandings:  that in them, beings and things are spoken of, which, taken generally, and in themselves, we should in vain endeavour to comprehend.  But what God means us to know, or feel, or do, respecting them, that we can understand; and beyond this we have no concern.  It is, in fact, a contradiction to speak of revealing