what is unintelligible; for so far as it is a revealed truth it is intelligible; so far as it is unintelligible, it is not revealed.  But though a thing revealed must be intelligible in itself, yet it by no means follows that we can understand how it happens.  When we are told that the dead shall rise again, we can understand quite well what is meant; that we beings who feel happiness and misery, shall feel them again, either the one or the other, after we seemingly have done with them for ever in the grave.  But “How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?” are questions to which, whether asked scoffingly or sincerely, we can give no answers; here our understanding fails, and here the truth is not revealed to us.

How, then, has Christianity no mysteries?  In one sense, blessed be God for it, it has many.  Using mysteries in St. Paul’s sense of great revelations of things which were and must be unknown to all, except God had revealed them:  then, indeed, they are many; the pillar and ground of truth, great without controversy, and full of salvation.  But take mysteries in our more common sense of the word,—­as things which are revealed to none, and can be understood by none,—­then it is true that Christianity leaves many such in existence; that many such she has done away; that none has she created.  She leaves many mysteries with respect to God, and with respect to ourselves; God is still incomprehensible; life and death have many things in them beyond our questioning; we may still look around us, above us, and within us, and wonder, and be ignorant.  But if she still leaves the veil drawn over much in heaven and in earth, yet from how much has she removed it!  Life and death are still in many respects dark; but she has brought to light immortality.  God is still in himself incomprehensible; but all his glory, and all his perfections, are revealed to us in his only-begotten Son Christ Jesus.  God’s Spirit who can search out in his own proper essence? yet Christianity has taught us how we may have him to dwell with us for ever, and taste the fulness of his blessings.  Yea, thanks be to God for the great Christian mystery which we this day celebrate; that he has revealed himself to us as our Saviour and our Comforter; that he has revealed to us his infinite love, in that he has given us his only-begotten Son to die for us, and his own Eternal Spirit to make our hearts his temple.

LECTURE XXVIII.

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EXODUS iii. 6.

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

LUKE xxiii. 30.

Then shall they begin to say to the mountains.  Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.

These two passages occur, the one in the first lesson of this morning’s service, the other in the second.  One or other of them must have been, or must be, the case of you, of me, of every soul of man that lives or has lived since the world began.  There must be a time in the existence of every human being when he will fear God.  But the great, the infinite difference is, whether we fear him at the beginning of our relations to him, or at the end.