IV.—­MYSTERY, MIRACLE, AND PROPHECY

I proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been employed in all ages and perhaps in all countries to impose upon mankind.

These three means are mystery, miracle, and prophecy.  The two first are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected.  With respect to mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a mystery to us.  Our own existence is a mystery, the whole vegetable world is a mystery.  We know not how it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies itself.

The fact, however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a mystery, because we see it; and we know also the means we are to use, which is no other than putting the seed in the ground.  We know, therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of the operation that we do not know, and which if we did we could not perform, the Creator takes upon Himself and performs it for us.

But though every created thing is in this sense a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light.  The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth, and not of mystery.  Mystery is the antagonist of truth.  It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.

Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery.  The belief of a God, so far from having anything of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, becauses it arises to us out of necessity.  And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a practical imitation of the goodness of God, is no other than our acting towards each other as he acts benignly towards all.

When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation, they were under the necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should serve as a bar to all inquiries and speculations.  The word “mystery” answered this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion, which in itself is without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mysteries.

As mystery answered all general purposes, “miracle” followed as an occasional auxiliary.  Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given, that of miracle is the most inconsistent.  For, in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief, it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached.  And, in the second place, it is degrading the Almighty into the character of a showman, playing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and wonder.  It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter who says that he saw it; and therefore the thing, were it true, would have no better chance of being believed than if it were a lie.