footsteps of the throne of God and of the Lamb, there to serve Him, and see His face, "and have His name written on our foreheads, and reign with Him for ever and ever."

Preached St. Edmund's, Salisbury, December 7, 1859. St. Mary's, Oxford, November, 9, 1862.

III.

MYSTERIES.

(With allusions to the Death of Charles Dickens.)

"Great is the mystery of Godliness."-1 TIMOTHY iii. 16.

It ought to be no valid objection to Christianity that it concerns itself with mysteries.

If Revelation had undertaken to clear up all doubts and difficulties that might beset or cross the path of a man travelling from earth to heaven, then, that anything were left dark, that all were not so plain that even he that ran might read, would naturally, and might fairly, be occupied as a vantage-ground by gainsayers.

But such notoriously is not the case with that revelation which we Christians believe to have come from God. Over the mind of the Jew, as he tried to fathom the meaning of the Old Testament, we are distinctly told by St. Paul, there was spread "a veil.” "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself," was almost a complaint of the evangelical prophet-and though

that veil is done away in Christ, and much that before was dark is now made clear, still we see only as through a glass darkly "—as men interpreting a riddle. Even the Apostle, who had been caught up to the third heaven, and there beheld visions and revelations of the Lord, found it impossible, when he returned to the conditions of terrestrial life, to utter what he had seen.

If any one were asked beforehand what he would expect a revelation, given by such a Being as God to such a being as man, to contain; he would answer, if a person of reflection, that such a revelation might be anticipated to reveal nothing more of the nature of God than it concerned the recipient, for the purposes of his probation to know, that it would be intended not to gratify curiosity, but to establish faith.

It seems to me that the mysteries of what is called Nature" are every whit as inscrutable as the mysteries of what is called 'Grace.' The student of science, as well as the student of theology, must halt again and again on the verge of the unknown, and find himself confronted by barriers which he cannot pass. Of all natural phenomena, the phenomena of life are the most mysterious. What marvel, therefore, if the phenomena of spiritual life are governed by a parallel law, and are found too subtle for analysis, and hide themselves from the mere speculative inquirer ?

I shall not attempt to explain the great revealed mystery of the Triune Godhead, which we believe simply because it has been revealed. No doubt it is an exceeding mystery. It has been put into words,

but still, in a certain sense, it remains unutterable. The mind attempts to grasp it, yet it eludes the grasp. Even the Creed, which has attempted to adjust the doctrine to the proportions of our finite intellect, recoils, as it were, baffled from the task, and confesses that the Father is "immeasurable," the Son "immeasurable,” and the Holy Ghost "immeasurable."

But to live on the edge of mystery is the very condition of our being. "I seem like a boy," said Sir Isaac Newton, "playing on the seashore, and picking up a few pebbles here and there, but with the great ocean of truth undiscovered before me." "There are mysteries," said Leibnitz, "infinite in number, where moderate minds may find an explanation sufficient to enable them to believe, though inadequate to enable them to comprehend. The fact that a thing is, is enough for us to know; how it came to be is beyond our ken, and is not even necessary for us to know.”

It is the mark, not of a philosophic, but of an unphilosophic mind, to ask for explanations of a phenomenon which, from the very conditions of its existence, or else from the limitation of the powers of the investigating mind, must of necessity be inexplicable.

The field of religious inquiry is one thing: the field of rigid mathematical demonstration is another. Each has its own proper methods, its own evidential cogency You cannot demonstrate the doctrine of the Trinity as you can the truth that two sides of a triangle are greater than the third; nor can it be called a selfapproving axiom, as that two straight lines cannot

inclose a space, or that the whole is greater than the part.

The Trinity is a matter of express revelation, and of Christian revelation. If the Jew knew it at all, which may justly be doubted, he saw it as he saw so much of the Divine purpose, through a glass darkly.

We cannot even presume to say that the doctrine of the Trinity is the utmost knowledge of the Divine nature to which man may ultimately attain. There are things concerning ourselves and our own future which St. John tells us "have not yet been revealed.” If the precise character of our own future existence is not yet fully revealed, surely we may be prepared to admit that there may be further and fuller revelations in store for us of the nature of the Ancient of Days.

Some would bid us retain the morality of the Gospel and discard its doctrines. But it is impracticable counsel. Doctrines and precepts are woven into one tissue. The morality of the Gospel all depends on one fundamental axiom, that sin need not have dominion over those that are under Grace: that human nature can achieve any conquest over Satan through Christ strengthening it.

And in that same single axiom lies wrapped up the whole mystery of Redemption: the dogma of the Father's eternal counsel consummated by the administration of the Son, and applied to the sanctification of each individual soul by the operation of the Holy Ghost.

If we begin to discard doctrines from the Christian scheme because they are mysterious, it is hard to say