SERMON IV.

GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH: A SERMON FOR CHRISTMAS DAY.

1 TIMOTHY, iii. 16.

"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness God was manifest in the flesh."

Of all the absurdities which the abuse of reason has produced in religion, there is none more practically injurious than the peremptory and scornful rejection of mystery. Whether this word, as used in Scripture, has the same meaning which is now popularly attached to it, is a matter which we may consider hereafter. At present, I understand the term as it is usually applied, meaning a proposition in the terms of which there is something that we do not fully

understand, or of the causes, mode, and consequences of which we are either partially or entirely ignorant.

Now there have not been wanting persons, -and of a class, too, claiming the distinctive appellation of rational Christians,-who hold as a self-evident truth that it is irrational to believe any such mysterious proposition in religion. And this they do in direct opposition to all the analogy of natural science, many of whose most useful truths rest upon principles just as mysterious as any which enter into the creed of the orthodox Christian. Of that great law which governs the whole material universe, that attraction whose influence we experience at every moment in every voluntary or involuntary motion of our bodies, who is there that knows any thing beyond its practical effects? And who is there, pretending to philosophy, or even to common sense, who thinks that this unavoidable ignorance of the essential nature of gravitation ought to render us either sceptical of its real existence, or indifferent to its practical importance? What

navigator can explain the power by which the magnet turns towards the pole? or who imagines that, this being a mystery, he is disqualified from believing that it actually does so, and from availing himself of his certain knowledge of the fact? Nay, are we not a mystery to ourselves? Who can define matter or mind, except by their effects or operations? Who can comprehend or explain the chain of causes and effects through which external matter becomes, through the senses, the object of perception and of thought? In mystery we live, and move, and have our being; and he who refuses to believe in that which is mysterious, must refuse, together with every thing else, to believe the fact of his own existence.

But do not for a moment imagine that, either in natural science or in religion, this universal scepticism is the natural or reasonable state of man. We may with the highest degree of probability determine what it is that God wills us to know and believe, by considering what he has enabled us to know, and what are the truths the

knowledge of which is, or can be, practically influential on our well being; and these truths in both cases, that is to say, both in natural science and in religion, are facts and their practical application. The fact is, that all the matter with which we have to deal gravitates towards the centre of the earth; the application is, the whole body of mechanical philosophy and of the mechanical arts. The fact is, that, with certain ascertainable variations, the needle does point to the pole; the application is, that the navigator in fearless certainty traverses the pathless ocean, and practically keeps the course, and arrives at the harbour which he originally intended. Natural science, in short, has been upon the advance ever since men ceased to entangle themselves with the question, "How can these things be?" And why, it may be confidently asked, should that principle be condemned as irrational in religion, which is universally admitted as the true basis of successful investigation in all other sciences? have therefore no more cause to distrust a doc

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trine which we find in Scripture, because it is mysterious, than we have to disbelieve a phenomenon observed in nature because we do not know the chain of causes which produce it.

But when the apostle introduces our text by asserting that "great is the mystery of godliness," I do not think that he meant to assert that the essential nature of its truths was unfathomable by human reason; for the pretended rationalism of modern times was not one of the errors of the time in which he lived and wrote. A mystery in those days signified a truth, or system of belief, held by a fraternity of believers, and communicated only to such as were admitted into the society by certain solemn rites of initiation. Such were the mysteries of the Cabiri, and the mystery of Eleusis, though the peculiar nature of these secret doctrines it be now impossible to determine.

When therefore the apostle says that the mystery of godliness is great, he does not mean that there is something in Revelation which the