evealed to us. Thus they deal in
particular with the great truth declared in the text, that He who made
the world visited it in the likeness of man. Now, if this truth were a
mystery, in the common notion of that term; if it were a thing full of
darkness, defying our minds to understand it, or to draw any good from
it; then, indeed, it would be of little consequence whether we received
it or no. It is because it is a mystery in a very different sense, in
the sense in which the word is used commonly in the Scriptures; that
is, a thing which was a secret, but which God has been pleased to
reveal, and to reveal for our benefit, that therefore the loss of it
would be the loss of a real blessing, a loss at once of light
and comfort.

But we must go a little further, and explain from what this sad
confusion in the use of the term "mystery" has arisen. There are many
things relating to ourselves and to things around us, which by nature we
cannot understand; and of God we can scarcely understand anything. Now,
while the gospel has revealed much that we did not know before, it yet
has not revealed everything: of God, in particular, it has given us much
most precious knowledge, yet it has not removed all the veil. It has
furnished us with a glass, indeed, to use the apostle's comparison; but
the glass, although, a great help, although reflecting a likeness of
what, without it, we could not see at all, is yet a dark and imperfect
manner of seeing, compared with, the seeing face to face. So, when the
gospel tells us that He who made the world visited it in our nature, it
does not indeed enable us yet fully to conceive what He is who made us,
and then became as one of us; there is still left around the name of God
that light inaccessible which is to our imperfections darkness; and so
far as we cannot understand or conceive rightly of God, so far it is
true that we cannot understand all that is conveyed in the expression
that God was in the world dwelling among us. Yet it is still most true
that by the revelation thus made to us we have gained immensely. God, as
he is in himself, we cannot understand; but Jesus Christ we can. When we
are told to love God, if we look to the life and death of Christ, we can
understand and feel how truly he deserves our love; when we are told to
be perfect as God is perfect, we have the image of this perfection so
truly set before us in his Son Jesus, that it may be well said, "Whoso
hath seen Him hath