ned men to pass lightly over them, or at all events to regard them
only in their directly practical aspects, and so to withdraw from the
soul, as if they were but idle speculations, some of the most elevating
subjects of contemplation which the Christian faith affords. Such
reasoners were strangely blind to the thought that few could be so
inertly commonplace in mind and feeling, as to rest satisfied with being
fired to virtuous deeds by the purely practical side of transcendental
truths, without delighting in further reflection on the very nature of
those mysteries themselves. Nor did they at all realise, that
independently of any direct results in morality and well-being, it is no
small gain to a man to be led by the thought of Divine mysteries to feel
that he stands on the verge of a higher world, a higher nature, of which
he may have scarcely a dim perception, but to which creatures lower than
himself in the scale of being are wholly insensible. There was little
feeling that truths which baffle reason may be, and must be,
nevertheless accordant with true reason. It was left to William Law, a
writer who stood much apart from the general spirit of his age, to
remark: 'This is the true ground and nature of the mysteries of
Christian redemption. They are, in themselves, nothing else but what the
nature of things requires them to be ... but they are mysteries to man,
because brought into the scheme of redemption by the interposition of
God to work in a manner above and superior to all that is seen and done
in the things of this world.'[238]

Nothing very instructive or suggestive must be looked for from Tillotson
on the subject of Divine mysteries. He was too much of an
eighteenth-century man, if it may be so expressed, to be able to give
much appreciative thought to anything that lay beyond the direct
province of reason. Yet, on the other hand, he was too deeply religious,
and too watchful an observer, not to perceive that the unspiritual and
sceptical tendencies of his age were fostered by the disparagement of
all suprasensual ideas. The consequence is, that he deals with the
subject without ease, and with the air of an apologist. This remark
does not so much relate to the miracles. Upon them he constantly insists
as a very material part of distinctly rational evidence. But mysteries,
apart from any evidential character which they may possess, he clearly
regards almost entirely in the sense of difficulties, necessary to