The Christian Mysteries.
The Feast of Trinity succeeds Pentecost; the light of the Gospel does not remove mysteries in religion. This is our subject. Let us enlarge upon it.
I. Consider such difficulties in religion as press upon us independently of the Scriptures. Now we shall find the Gospel has not removed these; they remain as great as before Christ came. Why does God permit so much evil in His own world? This was a mystery before God gave His revelation. It is as great a mystery now, and doubtless for this reason, because knowledge about it would do us no good; it would merely satisfy curiosity.
II. Nor, again, are the difficulties of Judaism removed by Christianity. The Gospel gives us no advantages, in mere barren knowledge, above the Jew, or above the unenlightened heathen.
III. Nay, we may proceed to say, further than this, that it increases our difficulties. It is, indeed, a remarkable circumstance, that the very revelation that brings us practical and useful knowledge about our souls, in the very act of doing so, may (as it would seem), in consequence of doing so, bring us mysteries. We gain spiritual light at the expense of intellectual perplexity; a blessed exchange doubtless, still at the price of perplexity. As we draw forth many remarkable facts concerning the natural world which do not lie on its surface, so by meditation we detect in revelation this remarkable principle, which is not openly propounded, that religious light is intellectual darkness.
IV. Such being the necessary mysteriousness of Scripture doctrine, how can we best turn it to account in the contest which we are engaged on with our own evil hearts? Difficulties in revelation are expressly given to prove the reality of our faith. They are stumbling-blocks to proud, unhumbled minds, and were intended to be such. Faith is unassuming, modest, thankful, obedient. Those that believe not fall away; the true disciples remain firm, for they feel their eternal interests at stake, and ask the very plain and practical, as well as affectionate, question, "To whomshall we go" if we leave Christ?
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. i., p. 203.
References: John 3:11. J. Keble, Sermons from Ascensiontide to Trinity,p. 33 2 John 1:3 :12. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 401; R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness,p. 1.