There is revelation of His Name in all His works. His action must be all self-manifestation. But after all it is obscure and hidden.
1. Nature hides while it reveals. Nature's revelation is unobtrusive. God is concealed behind second causes.
God is concealed behind regular modes of working (laws).
Nature's revelation is partial, disclosing only a fragment of the name.
Nature's revelation is ambiguous. Dark shadows of death and pain in the sensitive world, of ruin and convulsions, of shivered stars, seem to contradict the faith that all is very good; so that it has been possible for men to drop their plummet in the deep and say, I find no God,' and for others to fall into Manichaeism or some form or other of dualism.
2. Providence hides while it reveals.
That is the sphere in which men are most familiar with the idea of mystery.
There is much of which we do not see the issue. The process is not completed, and so the end is not visible.
Even when we believe that to Him' and for good' are all things,' we cannot tell how all will come circling round. We are like men looking only at one small segment of an ellipse which is very eccentric.
There is much of which we do not see the consistency with the divine character.
We are confronted with stumbling-blocks in the allotment of earthly conditions; in the long ages and many tribes which are without knowledge of God; in the sore sorrows, national and individual.
We can array a formidable host. But it is to be remembered that revelation actually increases these. It is just because we know so much of God that we feel them so keenly. I suppose the mysteries of the divine government trouble others outside the sphere of revelation but little. The darkness is made visible by the light.
3. Even in grace' God is hidden while revealed. The Infinite and Eternal cannot be grasped by man. The conception of infinity and eternity is given us by revelation, but it is not comprehended so that its contents are fully known. The words are known, but their full meaning is not, and no revelation can make them, known to finite intelligences.
God dwells in light inaccessible, which is darkness. Revelation opens abysses down which we cannot look. It raises and leaves unsettled as many questions as it solves.
The telescope resolves many nebulae, but only to bring more unresolvable ones into the field of vision.
Now all this is but one side of the truth. There is a tendency in some minds to underrate what is plain because all is not plain. For some minds the obscure has a fascination, apart altogether from its nature, just because it is obscure. It is a noble emulation to press forward and still to be dosing up what we know not with what we know.' But neither in science nor in religion shall we make progress if we do not take heed of the opposing errors of thinking that all is seen, and of thinking that what we have is valueless because there are gaps in it. The constellations are none the less bright nor immortal fires, though there be waste places in heaven where nothing but opaque blackness is seen. In these days it is especially needful to insist both on the incompleteness of all our religious knowledge, and to say that--
