I answer that we are only capable of accepting propositions the two terms of which we are able to comprehend with more or less distinctness. Nothing has been the subject of greater abuse than the word “mystery” in connection with revelation. It is frequently represented as denoting something which from end to end is utterly incomprehensible, like the unknowable God of a certain system of philosophy. In the New Testament the meaning of the word “mystery” is not an incomprehensible proposition, but a truth which once was hidden in the divine counsels, and has been revealed by the Gospel. That which is actually unthinkable is incapable of affirmation or denial. None of the affirmations of Jesus Christ partake of this character. They are mysteries only in the sense that they ran up into spheres of thought which transcend the limits of human knowledge. But this is done by all ultimate philosophical and scientific truths. If it be urged that some of them are difficult or incapable of definition, the same is true of not a few of the conceptions of science. It is also true that they respect truths with which we could not be acquainted apart from such a revelation as that made in the person of Jesus Christ; but this is true of the phenomena of Creation likewise. We do not acquire a knowledge of its phenomena by reasoning, but by observation, or from the statements of others when they lie beyond the limits of our own observation. The Incarnation, including as it does the divine actions and the teaching of Jesus Christ, is not the revelation of a dogma, but the manifestation of a new fact. This fact, like all other phenomena, although undiscoverable by our reasoning powers without the exercise of observation, becomes after observation a fact on which reason may justly exercise its powers. If he be really what he professed to be, then his statements about himself give as an account of his previous history, before he came under human observation. Let me now consider the relation in which miracles stand to the affirmations of those who claimed a commission from Jesus Christ to publish his religion in the world, and to lay the foundation of the Church.